The protesters who defied the heavy rains and marched from Badagry town towards Lasu-Iba axis of the road lamented the hardship they experience on daily basis plying the road.

The Lagos/Badagry Expressway  connects  Badagry Roundabout, Aradagun, Muwo, Oko Afo,  barracks, Magbo, Alabama , Okokomaiko ,  ACOED Roundabout, Iyana-Era, Isashi, Okokomaiko, LASU, Iyana-Iba, Volks, Agric, trade fair, Alabama, and  others  along the route up to Mile 2 and also it  is the Nigerian section of the Trans-West African Coastal Highway which connects Lagos, Nigeria with Dakar, Senegal.

The protesters stormed the highway  displaying  placards with different inscriptions, such as: Fix Lagos/Badagry Expressway. Our businesses are dying’’; “Bad Road, Our pregnant women are having miscarriages’’; and “We are not at war, Remove checkpoints on our road’’; “We are losing man hours, “Enough is Enough, We are also tax payers, No Retreat No Surrender.”

Bemoaning the situation, a group under the umbrella of “Fix Lagos-Badagry Expressway Now Mass Movement”, said the protest was to draw attention of President Buhari and the Lagos State Governor-elect, Babajide Sanwo-Olu’s to the plights of all the road users.

Speaking during the protest,  Dr Joe Okei-Odumakin, the President, Women Arise Initiative,  said“ We are here because the Lagos/Badagry Express road has continued to serve as a route of anguish and pain; the state of the road is deplorable.’’

“We are seeing our economy ruined, we have seen women having still births; We have seen our road becoming a road to the hospital and the mortuary, the time has come for us to rise up in unity.’’

“Time has come for us to demand that the government should fix the Lagos/Badagry road; we are here to demand that the road that leads to the economic hub of the ECOWAS sub-region be fixed.’’

“We have endured this for a very long time, and tourism in Badagry is now at its lowest ebb; we know the concession started in 2009 and several years after the road was awarded, nothing serious has been done about it,’’ she said.

Also speaking, Comrade Bokoh Oluwole. the Chairman, Gunuvi Rights Initiative of Nigeria (GRIN), said “This is the first major international road in Nigeria, and the road is Trunk A. It is an international route, an international haulage route. This road serves industrial hubs, and government generates a lot of income from the route.’’

“This road construction began during the Babatunde Fashola administration and it has been on for over a decade and people are dying. At my bus stop, we lost two kids recently because of the nature of the road and some users are sometimes compelled to ply one-way.

“Those who go to Lagos to buy goods from Badagry now find it difficult to transport their wares without incurring losses.How long shall we continue to suffer like this, while the government pretends as if all is well?, said Oluwole