By Obong Akpaekong
To the glory of God, throughout my sojourn of over 37 years in the media, with its very high travel turnover, I have never been involved in an accident whether of road, air or water nor witnessed an accident happen. However, I remember that on two occasions, I have been in aeroplanes that fatality threatened but God promptly intervened.
As a chief correspondent of the now defunct Concord Press in Calabar, I was returning to my station one day after a visit to our head office in Ikeja, Lagos. I had boarded an ADC (now defunct) airline from Lagos to Calabar. When we got to Calabar, the pilot announced that unfavorable weather conditions did not allow the aircraft to land on schedule. The plane hovered over the airport for about 30 minutes while rain was falling heavily. Passengers turned into prayer warriors. The aircraft soon landed.
Another occasion was when I was working with NewsAfrica magazine as bureau editor for West Africa. It was in 2005. I was traveling with a Chanchangi airline, (also in limbo) from Lagos to Jos. I was going to source for some special projects with the Plateau State government. The journey became turbulent soon after we left Murtala International Airport in Ikeja.The pilot announced the troubles of the flight but assured that there was nothing to worry about.
The situation came to its worst state as we reached the Federal Capital Territory of Abuja. So, against the assurance of the pilot, there was everything to worry about as the aircraft kept “hitting rock, snow and heaps of sand” in the sky while dark clouds covered everywhere. It was as if the aircraft was going to descend into the bush beneath us. Trust passengers. They all turned to God in prayer.
The journey was so frightening that when we got to MKO Abiola International Airport, then called Abuja International Airport, many passengers came down to continue the journey to Jos by road. I did not come down. We later arrived Jos in safety.
But it was sheer luck that I did not witness the accident that claimed nine lives on Calabar-Itu highway, at Okurikang in Odukpani Local Government Area on February 12, when it was happening. I arrived at the spot about 30 minutes after the accident occurred and was greeted by the sight of the bodies of the nine victims. They were passengers of a Toyota bus traveling from Calabar to Uyo. I was traveling from Calabar to Uyo too. Sympathizers turned the scene into a market place.
What caused the accident? The driver of the bus was said to have suddenly noticed a pothole on his side of the road and in his attempt to avoid it, swerved the vehicle to his left hand side, ramming it into an on-coming truck. The accident left behind a very sad memory of Calabar-Itu highway as a road to death.
The accident of March 15 at Ntak Inyang village in Itu local government area of Akwa Ibom State in which seven persons including school children were killed is also very regrettable. A fuel tanker was said to have run over two tricycles that were conveying them. The unfortunate incident again happened at a bad spot of Calabar-Itu highway – a failed portion of the federal road that is currently under repair by Akwa Ibom State government after it was cut off by a landslide.
Two years earlier, some 10 souls also perished at the bridge that marked the former boundary between Akwa Ibom and Cross River states, when a tanker driver hit a passenger bus, tearing and throwing the bus and those inside it into the swamp under the long time broken-down bridge. I noticed that the bridge has just been fixed back. There will be nothing wrong with naming it “Bridge of Blood” since the government’s decision to rebuild it followed an accident that wasted the lives of 10. Calabar-Itu road has consumed the lives of very many year in, year out.
Deep cuts on the road caused by erosion and years of wear and tear, added to donkey years of lack of maintenance had turned the road, built soon after the civil war by the Yakubu Gowon military regime into a practical death trap. The wear and tear status of the road has been worsened by the weight of a large number of petrol tankers and trucks carrying rocks from the numerous quarry sites of Akamkpa town on the Calabar-Ikom axis of Cross River State to Akwa Ibom, Rivers, Bayelsa, Edo and Delta states and almost all the states of the Igbo-speaking south east region.
Livestock and foodstuff are also being converted from farms in communities of central and northern Cross River State, Benue State and other parts of the north of the country to markets in these states. All these have been responsible for the dreadful heavy traffic on this very bad road, which some rough estimate says is being plied by about two million trucks and tankers daily. I think that figure is over calculation.
During the rainy season, the situation with the road changes from impassable to tug of war as the road itself, the many trucks and tankers, the buses and cars plying it cry for help. Now and then, all manner of vehicles on the road get stuck in stagnant water here and there. There have always been innumerable broken down vehicles and travel twists. If one is traveling from Itu, one begins to encounter such vehicles soon after leaving the Itu local government council headquarters.
There will be a disturbing line of trucks at Oku Iboku, from before the police station to about two kilometres after the junction, more popular as ‘Workshop’. Bad shape of the road will join with the three security checkpoints at the Itu bridgehead to delay movement of vehicles for sometimes up to two hours.
There is a stretch of swampy area on this road of hell about four kilometres from Okurikang. Even though it is a farming settlement, the peasant farmers cannot bring their cocoyam, plantain, banana, etc., out to the market. If the swamp does not stand on their way, the deplorable shape of the road does. This spot can be impassable for motorists 24 hours of the day and unfortunately, stretches to Mkpara, where one of the worst spots of the road is.
There is hardly a stretch of the road that you can drive for a kilometre without encountering a bad spot that can spoil your vehicle and subject you to extreme stress. Once you scale the Mkpara area, you thank God that you are getting closer to Calabar but not before escaping road hurdles in Okoyong.
Over some eight months ago, there used to be traffic gridlock beginning from Mkpara to Odukpani Junction. I mean traffic gridlock: a condition of total, interlocking traffic congestion, such that no one can move because everyone is in someone else’s way.
The gridlock would begin from Mkpara at the heart of Okoyong and stretch past the Power Plant to the Akai Effiwatt area and head straight to Odukpani Junction. I learnt that sometimes, motorists would spend between two to three days on the road – a journey that would have taken between 40 and 50 minutes if the road was good. Traveling on this road then amounted to total suffering, waste of time, money and energy. At that time gridlock was a daily occurrence from Okoyong to Odukpani Junction though sometimes it extended to Ikot Omin and 8 Miles on the outskirts of Calabar.
Palliative is not a new word, so to say. But the way it is more widely used in Nigeria because of its positive nature makes it a new word in the country, thanks to COVID-19. So much of stones largely from the Akamkpa quarries were poured on Calabar-Itu highway as a palliative measure just before the end of the rains, by some government agencies. Though the road can still be said to be very bad and easily going to hell, the number of trucks breaking down along it on any given day has drastically reduced.
But you still use between three and half hours to four hours to travel the distance that you would have spent 40 to 50 minutes. To be sure, dust will give you good company despite your COVID-19 face and nose mask or air-conditioned car. Users of the road pray two prayers to God: “Remove trucks and tankers from this road.” “Let the rains wait.” And lastly, “Don’t kill political leaders, just replace them with those who will fix this road.”
When the Gowon administration built the road, travelling from the mainland of the then South Eastern State to the state capital of Calabar was a delight and fun. In expressing their joy over the state of the road and the ease of traveling, motorists used to describe the exercise as “Uyo by Air” or “Calabar by Air” depending on the destination. Not so anymore. It is now “Uyo or Calabar by suffering” and people dread traveling on the road.
I was only sharing thoughts on the current situation with Calabar-Itu highway. Issues such as who got a contract to do the road but failed to, those who failed to pay contractors or those who did what to desecrate the road remains a subject for another day.
• Akpaekong is a senior journalist and columnist.