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Nigeria Roads
The road system began in the early 1900s essentially as
a
feeder network for the new railroads. In the 1920s, the
government established a basic grid of two north-south
trunk
roads from Lagos and Port Harcourt to Kano, and several
east-west
roads, two north and two south of the natural division
created by
the Niger and Benue rivers. In later decades, this system
was
expanded until most state capitals and large towns were
accessible by paved road. In 1978 an expressway was
constructed
from Lagos to Ibadan, and a branch from this route was
later
extended east to Benin City. Another expressway connected
Port
Harcourt with Enugu. In 1990 Nigeria had 108,000
kilometers of
roads, of which 30,000 kilometers were paved, 25,000
kilometers
were gravel, and the rest were unimproved earth. Carrying
95
percent of all the nation's goods and passengers, the
roads
constituted by far the most important element in the
transportation network.
The poor maintenance of past years forced the
government to
shift its emphasis in the 1980s from constructing new
roads to
repairing existing ones. Massive traffic jams were
reported in
most large cities, and there were long delays in the
movement of
goods. Safety standards were low; in 1988 more than 30,000
accidents and 8,000 highway deaths were reported.
Data as of June 1991
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