16th December 2025, NewsOrient, Opinion, Column, News
By John Chukwu Anyim

The Yuletide season is meant to symbolize joy, reunion, gratitude, and renewal. It is a time when families travel across towns and states to reconnect, when communities come alive with celebration, and when hope briefly overshadows hardship. Yet, in Nigeria, this season of movement has increasingly become a season of mourning. Our highways, instead of serving as channels of unity, turn into scenes of horror. At the heart of this tragedy lies a long-standing and unforgivable problem, the deplorable condition of Nigerian roads.

As the Yuletide approaches, traffic on major highways multiplies. From Lagos to Onitsha, Abuja to Kaduna, Enugu to Port Harcourt, Benin to Ore, and countless other routes, roads are pushed far beyond their capacity. Unfortunately, these roads were already failing before the festive rush began. Potholes large enough to swallow tyres, broken bridges, eroded shoulders, faded road markings, and abandoned construction sites greet travelers with cruel familiarity. Driving at night becomes a gamble with death, as poor lighting and missing signage make it nearly impossible to anticipate danger.

Bad roads are not just an inconvenience; they are a direct cause of accidents. Drivers swerve suddenly to avoid potholes, leading to head-on collisions. Vehicles lose control after hitting damaged sections at high speed. Tyres burst, suspensions fail, and brakes give way under the strain of navigating uneven surfaces. In many cases, what begins as a manageable journey ends abruptly in tragedy, not because of recklessness alone, but because the road itself has become an enemy.

During the Yuletide season, these dangers are amplified by pressure and fatigue. Drivers are eager to make multiple trips in a day, maximizing profit in a short window. Private motorists rush to beat traffic and arrive on time for celebrations. Long hours behind the wheel, combined with bad road conditions, reduce concentration and increase errors. A single misjudgment on a damaged highway can cost dozens of lives at once.

The failure of government is glaring. Road rehabilitation in Nigeria is often reactive, politicized, or abandoned halfway. Projects are announced with fanfare, budgets are allocated, but the roads remain death traps. Temporary repairs are washed away by the first rains, while contractors disappear without accountability. During festive seasons, authorities issue safety advisories, yet fail to address the most obvious risk: roads that are fundamentally unsafe to drive on.

Equally troubling is the lack of proper road infrastructure to support safe travel. Drainage systems are poorly designed or nonexistent, causing roads to collapse after rainfall. Weighbridges are ignored, allowing heavy trucks to destroy highways not built to withstand such loads. Warning signs are either missing or vandalized, and reflective markings are rarely maintained. In many rural and inter-state routes, there is no clear separation between highways and human activity, exposing pedestrians and roadside traders to constant danger.

When accidents occur, as they inevitably do, the consequences of bad roads extend beyond the crash itself. Emergency response is severely limited. Many accident scenes are inaccessible due to damaged road sections. Ambulances struggle to arrive on time, if they arrive at all. Victims are left stranded, bleeding, and helpless, while traffic builds up around wreckage on narrow, broken roads. Lives that could have been saved are lost because help cannot reach them quickly.

The human cost of this neglect is staggering. Families are shattered, breadwinners are lost, and entire communities are plunged into grief, all during a season meant for joy. Each fatal accident tells a familiar story of preventable loss, of warnings ignored, and of lives sacrificed on the altar of poor governance and infrastructural decay.

Improving safety on our highways during the Yuletide season must begin with an honest confrontation of Nigeria’s road crisis. Government must treat road construction and maintenance as an urgent national priority, not a political favor. Critical highways must be repaired before peak travel periods. Construction standards must be enforced, and contractors held accountable. Regular maintenance, proper drainage, road lighting, and clear signage are not luxuries; they are life-saving necessities.

Drivers and road users also have responsibilities. Speed must be reduced on damaged roads. Night travel should be minimized where possible. Passengers must speak up against reckless driving, especially on visibly dangerous routes. But citizens cannot be expected to compensate endlessly for systemic failure.

The true test of leadership is not in holiday messages or safety slogans, but in whether citizens can travel during festive seasons without fear of death. The Yuletide should not be remembered for mass burials and roadside memorials. It should be a time of safe journeys and joyful reunions.

Until Nigerian roads are fixed, every Yuletide journey remains a gamble. And a nation that normalizes such risk has failed in one of its most basic duties: protecting the lives of its people.

~ Published By NewsOrient Network

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