Ore To Delta Nightmare: Passengers Sleep Overnight On Highway As Bad Road Traps Motorists In Ore, Okada, Ubulu-Okiti 

 By 8:30 PM they hit Ore. But by then, the federal road has turned to gravel and potholes. What used to be asphalt became a map of craters filled with brown water. Headlights of oncoming trucks made the holes look deeper than they were.

The bus slowed to a crawl. A trailer ahead had broken down, its two back tires buried in mud. Passengers got down to push. Men in singlets, women holding their wrappers up, students in uniform. No one asked who was Igbo or Yoruba or Urhobo. The road had made them one tribe: stranded.

At the Okada town axis, the story repeated. The bridge was narrow and one side had collapsed. Vehicles lined up for half a kilometer. Bike men, popularly known as “Okada,” wove between cars selling pure water, Gala, and roasted plantain at twice the normal price. “Madam, buy something. You might sleep here,” one of the hawkers told a female passenger, Mama Bose.

Night came fast. The generator sound from nearby houses became the only music. Children on the bus began to cry. A nursing mother tried to breastfeed in the dark, covering herself with a scarf while mosquitoes sang in her ear.

At Ubulu-Okiti, the road broke down completely. The bus tires spun. The driver came out, sweating, and said the words no passenger wanted to hear: “We are sleeping here tonight”. Groans filled the bus. An old man with a walking stick just nodded. He had seen this road in 1998. It was worse now.

People spread cardboard on the roadside and sat. Truck drivers lit fires to keep warm and to keep thieves away. The smell of diesel mixed with smoke serenaded with the scent of rain on dust. Somewhere in the bush, frogs croaked as if mocking the traffic.

A young corper traveling to Asaba clutched her NYSC bag. She called her mother. “Mama, I am fine,” she lied. Then she whispered, “But we’ve been on the same spot for 3 hours”. On the other end, her mother began to pray in Igbo language.

The worst part was not the delay. It was the uncertainty. No one knew if the road would be passable by morning. A tanker had fallen two weeks earlier on the same spot. The tar had melted in the sun and the rain washed it away. Now, only sand and sharp stones remained.

At 2 AM, rain started. It was not heavy, but enough. Passengers moved back to the bus for shelter. Water ran into people’s shoes. A trader lost a carton of tomatoes to the mud. He sat and watched it completely immersed in mud, too tired to shout.

A soldier stopped to help direct traffic. Even he shook his head. “This road has killed more dreams than bullets,” he said quietly before moving on. His torchlight showed faces that were dusty, hungry, and patient in a way that only Nigerians can be.

By dawn, the line had not moved much. Those who had money entered bikes and paid to be taken through bush paths. Those without money waited. Mama Bose shared her oranges. A stranger shared bread. Hunger made neighbours of strangers.

When the bus finally moved at 10 AM, people cheered weakly. But the joy did not last. Another pothole, another delay. The journey that should have been a few hours took almost a full day.

Mama Bose got to Owerri in the afternoon the next day. She was late for her sister’s burial. She cried, not just for her sister, but for the hours stolen by a road that the government had made several promises to fix.

The Ore-Benin-Asaba Expressway is more than tar and potholes. It is a place where time stands still, where students miss exams, where sick people miss hospitals, and where families wait at bus parks with cold food. Until that road is fixed, thousands will continue to sleep on the highway, praying that tomorrow, they will move just a little farther.