The Great Lagos Lockdown

By Steve Osuji

Something eerie happened in Lagos last Saturday. It was a traffic logjam that one would rather describe as, ‘the great Lagos lockdown’.

It happened on the Lekki-Epe Expressway, (LEE). We speak of about five kilometres of traffic in near standstill and  stretching from a place called Ogidan which is close to the Lagos Business School, back all the way to Abijo and beyond. It was yours truly’s tough luck to be caught up in it.

It was a dark, and indeed, ominous occurrence because it signposts the very morass and decadence of a supposed megacity, Lagos. The surreal standstill which lasted for about three hours (2.00 pm to a little over 5.00 pm) speaks to the town planning disaster that Lagos represents.

According to reports, the calamity started in the wee hours of the same day (Saturday at about 1.00 am) when a sand-laden tipper truck smashed into an LPG truck parked smack on the speed lane. The gas truck was said to have developed a fault which made it difficult for the driver to properly clear it off the road.

The Ogidan holocaust which ensued from the crash had incinerated everything in its path from the Theranex Estate gate, along the roadside towards the direction of Sangotedo  market. It missed the Total Petrol station nearby by a whisker.

From this moment, traffic inward and outward of this axis of the LEE became a nightmare. But it all came to a head  in the afternoon when it was time to remove the carcasses of the accidented trucks. The entire road had to be closed for hours, this the lockdown.

ONE-TRACK EXPRESSWAY:This incident which traumatized hundreds of commuters  for hours on end, again exposed the acute shortcomings in Lagos’ road infrastructure and showcases Lagos’ town planning nightmare which this column had highlighted several times in previous write-ups.

First, the nearly 50 Kilometres LEE which stretches from Epe to Victoria Island is peculiar for its lack of proper access roads or linkway to the mainland of Lagos.

There’s no escaping from the main road or making a major detour until one gets to the stretch around Lekki phase two where it becomes possible to do a detour which leads to the Ikoyi link bridge leading to Lagos Island and the Third Mainland bridge.

So once trapped on the LEE there’s no escape route.

Now that the Coastal Highway is afoot, opportunities are plentiful for access roads to connect the ongoing “wonder thoroughfare”. But none is developed yet. And none may be properly developed for decades to come. That’s the nature of the Lagos State Government (LASG).

Instead of locking people down for hours, detour routes through the inner roads would have removed commuters out of the trouble spot. But there are very few such escape routes along the LEE.

DERELICT INNER ROADS: Again, this column has had cause to lament the abandoned inner roads of Lagos State.  During the eras of Governors Babatunde Fashola and Akinwunmi Ambode, visible efforts were made. Inner streets were fixed in their hundreds every year. The LGAs were galvanized to own the responsibility of fixing and paving the streets.

 Today, especially since the ascendance of Governor Babajide Sanwoolu, it appears all the outskirts outside the highways have been abandoned and forgotten.

It’s especially so in the Ibeju-Lekki area which is littered with ill-planned residential estates. The LASG and its LGAs have practically abandoned the streets of Lagos for residents to fix through self-help efforts.

Local drains, water channels, culverts and the general environment that are off the major roads, have been jettisoned by the  government. The result is that, a city state that prides itself as the Centre of Excellence, has been fast deteriorating into a dungeon – especially in the last six years.

WHERE’S THE LAGOS TRILLIONS GONE?

Lagos State has been posting trillion naira budgets in the past six years. In fact, its five-year report to 2025 shows a cumulative N10.244 trillion.

In the last three years, LASG’s budget has increased by about one trillion naira each year. The current year, 2026, recently signed into law is a staggering N4.444 trillion. Where in the world is all the funds accruing to Lagos State?

Apart from the Lekki-Epe Expressway which has been ongoing for about five years and which is a PPP (public-private partnership), there are hardly any landmark projects rising in the state. The Federal Ministry of Works under Engr. Dave Umahi seems to have more projects on-going in Lagos than the LASG.

A LITTERING OF UNCOMPLETED PROJECTS: The Lagos-Badagry Expressway initiated by the state remains uncompleted after nearly 20 years. No mention is made of the fabled 4th Mainland bridge anymore. The much talked about airport proposed for Ibeju-Lekki has been put on silence mode.

An abandoned bridge remains an ugly  spectacle around the VGC gate near Ajah for the past four years. The second phase of the

Lagos Blue Rail line extending to Okokomaiko scheduled for completion next year is unlikely to meet the deadline. On and on,  hardly any activities in a state that should look like a construction site

LGA’S NIGH EXTINCT: As in all the states, the local government authorities across the country are awash with cash now. But it is more so in Lagos State.

 Federal funding is streaming in in hundreds of billions for the 3rd tier of government. But no significant progress is experienced.

LASG has little or no human development database but evidently, poverty and deprivation is rife and pervasive. All the  highways of Lagos are littered with street urchins and touts. Bus routes of Lagos are eye sores with scruffy state thugs chasing bus drivers down like wild hogs. This public show of shame alone betokens an environment bereft of civil governance and leadership.

THERE SHOULD HAVE BEEN PARADISE: With the huge funding available to Lagos and her limitless capacity to raise development funds, Lagos should be a verisimilitude of a paradise. But the poor state remains half slum, half disheveled and Shambolic like a highway tramp. Lagos

struggles without success to become a modern habitable city.

 The state’s much vaunted aquatic splendor is largely exploited. Water transportation is almost non-existent. Water entertainment and marine economy initiatives stuff for other climes.

NOW, THE REAL LAGOS LOCKDOWN: It is common knowledge that Lagos State has been held by the jugular since 1999 by the Bola Tinubu Group. The state has been run like an arm of a large, dysfunctional conglomerate. This explains why the state hasn’t progressed on the expected trajectories. On the contrary, it has been hamstrung and suffers asphyxia.

After governors Fashola and Ambode, who took liberties and pushed the limits, the incumbent, Governor Babajide Sanwoolu was lame-ducked and ring-fenced from the outset.

With the godfather becoming president in 2023,  Lagos became completely captured and locked down as in an unending traffic jam.

One thing for sure is that Lagos will never have a governor of her choice so long as it remains under the yoked of pernicious godfatherism.

And that, indeed, is a tragedy; a long-running tragic movie.

LAST LINE:

IS THIS POWER MELTDOWN? It’s weird but it happened before our eyes. ASO ROCK, the seat of Nigeria’s presidency recently jettisoned the abiku (dead-today-awake-tomorrow) national electricity grid. Yes, the president removed himself from Nigeria’s epileptic national power supply system. He can’t stick it anymore.

A nearly N20 billion off grid solar system was reportedly acquired for the exclusive use of the Presidential Villa in Abuja.

In proper democracies, the president would have been impeached already on account of this alone. To think that President Bola Tinubu told Nigerians during the last campaign that if he couldn’t fix power in one term of four years, he should not be voted for a second term.

But Tinubu has not only failed woeful on this score, Nigeria’s electricity system is on the verge of a total collapse. Generation, anaemic at 5mw  has dropped further while transmission is in disarray.

Worse still, the so-called Power Minister is busy with campaign for the governorship of Oyo State.

While we hope for a Deux ex machina would come solve Nigeria’s power snafu, we all owe it a duty to ensure that a certain Adebayo Adelabu never gets into any public office anywhere in Nigeria. He is probably the worst power minister Nigeria ever had.