Just hours before President Bola Tinubu's scheduled visit to Benue State, flooding has forced the closure of the Makurdi–Lafia–Abuja highway, one of the state's key entry points. The disruption poses serious challenges to security and logistics arrangements for the President’s planned condolence visit over recent mass killings in Yelwata.
- Intense floodwaters overran the Makurdi-Abuja road, stranding commuters.
- Tinubu’s visit aimed to sympathise with the victims of Benue attacks.
- The flood's timing complicates state and federal preparations.
- Motorists were forced to delay travel or seek shelter.
- Authorities are yet to announce alternate routes or emergency measures.
Insecurity may have triggered Tinubu’s visit, but now its nature threatens his route. For residents and observers, the closed road symbolises Nigeria’s wider crisis: weak infrastructure, climate vulnerability, and state fragility colliding at once. Will Tinubu’s visit still make it through the storm, literally and politically?
The blocked route serves as a metaphor for the broader obstacles facing the Nigerian state, both man-made and natural. All eyes now turn to whether the president will reach Makurdi at all, and what message he brings when or if he does.
