The road was built to unite cultures and guide destinations. Indeed, it became a connector of economies, a facilitator of traveling, and the hurrying feet of farmers. This is not a tale, but parts of the once promising road, a forerunner of prosperity and development is now shrieking for help. The stones and sand on its pathway can no longer bear traffic burdens as they clamor for asphalt and concrete to stand the test of time.
The deplorable situation of the Damaturu-Biu road from Maza to Biu towns in Borno South was not the expectation of Salisu Ibrahim, who may be used to the bumpy rides and dust for now. Salisu a commercial driver who plied the Damaturu-Biu road for more than six years bemoans the hardship caused by the bad road as he expresses fear for the future.
A video showing a huge erosion eating up the road.
“I definitely cannot keep up with working on this kind of road when I clock fifty years. Moreover, there is no place without a hole on this part of the road; we are already in the rainy season, and one could get stuck for hours, sometimes days when it rains,” said 47-year-old Salisu as he threw caution to the wind and bumped into potholes.
To Salisu, it was good news when on 3rd December 2014, the former Minister of Works, Mike Onolememen, briefed State House correspondents on the outcome of the weekly Federal Executive Council (FEC) meeting in the Presidential Villa, Abuja. One of the outcomes of the meeting was the award of road projects meant to enhance the transformation of the nation’s road sector. The new projects awarded and approved by the council were all provided in the 2014 Appropriation Act of the National Assembly. With this announcement, respite seemed to have come already, as the Damaturu-Biu Road was among the projects listed.
Nine years after the pronouncement, the Damaturu-Biu Road is yet to be fully completed. Salisu remembered 7 years back when trucks and caterpillars descended upon the land and scraped off the old road built in the 1970s. That was the first time he witnessed repairs on the road since it was built almost three decades ago.
The road construction lingered. They should have left the road the way it was, Salisu thinks. Scraping the old tarred road and not fixing it made the situation worse; imagine they’ve gone beyond where the scraping stopped and still could not fix it; it would have been so bad, Salisu queried.
The Damaturu-Biu Road was proposed and would, upon completion bring remarkable benefits such as reduced accidents on the road, operating costs, and travel time, which will, in turn, improve the socio-economic activities of grassroots communities. The development came with a sigh of great relief to the communities within the Damaturu-Biu axis. However, as years went by, their happiness was short-lived.
The Damaturu-Biu road is approximately 125km going through villages and towns in Yobe and Borno states, it is a major road used by farmers, artisans, and traders for their day-to-day activities. It is also an alternative route, for heavy trucks transporting farm produce, including commuters from Adamawa going to Maiduguri, in Borno State.
Bad roads to the largest market in Biu
The Miringa market is big; traders troop in from as far as Adamawa, and Yobe. At noon, almost all the available spaces for traders have been occupied. According to Mohammed Gambo a livestock trader, “The journey from Buratai to Miringa is the closest, it should be less than 50 minutes but it now takes 1hr 30 minutes. Despite spending so much one gets little or no comfort coming here due to bad roads.
As potholes trouble village commuters amidst fear of traffic chaos caused by big trucks as the rains set in, traders lament the increase in transport fares.
“I once walked more than 3 kilometers after our car got stuck in the mud; my transport fare was not refunded despite paying an outrageous fare” said Amina Ibrahim, a trader from Yobe. “To travel this road one has to be careful, I call to ask if rain fell just to make sure I don’t experience the same situation, once it is cloudy I become restless and begin to pack up,” Amina added.
Yakubu Adamu, a commercial driver who also plies the road from Damaturu to Miringa mostly on market days, decried how the bad road damaged his vehicle.
“I have spent a lot of money changing the wheels on my car shock absorber, moving passengers to Biu is tasking, I barely save money, and I rather take passengers from Damaturu to stop in Buratai because that side is good,” said Yakubu Adamu.
Yakubu is not the only driver who has experienced damaged vehicles due to bad roads. For Musa Mari, a fellow commercial transport worker, surviving this road must include ingenuity. “I had to install a spring originally made for a van on my wheels so that I could survive this road,” Musa told UDEME.
A community leader, Umaru Mohammed, recalled how the Emir of Biu Emirate, got stuck on the road due to the level of water and mud. At a time, I had to intervene and talk to some angry youths from this town not to take the law into their hands as they made attempts to protest and drive away the construction workers at their site yard, Umaru told UDEME.
Contractor, Agency- React.
The Damaturu-Biu road was awarded to Messrs Fik Global Resources Ltd in 2014. With project name lot b1 – Rehabilitation of Damaturu-Biu road with contract number C/No 6256, awarded at the sum of N8.1 billion. The project is supervised by the Federal Ministry of Works and Housing and the source of funds for the project is to be derived from the 2014 Appropriation Bill and the Subsidy Reimbursement Empowerment Program (SURE-P). To be completed in 18 months.
According to UDEME sources, close to N2 billion including advance payment, while about N800 million was approved for the road construction work. A document dated 15th Jan 2018 also showed that the sum of N432.1 million was approved for payment to the contractor. Similarly, a letter from an engineering consultant for the project dated 12th March 2019 reported a physical percentage of progress of 8.91% at a lapse of 161.1% which was very low having supervised the project from Sept 2018- Feb 2019. Also, a request for the sum of N21.8 million as consulting fee was to be paid to M/S Proportion Engineering Consultants Nig Ltd.
UDEME wrote MESSR FIK to seek information and answers on the uncompleted part of the road. The contractor disclosed in a letter, that despite issuing the project in 2014, lack of funding and low-budget implementation, were setbacks encountered as the project was not funded until 2016. Funding came with a yearly budget provision for as low as N100 million, the letter reads.
Though the letter failed to state exactly how much has been released for the project over the years, to substantiate UDEME’S findings. Other issues raised in the letter include insecurity, inflation in the cost of construction materials, and access to raw materials like gravel which make up 79% of the materials needed for the job. This posed a challenge, due to the FG’s ban on quarry explosives in Borno, Yobe, and Adamawa States, even after writing severally to the Office of the National Security Adviser ONSA through the Minister without any favorable response, the letter reads.
In an interview with UDEME the Federal Comptroller of Works, Borno State, Engr. Amos A. Tongman corroborated the contractor’s statement saying that though the contractor complained of insecurity during construction, the major challenge at the beginning was cash constraint, and also that the job was awarded to a local contractor who may not have had the financial capacity at the time of awarding the contract. There was a lot of reliance on the Ministry to make money available, and funding became a problem, considering that funds from SURE-P which forms part of the funding, have been trashed by the Buhari administration, Engr. Amos added.
This is against the backdrop, of reports showing that the Federal Government in 2020 alone spend about N169.88bn on road construction and rehabilitation of roads in the six geopolitical zones of the country. The figure was in the details of the 2020 Appropriation Bill that former President Muhammadu Buhari presented to a joint session of the National Assembly.
Interestingly, the figure is far less than the N280.44bn budgeted for the same purpose in the 2019 Budget. Buhari, during the budget presentation, said the Federal Government would not embark on new road projects, but complete the ongoing ones.
Sadly, the Damaturu-Biu road still could not find a place or be considered among the projects to be completed in the following years. According to Engr. Amos today the road construction of an over 50-kilometer road is no longer tenable from the initial contract sum of over N8 billion. Even though the contractor has written for a review of the initial contract sum, the whole contract is been looked at by the Ministry holistically, by identifying issues emanating from the contractors’ inability to meet up and also the Ministry, Engr Amos added.
Respite on the horizon
When UDEME visited the road in May 2023, UDEME observed that on 19th May, about 10 trips of sand were offloaded on some critical areas of the road. With one construction vehicle parked by the roadside. Erosion had eaten the side of the road, and some culverts and drainages earlier constructed had been damaged. Close observation by UDEME showed that drainages were not more than 4 feet wide.
The secretary of the NURTW Miringa branch, Abubakar Ibrahim, when asked by UDEME about the contractor’s efforts, said “I have received a countless number of visitors who get stuck on the road. The contractor should better use stones to fill up the road instead of laterite sand because the road gets muddy and impassable when it rains. The drainages and culverts are too small to accommodate the volume of water coming from the hill. It took the effort of community members from Buratai, Miringa, and Biu to put stones and make temporary repairs on the road during last year’s rainy season.”
However, the Federal Comptroller of Works, Engr. Amos said that in 2022 part of the road worst hit by the flood was considered an emergency special intervention on flooding by the Federal Ministry of Works and Housing, and a contract was awarded to address in particular the road close to the hill. “This is so because we saw the need for that; another contractor should handle that part with specialty to provide relief to the populace,” said Engr. Amos.
Similarly, the contractor stated that since the security situation of the road has improved significantly the company is currently making an effort to secure funds for the project through the next SUKUK funding for projects and is positive that the road shall be approved for SUKUK. Meanwhile, the meager funding and budgetary provision are not peculiar to this project alone, as most projects enjoying speedy and timely progress have special funding that enables contractor performance and timely delivery, the contractor added.
Toba Yahaya Sanyari, Borno
“This report was produced under the Udeme project of the Centre for Journalism Innovation and Development (CJID).”
