Nigeria's potholed roads among world's most deadly
By JON GAMBRELL, Associated Press – 3 hours ago

MOWE, Nigeria (AP) — The tractor-trailer lay alongside the busy Nigeria expressway like a child's forgotten toy, its cargo of cosmetics smashed on the hot, uneven strip of asphalt road and its driver left bleeding with a head wound.
Burned-out metal carcasses of crashed minibuses and wrecked cars line the Lagos-Ibadan Expressway, a rutted and potholed highway that connects two major cities in Africa's most populous nation.
Horns screeched from drivers waiting impatiently to pass, as those on the other side of the highway sped on without slowing for the axle-jarring bumps in the uneven lane.
Despite decades as an oil producer, Nigeria's roads remain neglected scenes of needless carnage. And despite the World Health Organization warning that Nigeria's traffic fatalities among the highest in the world, the deaths continue unabated.
"For now, it's a death trap," said Abdul-Azeez Ibraheem, a lecturer at Lagos State University who studied the traffic crashes.
Africa as a whole has one of the highest road traffic death rates in the world, the WHO's 2009 study determined. Nigeria saw more than 47,800 people killed in traffic crashes in 2007 alone, according to WHO statistics. That put it at No. 3 in the world in the number of fatalities, behind China and India.
Paved roads only constitute 15 percent of Nigeria's total road network, and crashes happen with a horrifying regularity.
Speeding buses crash head-on into each other on a seemingly daily basis, as drivers who often take stimulants and liquor rush along unsafe roads. Passengers are crammed onto benches welded to the floor of former delivery vans. And long-haul truckers lose control of gasoline tankers that can explode into hellish infernos.
Along the Lagos-Ibadan Expressway, tow truck driver Muritala Adeniran, 54, said he's seen an "uncountable" number of crashes from the driver's seat of his old yellow-and-green Range Rover. The worst came several years ago as a fuel tanker overturned on the highway, its fuel draining down a hill and igniting, burning a line of waiting cars behind it.
Talking alongside the highway, he could only shake his head watching a speeding sedan pass, not slowing down despite the road being buckled into ruts from straining under the weight of overloaded semi-trucks.
"The roads are not good," Adeniran said in the local Yoruba language. "If vehicles pass, you see how the tires begin to wobble."
Nigeria's endemically corrupt federal police represent another danger on the road, mounting sudden checkpoints to extort money from drivers. In August 2010 and April of this year, trucks unable to stop plowed into waiting cars at two separate checkpoints, starting fires that killed more than 20 people in each instance.
The agency charged with monitoring roadways, the Federal Road Safety Corps, also faces allegations of accepting bribes to look away from dangerous vehicles and drivers plying highways. A corps spokesman refused to talk to The Associated Press about traffic crashes in the nation.
Another danger lurks from the motorcycles that race around Nigeria's cities and countryside, braying horns originally designed for semi-trucks. The bikes, known locally as "okadas," speed through crowded streets with little regard for traffic signals or other vehicles. Crashes remain all too common, as are serious injuries, as many onboard don't wear helmets.
Nigeria has about 106,000 miles (164,000 kilometers) of unpaved dirt or gravel roads, which wash out in the country's rainy season and make travel impossible.
While Nigeria earns billions of dollars a year from oil production, confusion over which roads remain a federal, state or local responsibility sometimes delay repairs, Ibraheem said. Corruption plays another major problem, as some road projects often get budgeted for each year without any actual work being done, he said.
Along the Lagos-Ibadan Expressway, Aliyu Mohammed, 37, looked over his wrecked tractor trailer and blamed the federal government for not maintaining the highway. He owned the truck and its cargo, which should have been on the way to Maiduguri, a city in the country's far northeast that's more than 1,000 miles (1,600 kilometers).
In the past, it took two days to drive that distance, he said. Today, the journey can take five days.
"Without road, there is no life," Mohammed said. "We can't survive."



Here is the link
http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5iy8SxhbUhPbUexyik8xIleOsbFSw?docId=1533bf61a0d049f5920b0c984d49e721

You don't say

Does Nigeria have roads or bush, death-traps?
Thank God for Oshiomo-Ale and Fazzzz-hole road reforms!
They would have been "more deadlier"!

Wait let them upgrade all our airports and create more then we begin to fly to anywhere in Nigeria, NO MORE ROAD WAHALA AGAIN or you never tired ?

Very accurate account of the situation on ground. It's a pity we've found ourselves in such situation, however, people like Fashola have proven that we can do better.

wow, [img]http://2.s07.flagcounter.com/count/DymW/bg=E6E6E5/txt=E6E6E5/border=E6E6E5/columns=1/maxflags=1/viewers=3/labels=0/[/img]
[img]http://s07.flagcounter.com/count/DymW/bg=E6E6E5/txt=E6E6E5/border=E6E6E5/columns=1/maxflags=1/viewers=3/labels=0/[/img]

No argument on that

my ppl let us pray God should see us true this end of the year and any driver u come acros pls tel him to drive carefull . most on lokoja/okene rd . there driver are so recless

Federal officials and lawmakers should be allowed to travel on road.

Point of correction, Nigerian roads are not among the worlds most deadly but the worst and bad in the world.

Director 23:

my ppl let us pray God should see us true this end of the year and any driver u come acros pls tel him to drive carefull . most on lokoja/okene rd . there driver are so recless

STOP prayingand do soething. How long have you ben praying for?

Hopeless Nigerians

Civil Society and the masses should pressurize the FG to separate the LG accounts from their various state accounts, this will go a long way in solving many infrastructural decay we have been experiencing. BUT to think of it, Our past leaders were crooks.They should be sued for adding that in the constitution if actually it's there,

Rubbish racist report. There are bad roads in europe too. like a poster was kind to show us some threads ago, there are many nice roads in Nigeria jor!

Civil Society and the masses should pressurize the FG to separate the LG accounts from their various state accounts, this will go a long way in solving many infrastructural decay we have been experiencing. BUT to think of it, Our past leaders were crooks.They should be sued for adding that in the constitution if actually it's there,

wouldn't suprise me for that!!!!!!!!!!!!! Nigeria roads are among the world'most deadly, And 2012 budget has been up, let see what 2012 budget will get us, finger cross,

anyone here have recent photos??

Obviously, this article was not written by a Nigeria, but someone from the western world. You can see by the way he's putting emphasis on words he doesn't need to

Civil Society and the masses should pressurize the FG to separate the LG accounts from their various state accounts, this will go a long way in solving many infrastructural decay we have been experiencing. BUT to think of it, Our past leaders were  crooks.They should be sued for adding that in the constitution if actually it's there,

some youths actually believe that someday nigeria would be a wonderful place to live like europe, sorry for you guys,

it is only a bloody revolution that can ever gurantee that in the next 50yrs even if the revolution takes place now,

Was this supposed to be news?

Nigerian roads are more like suicide mission.

Its not to late, to make the many bad roads good.

the roads aren't deadly, the drivers that make it so dangerous


[img]http://s03.flagcounter.com/map/FMv/size=t/txt=000000/border=CCCCCC/pageviews=1/viewers=3[/img]
[img]http://2.s03.flagcounter.com/count/FMv/bg=00CC66/txt=000000/border=000000/columns=1/maxflags=1/viewers=3/labels=1/pageviews=1/[/img][img]http://s03.flagcounter.com/count/FMv/bg=00CC66/txt=000000/border=000000/columns=1/maxflags=1/viewers=3/labels=1/pageviews=1/[/img]

I will consider Benin - Warri motorway as our best in Nigeria. If only our goverment will give all the other roads a facelift to such standard, then, I would say " we are sure to get there".

Oba234:

Nigeria's potholed roads among world's most deadly
By JON GAMBRELL, Associated Press – 3 hours ago

MOWE, Nigeria (AP) — The tractor-trailer lay alongside the busy Nigeria expressway like a child's forgotten toy, its cargo of cosmetics smashed on the hot, uneven strip of asphalt road and its driver left bleeding with a head wound.
Burned-out metal carcasses of crashed minibuses and wrecked cars line the Lagos-Ibadan Expressway, a rutted and potholed highway that connects two major cities in Africa's most populous nation.
Horns screeched from drivers waiting impatiently to pass, as those on the other side of the highway sped on without slowing for the axle-jarring bumps in the uneven lane.
Despite decades as an oil producer, Nigeria's roads remain neglected scenes of needless carnage. And despite the World Health Organization warning that Nigeria's traffic fatalities among the highest in the world, the deaths continue unabated.
"For now, it's a death trap," said Abdul-Azeez Ibraheem, a lecturer at Lagos State University who studied the traffic crashes.
Africa as a whole has one of the highest road traffic death rates in the world, the WHO's 2009 study determined. Nigeria saw more than 47,800 people killed in traffic crashes in 2007 alone, according to WHO statistics. That put it at No. 3 in the world in the number of fatalities, behind China and India.
Paved roads only constitute 15 percent of Nigeria's total road network, and crashes happen with a horrifying regularity.
Speeding buses crash head-on into each other on a seemingly daily basis, as drivers who often take stimulants and liquor rush along unsafe roads. Passengers are crammed onto benches welded to the floor of former delivery vans. And long-haul truckers lose control of gasoline tankers that can explode into hellish infernos.
Along the Lagos-Ibadan Expressway, tow truck driver Muritala Adeniran, 54, said he's seen an "uncountable" number of crashes from the driver's seat of his old yellow-and-green Range Rover. The worst came several years ago as a fuel tanker overturned on the highway, its fuel draining down a hill and igniting, burning a line of waiting cars behind it.
Talking alongside the highway, he could only shake his head watching a speeding sedan pass, not slowing down despite the road being buckled into ruts from straining under the weight of overloaded semi-trucks.
"The roads are not good," Adeniran said in the local Yoruba language. "If vehicles pass, you see how the tires begin to wobble."
Nigeria's endemically corrupt federal police represent another danger on the road, mounting sudden checkpoints to extort money from drivers. In August 2010 and April of this year, trucks unable to stop plowed into waiting cars at two separate checkpoints, starting fires that killed more than 20 people in each instance.
The agency charged with monitoring roadways, the Federal Road Safety Corps, also faces allegations of accepting bribes to look away from dangerous vehicles and drivers plying highways. A corps spokesman refused to talk to The Associated Press about traffic crashes in the nation.
Another danger lurks from the motorcycles that race around Nigeria's cities and countryside, braying horns originally designed for semi-trucks. The bikes, known locally as "okadas," speed through crowded streets with little regard for traffic signals or other vehicles. Crashes remain all too common, as are serious injuries, as many onboard don't wear helmets.
Nigeria has about 106,000 miles (164,000 kilometers) of unpaved dirt or gravel roads, which wash out in the country's rainy season and make travel impossible.
While Nigeria earns billions of dollars a year from oil production, confusion over which roads remain a federal, state or local responsibility sometimes delay repairs, Ibraheem said. Corruption plays another major problem, as some road projects often get budgeted for each year without any actual work being done, he said.
Along the Lagos-Ibadan Expressway, Aliyu Mohammed, 37, looked over his wrecked tractor trailer and blamed the federal government for not maintaining the highway. He owned the truck and its cargo, which should have been on the way to Maiduguri, a city in the country's far northeast that's more than 1,000 miles (1,600 kilometers).
In the past, it took two days to drive that distance, he said. Today, the journey can take five days.
"Without road, there is no life," Mohammed said. "We can't survive."



Here is the link
http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5iy8SxhbUhPbUexyik8xIleOsbFSw?docId=1533bf61a0d049f5920b0c984d49e721

I hope the minister of works and transport is reading this, i also hope those fat senators and parliamenterians in abuja are reading this. we all know that they fly from point a to point b but they should do something about the horrible state of nigerian roads.

na today una dey know?

@post,talk another tin abeg.
This na stale news.

You guys seem not to have read this earlier! 
It is a classic!
Who wrote it?
Mark Hammond, a foreigner.
-------------------------------------------------------------

Nigeria
Ikom, Nigeria * December 23, 2008

Scrawled in a shaky hand in the paper journal that I carry in my tankbag:

Lunch break, roadside, west of Benin City – OK, officially the most insane road I have ever ridden! The drivers, so fast, so aggressive, so brutal!
Beneath that I drew a diagram of the four-lane road we had chosen through a southern slice of Nigeria. It is charitably called an expressway and is divided by a weed-infested concrete median. On a four-lane expressway in the Western world, vehicles in the two right lanes would proceed east, while those in the two left lanes motor west.

Not here. Not in Nigeria, not on this throbbing artery of blood-thick traffic and long stretches of destroyed pavement. My diagram depicts traffic flow with four arrows. The journal goes on:
Incredible! To get somewhere faster, drivers cross the median and DRIVE THE WRONG WAY DOWN A HIGH-SPEED ONE-WAY ROAD!


The first time, I thought I was seeing things. Then I thought, Oh wow, that driver really got screwed up, he’s going the wrong way against traffic! But then I saw it again and again, and watched in grim amazement as drivers jockeyed back and forth at a breakneck pace, going both ways on a one-way route, a hundred head-on collisions waiting to happen. My journal continues:

Saw a sign – “If You Can’t Read This, You’re Going Too Fast. Nigerian Federal Road Safety Commission.”

No, the sign didn’t make sense. Nigeria didn’t make sense – not on the highways we rode. Motorized and urban Nigeria was upside down and inside out, twisted and furious and mutant and crazy and brash and bold and filthy and horrifying and exhilarating.

Africa on steroids, Migo called it. And amphetamines, and crack cocaine, and LSD … name your drug. Nigeria was on a permanent bender, intoxicated on its own stinking exhaust.

Migo and I took three days to ride the 800-plus miles from Abomey, Benin, to a border crossing at Ilara, Nigeria, north of Lagos, to Calabar, a city of 500,000 in southeastern Nigeria. In Calabar, we found a rundown, overpriced hotel off the main market and wandered into the pulsating night, stepping through dense traffic and around open sewers and over gaping holes in the street, for dinner and beers.

We sat outdoors on wooden benches at a rickety table in a dirt yard. The municipal electricity was off. It often was, in Calabar and elsewhere in Nigeria. Cans of kerosene with open dancing flames furnished illumination. Migo chewed on a kebab of peppered meat from a street vendor. I poked at a bowl of rice and red sauce. We sipped our warm Gulder beers.

“You know,” I said. “Those were the three most stressful days of motorcycling I’ve ever done.”

Migo exhaled deeply. “Phew, me too,” he said. “That was absolutely crazy. In Germany we drive fast, but not like that. Not that crazily. The wrong way on a one-way road! That actually had me a little scared. It’s like there’s no law out here – anything goes. Completely lawless. Every man for himself.”

“Lord of the Flies,” I said.

A woman from a food stand stopped by to see if I would like some bush meat with my rice and red sauce. Bush meat means monkey or crocodile or rodent or any other animal hunted, often illegally, by natives in the bush. I had seen a sign for bush meat in the dirt yard. I told her no.

I thought for a minute. “The Nigerian motorist is like a dog,” I told Migo. “He’s all nice to you when you’re stopped or eating something and he wants some food or petting, but put him behind a wheel and he turns into a crazed animal that hates motorcycles.”

I looked at my friend and smiled and was glad that he was still with me.

It was close. Damn close. Migo hadn’t seen it. But[b] he had very nearly been rear-ended by a speeding blue and white car earlier in the day[/b]. We would see dozens of these late-model blue and white cars – taxis, they were -- on the road from Onitsha to Calabar, the final day of our white-knuckle run across Nigeria.

Migo was ahead of me, as he usually is, on account of he rides more aggressively and has assumed navigational command for the group. He slowed for a vehicle trundling along in the right lane. This section of the road was four lanes. He checked his rear view mirror; a car was pulling up fast behind him on the left.

Once that car was past, Migo executed his pass. He is skilled and artful rider. Many times I have watched admiringly at how he tosses his big black motorbike to the left or right with a playful flair.

But Migo had not correctly judged the speed of a second blue and white car now racing down the left lane behind him. Or perhaps he hadn’t seen the car at all; he had no recollection of the incident. My estimate is that the car was doing 90 to 95 mph. I watched in horror as the car slammed on its brakes just behind Migo. I could see its brake lights flash a lurid red and the vehicle lurch forward and its front end dive as the brakes took hold.

I watched helplessly as the gap between the car’s front bumper and Migo’s rear tire narrowed to a matter of feet. My friend accelerated through his pass. Fear and then profound relief shot through me, and I thought of how I had made the same mistake in Portugal. Geoff had told me with chilling matter-of-factness how a car he estimated was running at up to 120 mph on a similar four-lane road had nearly taken me out from the rear.

A week later, in Limbe, Cameroon, I would learn that Geoff had crashed outside Benin City in Nigeria. He caught up with us after a 10-day excursion to England and Scotland, and as we sat for a couple of New Year’s Eve beers at our hotel in Limbe, he told me about the accident. A truck had slowed in front of him, but its brake lights were broken. Geoff slammed his brakes upon spotting the slowed vehicle and swerved hard to the right at about 35 mph, missing by inches the edge of the truck’s rear with his left shoulder.

Geoff powered through deep gravel along the side of the road, and angled to return to the pavement. But his rear tire got hung on the pronounced edge between pavement and shoulder, and his Yamaha XT went down, twirling 360 degrees across the road. He was unhurt and his motorbike was all right; the truck driver swerved around his prone Yamaha and never stopped.

“That traffic was the worst I’ve ever seen … and I’ve ridden through India!” Geoff said. “I couldn’t wait to get out of Nigeria!”

Thirty miles down the road from Migo’s near-disaster, we slowed to pass an accident. More than a dozen blue and white cars lined the side of the road. Their drivers stood idly about. I spotted a blue and white car freshly crashed on the right side, nestled into the dense foliage.