Road Firm Appeals for Patience as Benin-Asaba Highway Ordeal Continues

Reported by Ariajegbe Sylvia Esezobor 

The company reconstructing the troubled Benin-Asaba Expressway has appealed to motorists and communities along the corridor to exercise patience as it prepares to accelerate construction on the 125-kilometre highway, following weeks of public anger over the road's deteriorating condition.
Samuel Daramola, Chief Executive Officer of the Benin-Asaba Expressway Concession Company Limited (BAECC), made the appeal in a statement issued on Monday. He said the company remained committed to delivering the project despite persistent rainfall and the inherent difficulty of rebuilding a heavily travelled highway while keeping it open to traffic. "We recognise the inconvenience that motorists and communities have experienced, and we do not take their concerns lightly," Daramola said, adding that the company's responsibility extended beyond simply constructing a permanent road to doing everything reasonably possible to keep people moving while the work continued.
According to BAECC, the company had in some cases reopened treated sections of the road earlier than engineers would ordinarily prefer, specifically to ease congestion for motorists. "We are building and managing traffic at the same time," Daramola said. "There are occasions when engineering considerations would favour keeping a section closed for longer, but the realities facing motorists require us to reopen the road." He said palliative interventions would continue on the most difficult sections to reduce hardship while permanent reconstruction advanced, and he urged motorists and host communities to judge the project within the context of its overall construction programme rather than solely by the difficulties currently being experienced. "We are not asking anyone to ignore the present difficulties," he said. "What we ask for is the time and opportunity to deliver the project within the construction programme. Judge us ultimately by the quality, durability and safety of the highway we deliver."
BAECC identified persistent rainfall as the major challenge during the current phase of works, saying saturated ground conditions had affected earthworks, pavement stabilisation and asphalt operations. Daramola, however, stressed that the rain had disrupted the sequencing and pace of some activities rather than halted construction altogether, and he indicated that major works would accelerate from October, once the rainy season eases. The company also pledged continued cooperation with the federal government, relevant agencies and host communities, saying all stakeholders shared the objective of delivering a safe and reliable highway. "The road people see during construction is not the road they will see at completion," Daramola said. "We ask for a little more patience and the opportunity to complete what we have started."
Monday's appeal comes against the backdrop of an increasingly public dispute between BAECC and the federal government over the pace and quality of the reconstruction work. The Benin-Asaba Highway, a vital artery connecting Nigeria's south-south and south-east regions, was approved for concession by the Federal Executive Council on January 16, 2023, under a Design, Finance, Build, Operate and Transfer arrangement, with the concession agreement formally executed between the Ministry of Works and BAECC on May 23, 2023. Under the deal, BAECC is expected to convert the road into a 10-lane highway and operate it, with toll gates, for a 25-year concession period that includes an initial three-year construction phase. Completion, with tolling to begin, had been projected for September 2027.
In late August, Minister of Works David Umahi carried out an on-the-spot assessment of the highway after widespread complaints that motorists had been trapped for several days on the road due to multiple failed sections. Umahi strongly criticised BAECC during that visit, saying the company had "failed woefully" and lacked the technical competence to execute a project of this scale. He specifically faulted the concessionaire for removing existing asphalt from sections of the road before first constructing adequate drainage infrastructure, a decision he said the ministry had explicitly warned against. He went further, suggesting the concessionaire could have faced arrest for what he described as the destruction of public property, given the hazards created by exposing the road surface without proper drainage in place. The Ministry of Works said the concerns had been raised repeatedly with BAECC over the preceding year, including during a ministerial site inspection in October 2025, Project Delivery Team inspections in January and May 2026, and meetings involving the ministry, BAECC and the project's Independent Engineer, Yolas Consultants Limited, in July 2026.
Following the inspection, Umahi announced that the federal government would review all concessioned roads nationwide to ensure contract terms were being met, and convened a stakeholders' meeting involving the Edo State government to examine the Benin-Asaba situation specifically. He said the government was prepared to invoke an overriding public interest provision to intervene directly, bring in competent contractors to make the road motorable in the interim, and noted that the Niger Delta Development Commission had expressed willingness to assist with the intervention. Umahi also apologised to commuters using the road and commended Edo State Governor Monday Okpebholo for stepping in on federal roads within the state. Separately, the Chairman of the House of Representatives Committee on Works, Akin Alabi, urged President Bola Tinubu to review the Benin-Asaba concession agreement along with similar arrangements elsewhere in the country.
For its part, BAECC has consistently attributed the slow pace of work to a combination of heavy traffic volume on the highway and unusually torrential rainfall, rather than to any deficiency in technical capacity. The company has said it has expanded portions of the road and carried out palliative works even as it faces difficulty completing drainage infrastructure while keeping the highway open to continuous traffic. The competing explanations, from a government accusing the concessionaire of technical incompetence and improper sequencing, and a company pointing to weather and traffic as the primary obstacles, have placed the execution of the concession under sustained public and political scrutiny in recent weeks.
As of Monday's statement, no formal decision on a review or restructuring of the concession agreement had been announced, and BAECC's public position remains that it intends to complete the project within its 36-month construction programme while managing the current hardship through interim measures. Motorists along the Benin-Asaba corridor, in the meantime, continue to contend with the disruptions of an unfinished highway as the rainy season draws to a close.
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