The ongoing expansion joint repairs on the Kara Bridge along the Lagos-Ibadan expressway have triggered severe gridlock across the city, prompting businesses to activate remote work models to salvage employee productivity and mitigate operational disruptions.
While the federal project covers a construction zone of merely 100 meters, its two-week phased timeline has paralysed commercial activities and once again exposed systemic failures in public works coordination and traffic management. The resulting traffic bottleneck has spilt into major transit corridors, congesting Ojodu-Berger, Magboro, Ogudu, Ikeja, and Ogba. The project’s timing has drawn sharp criticism from motorists and haulage operators, as construction coincided with activities of school resumption week- stretching commutes from OPIC and Berger to Victoria Island to as long as seven hours.
The resulting bottleneck directly impairs regional productivity, trapping thousands of industrial haulage trucks, commercial buses, and daily commuters who rely on this vital axis to transport goods, services, and labour.
Trapped on a commercial motorcycle amidst the standstill, Folarin Joseph, a tech worker and content creator, captured the collective exhaustion of the commuting public: “This is a Wednesday morning, and you can see how crazy the traffic is. This is Kara Bridge, and all of us are on bikes; we are in traffic, and all vehicles are at a standstill. It doesn’t make sense, Julius Berger. You are killing the economy and not helping it in any way, and we want this economy to be productive… we have been stuck for hours…”
