Protest: Angry Drivers Hit Nasarawa-Benue highway Over Extortion By Soldiers, Travellers Stranded

Truck drivers on Tuesday barricaded the Oweto-Loko bridge along the highway linking Nasarawa State to Benue State, North-central Nigeria.

The truckers accused soldiers of extortion on the highway that connects Keffi area of Nasarawa State to Agatu and Otukpo local government areas of Benue State.

The blockage caused several hours of traffic gridlock, leaving hundreds of travellers stranded.

A truck driver who identified himself as Yusuf said soldiers at a checkpoint in Agatu beat him with sticks and gun butt for refusing to part with “N2000 bribe.”

“We were driving from Anambra State to Abuja. We normally give N500 to soldiers at checkpoints, but when we arrived in the Agatu area, the soldiers demanded N2000 per truck,” Yusuf told PREMIUM TIMES in a telephone interview on Thursday.

“I got off my truck to remove the wooden log with spikes on the road after the boy who was helping the soldiers to collect money rejected our N500 offer. The boy resisted the removal of the log, then the armed soldiers came out and began to beat and injure all the drivers.”

Yusuf, however, said he could identify the soldiers who extorted the motorists, but that he was disoriented by the beatings and could not recognise the officers who allegedly tortured him.

He further narrated that the issue escalated when the locals ran into the village with weapons to attack the truckers.

“In the process of beating us, the soldiers and the village boys destroyed our vehicles; they broke several windshields and tyres,” Yusuf said.

He said it was the shattering of the trucks that compelled them to block the highway in protest until the governors of Nasarawa and BeBenustates – Abdullahi Sule and Hyacinth Alia – intervened in the crisis.

He disclosed that the two governors promised to fix the vandalised vehicles and raise the issue with the Chief of Army Staff, Taoreed Lagbaja, a general.

How soldiers extort motorists

Yusuf said the soldiers recruited young locals, often children who helped them to collect bribes from motorists on the highway.

“The soldiers and even police put young boys, mostly children, on the highway to collect the bribes which they call “settlement” so that they won’t be caught on camera soliciting bribes,” the angry trucker said.

Narrating the difficulties motorists grapple with at the hands of law enforcement officers on the highways, a trucker who did not want his name mentioned said, “truck drivers spend as much as N250,000 on settling (sorting) soldiers, police, customs, drugs law officers on a single road trip from the southern to the northern part of Nigeria.”

The implications of this, the trucker said, is the hike in the prices of goods and services, which are passed on to the consumer.

Blockage a nightmare

An aide to a member of the House of Representatives who was caught in the incident, said being stranded for over eight hours on Tuesday caused him immeasurable pain.

“It was like hell; hundreds of travellers were stranded on the highway. I have never seen a thing like that before,” the legislative aide lamented.

“Some of the truck drivers sustained severe injuries, some of their vehicles were damaged; tyres punctured and windscreen broken as a result of the fight/clash.

“This morning (Tuesday), the truck drivers decided to block the Oweto-Loko bridge (highway) and they’re now demanding that until all their damaged vehicles are fixed, there won’t be movement on the road,” the traveller who did not want his name in print, said.

He questioned why “a federal highway is blocked, halting movement of lawful citizens and no intervention or action from either the state government or federal government or any of its agencies. It’s quite unfortunate.”

Regular occurrence

Tuesday’s incident was not the first time truckers would be protesting against extortion and parlous state of roads in the country.

In July 2022, truckers protesting arbitrary fees imposed on them by illegal tax collectors in Onitsha, Anambra State, left many road users stranded.

Similarly, truck drivers blocked the Lokoja-Abuja highway in Kogi State against the alleged brutality of soldiers at a checkpoint which led to the death of one of their colleagues.

Army speaks

Onyeama Nwachukwu, the spokesperson of the Nigerian Army, said troops were alerted of a traffic gridlock occasioned by a conflict between truck drivers and locals.

Mr Nwachukwu said the locals, not soldiers, “inflicted damage on their trucks, while some drivers sustained injuries.”

“This led to the barricading of the road by truck drivers and resulted in a tortuous traffic gridlock,” Mr Nwachukwu, a brigadier general, told PREMIUM TIMES via a text message.

He dismissed insinuations that soldiers killed two of the truckers.

“Troops moved to the scene to prevent further escalation of the violence and successfully restored the flow of traffic on the road.

“Troops even went as far as consulting the traditional leader of the concerned community to prevail on the warring parties to restore normalcy. Troops did not kill anyone during the intervention to restore peace,” Mr Nwachukwu said.

The spokespersons for Governors Sule and Alia – Ibrahim Addra and Kula Tersoo, respectively – said in separate interviews that they were not aware of their principals’ intervention in the incident.

Mr Addra, however, said the resolution of the issue might have happened at the level of phone calls between the aggrieved truckers and the governor.