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It’s finally happening. After years of complaints, dust clouds in the dry season and treacherous mud during the rains, contractors have moved onto Francisca Akya Street opposite Vaatsa College in Makurdi with rollers, pavers, and steaming bitumen.
On November 17, 2025, the long-awaited asphalt overlay began in earnest as workers started binding the road with the first layer of hot mix. The stretch, one of the busiest corridors linking residential quarters in the Wurukum axis to the ever-crowded Vaatsa College area, has been a motorist’s nightmare and a pedestrian’s gamble for as long as most residents can remember.
By midday, the sweet smell of fresh bitumen was already in the air, and curious residents lined the fences to watch the transformation unfold. Red-and-white caution tape now stretches across sections of the road, a clear sign that the days of dodging potholes on this route are numbered.
The project, handled by a local construction firm under the supervision of the Benue State Ministry of Works, is expected to deliver a complete dual-carriage standard with drainage channels, walkways, and solar-powered street lighting when finished. Although no official completion timeline was posted at the site, sources within the ministry say the contractor has been given a tight schedule to surface the entire 2.8-kilometer stretch before the Christmas rush.
Students of Vaatsa College and nearby schools are perhaps the biggest winners. Every morning and closing hour, hundreds of pupils, staff, and parents battle the dusty, bumpy road. “We’ve lost count of how many shoes have been ruined here,” laughed a parent dropping off her child on Monday afternoon. “Once this road is done, at least we won’t come home looking like we walked through a yam farm.”
Commercial motorcyclists and tricycle operators who ply the route also welcomed the development, though not without the usual banter. “Yes, the road is good o,” one okada rider quipped, “but make them finish quick before fuel price kills the celebration.”
For Governor Hyacinth Alia’s administration, the Francisca Akya project is another visible tick on a growing list of urban renewal works in Makurdi. Coming just hours after the high-profile flag-off of 41 brand-new tractors on the same day, it feels like November 17 has quietly become Infrastructure Monday in Benue State.
As the sun dipped low and the last truckload of bitumen was spread for the day, one elderly woman watching from her veranda summed it up for everyone: “This kind thing wey dem dey do now, if them finish am, we go know say government dey work.”
For now, the machines are humming, the road is blackening, and Makurdi is one step closer to shedding its old reputation of “beautiful city, terrible roads.” Francisca Akya Street is getting its long-overdue glow-up, and residents can already taste the dust-free days ahead.
