By Egufe Yafugborhi
By the time dawn breaks over Benin City, motorists heading for Warri have already accepted one certainty: no one knows when the journey will end.
What should take barely an hour often stretches into six, eight or even an entire day.
Articulated trucks sink into craters that swallow their tyres, commercial buses weave dangerously between failed sections.
Traders watch perishable goods rot in traffic, while stranded commuters keep one eye on the road and another on the surrounding bushes, fearful of kidnappers and armed robbers.
For thousands who depend on the Benin-Sapele-Warri Road, every trip is no longer routine. It is a gamble with time, livelihood and, sometimes, life itself.
Across the Niger Delta, abandoned federal highways have long symbolised unfulfilled promises.
For years, the East-West Road stood as the region’s most visible reminder of delayed contracts, cost variations and shifting contractors.
Today, many commuters believe the Benin-Sapele-Warri Road has overtaken it as the most painful symbol of that neglect.
The perception gained fresh momentum after the Federal Government approved N1.9 trillion for 27 road projects across 15 states, with no major federal road projects announced for Delta, Edo, Bayelsa, Rivers or Akwa Ibom States.
To many residents, the omission reinforced a long-standing feeling that the region’s infrastructure deficit continues to receive inadequate attention.
For Victor Okpamos, former Chairman, Nigeria Union of Journalists (NUJ), Warri Correspondents’ Chapel, the statistics are secondary to the daily suffering he witnesses on the Oghara-Mosogar axis.
Nearly two weeks after Delta State announced emergency intervention on the failed section, he said the promised relief had yet to materialise.
“Governor Sheriff Oborevwori, please kindly prevail on Obekpor Engineering Company to commence work in the interest of the people to ease suffering of motorists and other road users.
Some stationeries are on-site, no equipment, no manpower. The people are waiting and suffering in silence. The situation is agonising”, Okpamos appealed.
His account goes beyond damaged vehicles: “Someone said a bike man raped his passenger, a married woman yesterday, and a motor boy was crushed by his trailer; he died on the spot.
“President Bola Tinubu and David Umahi should wake up from their slumber and give the East-West Expressway a permanent repair.”
Stories of fear, delay and economic hardship have become increasingly common along the corridors. Civil society leader Rev. David Ugolor believes the consequences extend far beyond transportation.
Ugolor highlighted, “The continued deterioration undermines economic growth, threatens public safety and weakens national development.
‘Lives have been lost in avoidable road accidents. Businesses have suffered severe economic losses. Farmers struggle to move their produce. Patients are delayed from accessing healthcare.”
According to him, worsening road conditions have also fuelled insecurity: “More alarming is the growing insecurity. The deplorable condition of the road has created opportunities for kidnappers and other criminal elements who prey on stranded motorists and commuters.”
While commending Governor Sheriff Oborevwori for ordering emergency repairs, Ugolor warned against what he described as the endless cycle of temporary interventions.
“Without comprehensive reconstruction, many of these repaired sections may deteriorate again within a short period, resulting in another cycle of emergency interventions funded by taxpayers. This is neither economically prudent nor sustainable,” he stated.
The debate over the road has also exposed widening political fault lines. Social justice advocate Zik Gbemre argues that while communities elsewhere in the Niger Delta have successfully mobilised political leaders to demand federal intervention, Delta has lacked the same unified voice.
“Today every stakeholder in Delta is singing, ‘On your mandate we stand,’ even while the President’s neglect of the Benin-Sapele Road has assumed inciting proportion, with transporters and commuters suffering untold hardship that escalates as the rains peak”, is what he said.
He contrasted the situation with collective agitations over the Itu-Calabar Road and the Eleme-Onne Section of the East-West Road, where sustained pressure from lawmakers, traditional rulers and host communities eventually prompted renewed federal attention.
The growing frustration eventually reached the Senate floor.
Senator Adams Oshiomhole openly challenged the Federal Ministry of Works over what he described as an imbalance in road development affecting Edo and Delta States.
“Three weeks ago I understand 20 new roads were approved. But between Edo and Delta, there is manifest bias by the Minister of Works. You’re here, Senator Dahiru. You can’t go to Warri from Benin, can’t go to Asaba from Benin, can’t go to Auchi from Benin, can’t go to Okene from Benin. What have we done wrong?”
Works Minister David Umahi rejected the criticism, arguing that the Benin-Warri Road contract had been awarded in 2018 and suggesting previous administrations also bore responsibility for delays.
Yet concerns about how federal roads in the Niger Delta are managed predate the current administration.
Following a fact-finding mission in 2023, the Senate Ad-hoc Committee on the East-West Road identified engineering compromises, contract duplication and deviations from approved designs as major contributors to repeated failures.
Then Committee Chairman, Senator Abdul Ahmed Nimingi, expressed concern over what lawmakers found: “We saw from initial concept engineering that they did not do the scientific needful of testing the soil… and that has to do with some compromises. This is unacceptable.”
These findings continue to resonate as motorists navigate another rainy season on the Benin-Sapele-Warri Road. Each failed section tells the story of contracts awarded but unfinished, emergency repairs that seldom outlast a season, and communities forced to adjust their lives around a highway that should have been a gateway to commerce and development.
Until comprehensive reconstruction replaces recurring palliative repairs, commuters will continue to leave home with uncertainty rather than confidence.
On the Benin-Warri Road, every kilometre tells a story.
For too many in the Niger Delta, it is a story of neglect that has lasted far too long.
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