But our roads are not under construction! They are hardly
even properly planned, so how can we achieve success? Half a million naira is
the amount the average Nigerian car owner spends annually to keep one vehicle
good shape. If you don’t have a mountain truck there are many parts of Nigeria
you can’t hope to access without having to pick parts of your vehicle as you
scrape along. These routes include federal government roads. Yes, roads that
senators, presidents, companies and individuals use on a day-to-day. Why are
they in the state they’re in? Everyone knows the answer to that question, but
what are we gonna do about it?
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| Elelenwo Road |
My adventures led me from Oil Mill Market junction down the
road to Akpajo, it wasn’t a ‘drive’ it was a ‘gallop’. I was literally clinging
to the Keke’s (motorized tricycle) grip handles for my dear life as the rider
expertly wove his way through the roads. We may be called Rivers State because
of the nearly river-sized puddles that erosion has created on our roads.
 |
| Julius Berger Workers |
On my way to Akpajo I met a group of Julius Berger workers working on the roads, so I decided to have a
nice chat with them. They were basically working on the underground drainage
ahead of their peers (ie. the other colleagues were further down the road), their jobs were consequently to open up the old road so the others could mount the drainage
cylinders. After talking to them I discovered why the roads are taking ages to
be built: “If we wanted to rush this road now, we would just destroy the entire
road and block this place. But we are not doing that, we are working in a way
that will allow other people to use and access this road. This is how the
government wants us to work.” The director of the workers on that segment
specifically made it clear to me that they will never hinder the businesses on
the road, that even though they ought to stop a few traders selling on small
stalls like the bole woman they wouldn’t because “She has
to pay school fees for her children.”
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| He said he wants to be on Facebook |
Right now, the Akpajo junction is every trailer/truck/lorry
driver’s worst fear. Unfortunately, the two roads are economically important
roads that lead from Port Harcourt to the Eleme Refinery and ALL LARGE
COMMERCIAL VEHICLES that hope to reach the refinery use that road. They often
break down with the bad roads, or the cargo will fall and spill, cause loss of
lives and loss of property.
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| Stella Chukwukere |
The horrible roads are so bad for business that even Engaging Christian Books a small
bookshop run by Stella Chukwukere at
the Akpajo junction can testify that since the rains started, customers don’t
even know how to get to her shop, they can see it, but they can’t get to it.
She blames Julius Berger’s work for
the water that has lodged at her shop’s front: “Since this Berger people have
started working on the road, they just blocked the way water used to flow
previously. We told them our concerns but the reply was that we should go and
see the Minister of Works that the Berger contractors played their part as
directed by the state government.”
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| Loss of Property |
Stella was even nice enough to share the story of the
smashed car on the road in front of her shop: “It’s God that saved that man oh. He came down before that thing fell
on him. His car got stuck in one of those portholes, so he and his passenger,
the boy at the front, came down to check how they could free the car from
there. Then one of the trailers carrying those tanks came, the thing was
shaking like it was going to fall at any minute, and once it got to that point,
it just fell.”
WHAT IS THE SOLUTION?
The Akpajo junction in particular needs a flyover because of
how the junction is designed; we have three important roads meeting at one point
and people going in different directions. But…
The only way out of this mess is to put pressure on the government;
the roads all over Nigeria are in terrible condition. Is there money to fix it?
Yes, where is our tax going to? Why are the roads not fixed? One word: ‘corruption’.
I am not here to give you the solution to corruption, that is a moral problem,
but I am here to ask you: are you not the
government?
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