By Dele Ogbodo
The Minister of Works Engr. David Umahi has narrated his excruciating experience during the tour of East-West Road to Akwa Ibom and Cross River State Governments while meeting with them at their respective states on Thursday
After 14 hours tour on roads from Abuja, Kogi, Edo, Delta, Rivers and Akwa-Ibom, he hinted that the heart of the economy of the Niger Delta people rest on this East West Road.
“I started since Sunday from Abuja through Kogi to Benin, it has been a very ugly experience I was on the road for 14 hours, in some cases we could not pass we have to start going through villages, we saw trucks that have been on the road for more than 7 days and then we came into Benin, East West road continues to Warri, it is the same story in some of the locations you see trucks piling over 5 kilomettres parked because of bad road, Sapele to Agbor is so terrible, all these projects have been awarded by the previous administration which is a very good intention but while the contractors are on site working, the roads are failing.”
He continued “I have challenged them to tell us why the roads are failing and they have not been able to do so , the dummy they sold to our people that because the roads are being overloaded, I have challenged them and they have shut their mouth up because they are doing bad construction work , there is no road they are building that is going to last 5 years, if you take from Warri down to Port Harcourt, it is a very terrible experience, if President Tinubu did not send me to intervene, in 30 days nobody can travel from here to Warri, it is impossible , we have over 10 locations where the roads are below the flood lane and one section has already cut off.“
The Minister said to the Deputy Governor of Akwa Ibom State, Dr. Akon Eyakenyi “In section 2 of the East West road, I got very pleased with the bridges but the roads are very bad, I have directed the contractor to use his money and reconstruct it, the claim that it is flood, I didn’t buy into that, he must reconstruct it with his money I don’t want to mention the name of the contractor, you can’t be working on the road and they are getting bad and you are asking us to pay you.“
“In 14 days, the entire length of the roads that are ongoing in this country the entire stretch must be maintained to relief the ugly incidence that we are seeing on our roads where the people are suffering, I thank President Bola Ahmed Tinubu that asked me to tour all the roads all over the country, he mandated me to tour the road as a Fellow of the Nigeria Society of Engineers (NSE) to be able to assess it myself and bring up a comprehensive report to him.
“I can assure you that at the time we roll out the concrete road pavement that the Mr. President invented and directed, Niger Delta people will be very happy.” He said.
