THE NIGER DELTA DEBACLE (2)

You will recall that in my last post, I promised to highlight, in no special order, the problems of the Niger Delta region from the point of view of a son of the soil, as the saying goes. Today, I am starting with roads.

The last time I visited my village, I almost cursed the day my mother brought me into this world, without my permission, and to the Niger Delta of all the places in the world. I drove my car to point A, some 27 kilometres from the State capital Yenagoa; then boarded a canoe which ferried me to the other bank of the river from where I walked a 5 kilometre footpath in what I can only refer to as “mudcrete”. Where else, other than the Niger Delta region, do people travel this way?

The Bayelsa State Government has been struggling with the construction – or the planned construction – of 3 Senatorial Roads which, when completed will link the three Senatorial districts of the State to the State capital. Even the blind can see that this is a masterstroke of a developmental utopia! As and when completed, I may not have to go to my village the way I did last week. But the way things are going, you will have to be a Methuselah to see the completion of those roads not because the State Government is unwilling to complete them but because the resources are clearly no longer there to complete these projects.

For those who are not familiar with our terrain, Bayelsa State happens to be the only State out of 36 States where there isn’t a single inch of Federal Road except the East/West Road which passes through the State by default, sandwiched between Delta and Rivers States as we are.

In the circumstances, are we asking for too much, if we request the Federal Government to take over the construction of the 3 Senatorial roads from the overburdened shoulders of the Bayelsa State Government? The young man who means well for the State is currently being overwhelmed by the financial burden of the State to the extent that I can hear his groans one hundred miles away! Its not funny at all!

The least the Federal Government can do now is to include the construction of these roads in the 2010 Capital Estimates. We would want to believe that the Federal Government under President Umaru Musa Yar’Adua has the political will to confront the Niger Delta problem head on!

Tata, everybody.

Napoleon