GIDEON Desmond lives in the TudunWada area of Lugbe, in the Abuja Municipal Area Council (AMAC) of the Federal Capital Territory (FCT), and works in the Abuja City centre. 

Everyday, on his way to work, he removes his shoes, wears slippers, and enters a commercial motorcycle from his house to where his car is parked. 

Desmond will not dare drive his car home because of what he experiences everyday. “My car has developed many problems on this bad road,” he said. 

Desmond is not the only one going through the pain of passing  Tudunwada road, almost all the residents of Lugbe are. 

Omotayo Racheal, another resident of Tundunwada is not mobile, but she makes use of motorcycle taxi to get to Carwash in Lugbe where she gets a cab going to her place of work in Garki, Abuja.  

Rachel told The ICIR, that the road has been a source of great worry for her all the time she is going to work. She narrated an experience she had weeks back. It had just rained and the road was full of muds. Many bikes were swarming around the messy road looking for a good spot to pass amidst traffic, as her heart beats faster than normal. Suddenly the bike hit a stone, and she fell. 

“I was confined on bed rest for three consecutive days,” Rachael said.

Ologun Rebecca, another resident of Lugbe has an unpleasant story to tell. “Plying the road everyday on bicycles gives my body ache.”. 

A lot of people in Tudunwada complained that their clothes get dirty easily when walking by the road. 

“Most of the times, I walk along this road, I get dirty: my clothes, my shoes and body are always messed up because of the water splashed by the tires of vehicles and bicycles,” Rebecca lamented.

She noted that the situation has not helped the economy of people living in the community.

 Vehicles damage, bikes develop faults

Desmond said not less than N89, 000 has been spent on his car as a result of damages caused on the road. 

Thus reasons he stopped parking his car at home. “I would rather pack my car in far place, than spending thousands to repair it,” he commented. 

“The road got worse during the rainy season with potholes, mud and rocks. On three different occasions, the silencer of my car was spoilt. And my car got bruised severally as a result of the narrowness of the road.”

A bus owner, Aminu Muhammed, said his tire has busted once on the Tudunwada road because of the underlying rocks along the road. “It breaks my tire and my spring!” He cried, “This road no good at all, patapata.”

Moses Ibrahim, a bike rider, said accidents occur many times on the road. “Okada legs commot and legs for car dey commot for here,” he said. 

 What the budget says on FCT roads

For the past three years, the FCT has over  N30 billion for road construction and repairs in budget allocations. In 2015, N8.4 billion was allocated to FCT for its construction and provision of roads, N4.8 billion was allocated in 2016 for rehabilitation and road repairs while in 2017, N16.9 billion was allocated for the road construction. 

But roads in Lugbe have not being captured in the budgets. And there has not been plans by the Federal Government to construct or rehabilitate the roads in the area anytime soon.