Abuja’s nightmarish traffic congestion

“ I was very disappointed and angry really don’t know what is becoming of this city, this is a trip I used to make within ten minutes and now, I spend close to forty five minutes driving through traffic jams,” Fumed Patrick Ogunderu. His traumatic traffic experience was replicated in John Oba, a computer analyst […]

“ I was very disappointed and angry really don’t know what is becoming of this city, this is a trip I used to make within ten minutes and now, I spend close to forty five minutes driving through traffic jams,” Fumed Patrick Ogunderu. His traumatic traffic experience was replicated in John Oba, a computer analyst who works in Wuse ll. According to him, “the nature of my job is such that it requires me to drive round the city a lot to attend to my clients’ demands, but the task of driving through Abuja city in recent times has been nightmarish to say the least. Nowadays, a journey of ten to fifteen minutes lasts for as long as one hour or more.”

Frustration has continued to rule the lives of the Federal Capital Territory (FCT), Abuja, residents, who commute daily within the city centre in the pursuit of socio economic activities. Sunday Trust investigations revealed that commuting from one part of the city centre has been frustrating for many of the residents as traffic congestions has practically taken over most of the city’s wide roads.

Worst hit areas in the city includes the Ahmadu Bello way that stretches from Gudu district through the Apo legislative quarters to Area 11 and the federal secretariat. One of the commuters, Beatrice Onwuka who spoke to this medium attributed the frequent traffic congestion to the increase in vehicular movements on Abuja roads. In her view “all these traffic congestion you see all over the place are as a result of the fact that people are buying cars on a daily basis.

Two years ago, Abuja was not like this. There were fewer cars on the road and you can drive to anywhere you want without traffic snare, but since el-Rufai placed a ban on motorcycles and motorbikes, many people who were displaced by the policy hurried to buy cars and the result is the traffic congestion you see on the roads.” Another resident Babatunde Yusuf, who works at the federal secretariat, Abuja attributed the new development to the unbridled influx of people into the capital city. According to him, “the agonising traffic snares on Abuja roads are as a result of the increase in population of the residents.

There are those who migrate to Abuja in search of greener pastures basically because, it is the seat of government and so they feel, they have to be in the city to have their own share of the national cake.” But, in his own opinion, Garba Abdul, a resident who works in Maitama and lives in Nyayan, said that “the spate of traffic congestion in Abuja is as a result of the materialistic nature of most Nigerians. Today, it is common to see most people owning two or three cars and they also buy for their wives, too. So if all these people put all their vehicles on the road, the result is the traffic confusion that we see.”

So many things come into play to scuttle the plans of the FCT residents on a daily basis. Most significant of all is that the Abuja-Keffi expressway is almost always choked up. It is the only access route for hundreds of thousands of people earning their living in the city. Construction work is going on at the popular A. Y. A. Roundabout, which is the base of the expressway and has restricted the available space for free movement of vehicles, with adverse consequences, including persistent and ominous threats to public safety.

Every working day is, indeed, to be dreaded. The residents wake up with the same headache of knowing the stress they would be confronted with as they commute to work, and the stress that awaits them at the close of work. More often than not, they are reluctant to leave their homes or offices. It is hard to say when the traffic congestion is most agonizing; whether it is in the morning, when everyone is rushing to work, or in the evening, when people are physically and mentally exhausted and are eager for the warm embrace of their homes. Whichever way, it is an experience they would be more than content to live without.

The volume of traffic that goes through A.Y. A. and the Keffi expressway is far more than the narrow space provided by the construction firm can accommodate. People are held up for hours, just trying to move between the headquarters of the firm handling the project, Dantata and Sawoe, on the Nnamdi Azikiwe outer ring road, through A.Y.A itself, to Mogadishu Barracks, a distance of not more than five kilometres. It becomes more terrifying if there is any accident at any point on the entire stretch of the Keffi Expressway way up to Mararaba, which is about 12 kilometres.

The Chief Press Secretary to the Minister of the Federal Capital Territory, Sule Hazap however, conceded that government was aware of the discomfort the project had caused residents, and was, therefore, committed to completing it very soon. He opined that work was progressing as planned, contrary to the assertion of users, adding that the suffering would soon be over for commuters.