Nigeria Content Online

The thought of
going to, and returning from work has become a nightmare to Ayodele
Oyeleke, a bank employee. He resides in Ajah and his office is at
Onikan, Lagos Island. He spends an average of six hours (one quarter a
day) on traffic any day he goes to work.

“I tell you, it is
terrible. If you don’t live in this area you will not understand. I
spend like three hours going to work and three hours coming back, due
to traffic. This is even because I always try to leave early. Around
4am every morning I’m already on my way. Even at that, some days I get
to work after 7am. I tell you, I’m fed up. I’m seriously looking for a
house on the Mainland, maybe around Surulere,” Mr. Oyeleke said.

The Lekki-Epe expressway, which links Mr. Oyeleke’s neighbourhood with Lagos Island, is notorious for traffic jams.

With the rapid
urbanisation of Lekki, Ajah and other towns in that region, the
expressway became the way home for many, resulting into too many
vehicles plying the relatively narrow road.

On April 2006, the
Lagos State government, through the Public Private Partnership, engaged
Lekki Concession Company (LCC) as the concessionaire for upgrading and
expansion of the 49.5 kilometre road in Build-Operate-Transfer model.
The contract stipulates that LCC will operate and maintain the road for
30 years and then transfer it to the state government.

Months after the
expiration of the 36 months scheduled for the first phase of the
project, it has just gone a distance of less than five kilometres.

As a result,
adjoining roads get blocked while traffic is deviated to alternative
routes. The movement of construction workers and vehicles create a
hectic traffic situation.

“It’s even worse
these days; they started this their construction since. I don’t know
why they are not fast. They should round it off on time so that our
suffering will stop. These days, if you don’t come out on time, let’s
say 4am or 5am, just know that you want to go late that day. I had
spent up to one hour on this road from Ajah to CMS (a journey of about
30 minutes on free-flowing traffic),” said Helen Ifejiofor, a
salesperson in a boutique in Victoria Island, who also resides in Ajah.

The complaints of
commuters on the Lekki-Epe expressway are numerous, ranging from those
who claim to have lost jobs because they were kept in traffic longer
than they planned, to those who said they have developed waist pain and
other health conditions as a result of sitting for long hours
(sometimes in uncomfortable commercial buses) in the midst of endless
fumes from vehicles.

“But the traffic
congestion is a smaller issue compared to these toll fee they said they
want to start collecting by May this year”, said Samson Ovie, an
interior decorator who resides in Lekki.

On the LCC website
(www.lcc.com.ng) there will be three Toll Plazas in all. The first will
be located near the Palms Shopping Complex (Km 3); the second near
Chevron (Km 13); and the third near Crown Estates (Km 23). The toll,
according to the company, is the only means through which the company
will recoup its investment.

The announcement of
the commencement of toll collection in May 2010, which was billed to
start in the last quarter of 2009, has caused ripples, especially among
residents of Lekki and Ajah.

In their
advertorial in a national daily titled, ‘The fraud called toll
collection on Lekki-Epe Expressway’, the residents condemned the
intention of LCC to collect toll before completion of the project.

“If we may ask,
what is the urgency about toll collection in a 44-kilometer road, out
of which only a 2-kilometer stretch has been completed? It is laughable
and inconsistent with global standard practice to hear that a road
concessioning assignment with a life span of 30 years is already
attracting toll collection when only 5% of work has been done. LCC
obviously knows that this is fraudulent because expectedly, the period
from commencement to completion, which in this case, would have been
from 2006 to 2009, should ordinarily be taken as gesticulation or
‘test-run’ period,” read the advertorial which is a sequel to an
earlier one titled: ‘Lekki-Epe Expressway Expansion, Right Now a Curse’.

Opposition to the toll collection is mounting. For Mr. Oyeleke, it is a ‘No’.

“There is no way
I’m going to pay toll on this road. Maybe when they finish it and I see
how nice it is I may be motivated to pay, but not now. I know that many
people won’t even pay. It will cause a very big problem if they want to
force us to pay,” he said.

Enquires made in order to get LCC’s reaction on this were not replied as at press time.