Camer360

Frustration is boiling over at Douala’s westbound exit to Bonabéri, where crumbling road surfaces and recurring weekend tailbacks are turning routine trips into ordeals. Drivers and commuters flooded social media with testimonies and images, denouncing hours-long standstills and dangerous potholes that swallow traffic flow and productivity alike.

“Five hours for two kilometers—pure misery. Yesterday it took me seven hours to get out of Bonabéri. This is a chronic emergency,” wrote senior manager Yacouba Adam on LinkedIn, calling the bottleneck a drag on the economy. Journalist Lile Piedjou posted that a 4 a.m. departure from Douala ended with a 5 p.m. arrival in Bangangté, urging the Public Works Ministry to “see the suffering on these roads.” Cyrille Bojiko, CEO of Balafon Media, warned on X that jams were reaching Bomono, advising travelers from the West to find lodging rather than push on.

The complaints focus on a familiar trio of causes: severely degraded pavement, poor drainage that turns the carriageway into puddled traps after rain, and insufficient traffic management during peak outbound periods. Businesses report delays on supply runs and rising transport costs; passengers cite safety risks as cars, trucks and motorcycles jostle around cratered stretches with minimal signage.

Local users demand rapid, visible measures: emergency pothole patching and drainage clearing, temporary traffic marshals at choke points, and a transparent work calendar for a durable fix. Urban planners add that long-term relief requires lane rehabilitation with proper subgrade treatment, consistent axle-load enforcement, and better weekend traffic planning to smooth departure waves from the city.

Until those elements align, the Douala–Bonabéri corridor will remain a case study in how neglected maintenance multiplies into economic and social stress—week after week.