1st Niger Bridge, built to unite Nigeria, is now being dismantled, piece by piece, introducing a new threat as vandals target bolts, braces and steel components
By Egufe Yafugborhi
For six decades, the First Niger Bridge has stood over the River Niger, carrying generations of Nigerians, traders, travellers, families, trucks and buses between Onitsha and Asaba.
But at 60, the iconic Onitsha Head Bridge in Anambra State is confronting a threat that has little to do with age alone.
Somebody is allegedly taking pieces of the bridge away.
Not metaphorically. Steel members have been cut off, bolts loosened and removed, while expansion joints have also been vandalised.
These missing components are parts of the steel framework that gives the bridge its strength.
The disturbing discovery prompted an inspection visit by the Minister of Works, David Umahi, August 27.
Standing beneath the ageing steel skeleton, Umahi did not hide his anger. “I want to thank the public and media that highlighted this,” he said.
“To have more trouble than standard wear and tear is very disturbing. The overhead steel bar over there has been disconnected, and that is even more troubling.”
Images from the bridge tell their own story. Across the massive riveted framework, some steel members appear weathered by decades of exposure. Rust and staining mark sections of the structure.
But more alarming are the gaps where structural members should connect, while some plates and bolts appear to have been removed.
Below, the traffic never stops.
Heavy trucks, buses, cars and pedestrians continue to move across the bridge, seemingly indifferent to the battle taking place above their heads.
Visibly disturbed by what he saw, Umahi asked, “People are loosening these. It is very difficult to re-fix because it has been under tension. In trying to drag it, the members are yielding.”
He immediately ordered emergency intervention, directing, “First, the ones we can fix, we have to fix. And don’t open another one. We should be able to take this bolt to the market.”
He directed officials to clean affected portions, weld damaged areas and replace missing steel members.
“Clean here and weld it, get another steel member, and weld from here to here. Weld from here to here”, the minister said.
For him, however, the problem goes beyond repairs.
It is a question of how anyone could dismantle pieces of a heavily guarded national asset without being detected.
Security gaps
More blunt on the security gaps, Zike Gbemre, Coordinator, Niger Delta Peace Coalition, said the development again raises serious questions about Nigeria’s security architecture.
He noted, “Vandalism on the Onitsha Head Bridge raises both another moral question and test of integrity over the nation’s security agencies.
“The 1st Niger Bridge experiences 24 hours traffic and harbours heavy Police presence round the clock and an Army of occupation positioned on both ends.”
He then posed his central question: “Without these bloated security personnel on ground deliberately turning blind eye, what would give a thief the boldness to climb the height to cut those long, heavy beams without deploying heavy equipments and not being caught in the act?”
That question hangs over the bridge as heavily as the steel members themselves.
Umahi said an expansion joint had also been removed, noting that the ministry had already had to repair it previously.
“We’ve seen the expansion joint that was also removed. This is the second time we’ll be fixing the expansion joint.
But let me make it very clear: we are not mad dogs”, he said.
“We can’t be suffering to fix these things while the public is busy removing them. It’s not possible. Where is the money to fix it?”
Frustration
His frustration deepened as he warned of the consequences.
“The Ministry does not have an emergency fund to attend to this, and if this is not attended to, it can result in a catastrophic situation.”
The minister also rejected the assumption that every movement of the bridge necessarily signals structural failure.
“Regarding the bridge, people say it is shaking. Yes, that is because of the bearings. Every bridge shakes because of the bearing underneath.”
But he identified another concern — accumulated dead load from the roadway.
“I can see there is so much dead load on the bridge because of the asphalt, just like what we had on the Third Mainland Bridge”, Umahi said.
His proposed response includes night-time milling and asphalting, solar lighting and CCTV surveillance.
“We are going to have solar lights fixed all through. We are going to have CCTV here, and the CCTV feed is going to be accessible on your phone.”
Yet the larger question remains: Who is watching the watchers? The 1st Niger Bridge was conceived and built in the mid-1960s as a landmark connection across the Niger.
60 years later, its steel bones are carrying not only traffic but the accumulated burden of age, heavy commercial vehicles, maintenance challenges and now deliberate vandalism.
“We are getting very tired and frustrated about all of this. As Nigerians, we must rise up. This is not an APC problem; it is a national problem”, his said.
”This is simply not acceptable!”
For a bridge that has spent 60 years connecting people, communities and economies, perhaps the most unsettling image is not the ageing steel.
It is the missing steel.
Somebody is taking the bones of the bridge away, while Nigeria is still depending on it to carry the weight of its people.
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