Why Umahi Must Pay Attention to Existing Roads

Members of the House of Representatives recently criticised the Minister of Works, David Umahi, over the deplorable roads in the country.

They accused Umahi of lacking commitment to improving the nation’s roads.

Though Umahi was notably absent from the session, the members were enraged during a House hearing, where the ministry’s Director of Bridges, Bede Obiora, cited funding constraints as the primary cause of the poor road conditions.

A member of the House, Remi Oseni, representing Ibarapa/Ido Federal Constituency in Oyo State, rebuffed the minister’s defence, and challenged the claim that resource scarcity was to blame.

The lawmaker noted that the ministry was still awarding new road contracts. He claimed that the minister had misplaced his priorities over the state of roads across the country.

Currently, very few roads are motorable in the country. The East-West Road, which runs across the entire South-South region, from Edo through Delta, Bayelsa, Rivers, and Akwa Ibom and terminates at Cross River, is a nightmare. Most parts of the road are impassable and have been so for many years under successive governments.

The Benin-Asaba-Onitsha Road is currently in a state of disrepair; so are the Calabar-Itu Federal Highway, Enugu-Port Harcourt Road, the 65-kilometre Oyo-Ogbomosho Highway, Akure-Ekiti Road, Nsukka-Otukpo-Makurdi Road, Wukari-Yola Road, Lafia-Akwanga-Jos Road, Benin-Auchi Road, Benin-Sapele-Warri Road, Jos-Bauchi-Gombe-Numan Road, Suleja-Minna Road and the Lagos-Ota-Abeokuta Road, to mention a few.

Though the federal government inherited these bad roads, most Nigerians think that it should first fix these existing roads before shifting attention to the construction of the new Lagos-Calabar Coastal Road and the Badagry-Sokoto expressway worth trillions of naira.

They believe that at least N2trillion will complete these roads for Nigerians to have a sigh of relief.  

The dangers in all the failed roads are that they help bandits and kidnappers to perpetrate their nefarious activities.

As the Christmas and New Year celebrations are approaching, one of the ways the federal government can make many Nigerians happy in this difficult and bleak times, is to fix these roads for them to travel in peace.