{"id":61621,"date":"2025-02-20T11:56:38","date_gmt":"2025-02-20T11:56:38","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/?p=61621"},"modified":"2025-02-20T11:56:38","modified_gmt":"2025-02-20T11:56:38","slug":"motorists-protest-multiple-toll-points-on-abuja-makurdi-expressway","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/2025\/02\/20\/motorists-protest-multiple-toll-points-on-abuja-makurdi-expressway\/","title":{"rendered":"Motorists Protest Multiple Toll Points on Abuja-Makurdi Expressway"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>By Emmanuel Ogbodo<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Motorists plying the newly dualised Abuja-Akwanga-Lafia-Makurdi Expressway have decried the financial burden of multiple toll points along the 227-kilometer route, despite acknowledging the improved road quality delivered by China Harbour Engineering Company (CHEC).<\/p>\n<p>The Federal Government owes CHEC $460.8 million for the project, funded through a loan from China Exim Bank.<\/p>\n<p>While the upgrade has enhanced travel efficiency, drivers complain about the four toll gates along the Makurdi-Abuja stretch, each charging N500, amounting to N2,000 per trip and N4,000 for a round trip.<\/p>\n<p>Commercial drivers, including Terfa and David from Benue Links, lament that transport fares remain unchanged, leaving them to bear the toll costs without reimbursement.<\/p>\n<p>They are calling on the Federal Government to reduce toll points to one or two and implement a receipt system to prevent multiple charges on a single journey.<\/p>\n<p>While the project has been praised for its quality, stakeholders argue that the excessive tolling undermines its economic benefits, urging authorities to adopt a fairer toll collection system that balances infrastructure funding with motorists\u2019 financial realities.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>By Emmanuel Ogbodo Motorists plying the newly dualised Abuja-Akwanga-Lafia-Makurdi Expressway have decried the financial burden of multiple toll points along the 227-kilometer route, despite acknowledging the improved road quality delivered by China Harbour Engineering Company (CHEC). The Federal Government owes CHEC $460.8 million for the project, funded through a loan from China Exim Bank. While [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":32,"featured_media":61622,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[172],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-61621","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"aioseo_notices":[],"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/61621","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/32"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=61621"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/61621\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":61623,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/61621\/revisions\/61623"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/61622"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=61621"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=61621"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/abujacityjournal.com\/livenews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=61621"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}