Road construction: Motorists spend hours in Zuba traffic gridlock

Motorists and other road users that ply through Zuba town in the Federal Capital Territory FCT have decried the persistence gridlock being experienced in the area since the commencement of the rehabilitation work along the Abuja-Kaduna highway for the past two weeks. The motorists said they often spend about an hour or two on the […]

Motorists and other road users that ply through Zuba town in the Federal Capital Territory FCT have decried the persistence gridlock being experienced in the area since the commencement of the rehabilitation work along the Abuja-Kaduna highway for the past two weeks.

The motorists said they often spend about an hour or two on the portion of the road that is less than a kilometre.

Abuja Metro reports that Zuba town, which is one of the major entry points into the nation’s capital, also serves as transit points for travellers to either Northern or Southern states of the country.

Recently, a construction company commenced rehabilitation work on a portion of the Abuja-Kaduna highway, starting from Tungan-Maje and expected to link to Kaduna Road in Suleja area of Niger State, where a previous firm that handled the project stopped work.

The work on the road in Zuba town led to the diversion of the ever-busy expressway into one way, causing serious traffic gridlock on a daily basis.

Although many motorists, who spoke with Abuja Metro, lauded the rehabilitation works, they frowned at the complete closure of a lane on such a busy expressway.

They said the construction firm should have provided alternative routes before forcing the motorists to make use of a single lane in such a highway.

One of the drivers, who operates from Zuba town, Michael Olusoga, said the motorists that ply the road, experiences unnecessary stress navigating through a gridlock caused by the diversion on daily bases since the work gets to Zuba town from the Tungan-Maje.

He urged the construction firm to expand the single lane opened for the motorists rather than just blocking the second one, from the Tungan-Maje down to the Madalla town in Niger State.

The driver also decried the absence of caution signs that usually guide the motorists on blocked roads.

“This is how the other giant construction companies are doing. They also need to provide temporary entry and exit routes for such a very important project,” the driver advised.

A member of the National Union of Road Transportation Workers (NURTW) in the area, Muhammad Elrufai, said there had been cases of accidents in recent time as a result of the road project, saying the latest one led to the dead of one person and injuring four others.

He said, “It involved a trailer truck that ran over a gulf car loaded with passengers, one of them died instantly, while four others survived with various degrees of injuries.”

The driver lamented that as a result of the gridlock, passengers are no longer patronizing the area, saying that many of them will rather go to Jabi Park in the city center to board vehicles that will pass through Bwari-Jere road.

He urged the firm in charge of the project to introduce night work among other measures to reduce the traffic jam.

Also affected by the gridlock are civil servants and other staff that work in the Abuja city center but reside around the axis.

A civil servant in Abuja, who resides in Suleja town in Niger State, Nura Shuaibu, said it took him about one to two hours on many occasions to cover a distance of about one kilometre on the road.

This, according to him, usually make many people tired when they get back home in the evening.

Workers of the company handling the project refused to talk to our reporter and there was no available sign board that would guide him tracing the company’s office.