President Buhari has continued to insist that he inherited “no roads”, “no railway”, “no infrastructure”,although, it is probably better to say that the
infrastructure he inherited are in great disrepair. The road to this state of decayed infrastructure, started with the military government.
The former British colonialists designed the trunk “A” roads, linked them to the headquarters of the former three Regions at Enugu, Ibadan and Kaduna, and maintained them in excellent condition. Even with our independence, the indigenous leaderships continued to uphold the maintenance culture and built many more roads into the interior.
It was since the military incursion into the governance of Nigeria that we lost, not just the maintenance culture, but also the ability to construct quality, durable infrastructure. Worse still, the elected governments that took over from the military left out major roads as death traps. Though the situation of bad road network is a general national phenomenon, federal roads in the former Eastern Region (South East and most areas of the South) are routinely abandoned.
When campaigning for election in 1999, former President Olusegun Obasanjo promised to repair and expand the Onitsha-Enugu, Enugu-Port Harcourt, Onitsha-Owerri, Owerri-Aba, Aba-Ikot Ekpene and the East-West Road (Warri-Patani-Port Harcourt roads). For good measure, he also vowed to build the Second Niger Bridge. He left office without fulfilling his promises. The roads got worse.
In 2007, the late President Umaru Yar ‘Adua made the same promises but delivered only the Onitsha-Owerri road. Ex-President Goodluck Jonathan, in his five and a half years in office (and despite the overwhelming votes delivered to him in the area in 2011) failed to improve the situation. Even the East-West Road remains unfinished and the worst part is in Jonathan’s native Bayelsa State.
The Second Niger Bridge has been more of a political swindle. A few months before every presidential election, the incumbent president announces the award of contract for the Bridge; gets the people of the South East excited; collects their votes and promptly forgets it after the election.
Today, the worst sets of Federal roads are those leading to the old Regional capitals. Funds are scarce now; the days of $120 per barrel for crude are gone – perhaps forever.
Perhaps the only hope for a dramatic infrastructural turnaround lies in the massive borrowing proposal by President Muhammadu Buhari.
We, therefore, insist that if that loan is procured, it must be used to ensure that roads, railways and other infrastructural needs of the country are evenly distributed.
No part of the country must be left behind.
The road to the future, however, is to involve the state governments and the private sector more in building and maintaining infrastructure across the country. Overdependence on the Federal Government to do this has proved a failure, which we must admit.
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