By Musa Bakare
For nearly two decades, the Abuja–Lokoja road project has stood as a glaring symbol of delay, weak execution, and institutional complacency.
A highway that should represent connectivity and national efficiency has instead become a monument to failure.
A journey of barely 200 kilometers, which ought to take no more than three hours, now routinely degenerates into a grueling, unpredictable ordeal stretching into endless hours, sometimes even days.
Approved for dualisation in 2006 under President Olusegun Obasanjo, the Abuja–Abaji–Lokoja highway was divided among four contractors with a clear mandate: deliver within 30 months at a cost of ₦42.55 billion.
Nearly 20 years later, that mandate remains unfulfilled, buried under missed deadlines, poor coordination, and questionable commitment.
What was conceived as a flagship infrastructure project has become a cautionary tale of how not to build a road.
Today, the highway is a battlefield of craters, failed sections, and chaotic gridlock. Broken-down trucks litter the route like monuments to abandonment. Commuters are trapped for hours without relief.
What should be a routine trip has turned into a gamble with time, safety, and sanity.
This is not mere inconvenience, it is economic sabotage.
The Abuja–Lokoja corridor is a vital commercial lifeline linking the Federal Capital Territory to the North-Central and Southern regions. Every delay translates into lost revenue, inflated transport costs, disrupted supply chains, and wasted man-hours. Perishable goods rot in traffic. Businesses absorb avoidable losses. Productivity bleeds.
The human cost is even more severe. Lives are lost daily to avoidable accidents on failed sections of the road. Families are stranded without security or basic support. Emergency services are crippled by the very infrastructure meant to enable movement.
If any road in Nigeria deserves an emergency declaration, it is the Abuja–Lokoja highway, particularly the Abaji–Lokoja stretch.
What makes this failure even more indefensible is its proximity to power.
This is not a forgotten rural road. This is Abuja’s doorstep, a highway traversed daily by top government officials, policymakers, and security convoys. They see the chaos. They endure the delays. Yet, progress remains painfully slow.
If a road this close to the seat of power can suffer such neglect, what hope exists for more remote corridors like the Kabba–Egbe–Ilorin axis or the Kabba–Ekinrin Adde to Omuo in Ekiti State road?
The renewed infrastructure push under President Bola Ahmed Tinubu offers a window of hope, and the shift toward concrete road standards is commendable. But the contractors must be told of the needed urgency. Nigerians demand visible, measurable, and swift results on this critical corridor.
Enough of phased repairs that lead nowhere. Enough of promises without delivery.
This road requires immediate, decisive, and coordinated intervention, not cosmetic patchwork. It demands accountability, strict timelines, and consequences for failure.
Anything less is a declaration that mediocrity on the part of the contractors has become acceptable.
Until this road is fixed, fully and properly, it will remain what it is tragically becoming: a national embarrassment.
– Musa Asiru Bakare, a Political Analyst, writes from Lokoja, Kogi State.
