East-West Road And Shame Of A Nation

 By Jerome Utomi

The world is aware that the Niger Delta area or the South-South geopolitical zone of Nigeria is prone to many negative influences as a result of successive Federal Governments’ neglect of the region. Some of these challenges are well known and glaring, yet no attention given to addressing them, even though they have a substantial impact on people, corporations and social levels.

A typical example of such monumental neglect is the shoddy state of the East-West Road, a strategic road connecting the country’s busiest and foremost commercial cities in the region. That is why it is baffling that successive administrations in Nigeria had allowed the road to degenerate to such a state of disrepair.

Looking at the present condition of the road, it will not be out of place if the Federal Government tenders unreserved apologies to the people of the region as well as take practical  steps to have the road permanently repaired. For those unfamiliar with the Niger Delta region, the referenced road, according to records, extends 188 kilometres and connects the Niger Delta cities to Lagos in the West and Calabar in the East. On its route, the road links up with the vital commercial hubs of Port Harcourt and Warri. The first phase of the road, according to experts, is laced with no fewer than 31 bridges with lengths from 31 to 850 metres. Before it was constructed, a trip from Lagos to Port Harcourt used to take 12 hours, but after its construction, it was drastically reduced to a third of that time. 

Farmers and fishermen from the over 1000 communities along its stretch were equally able to fetch a higher price by selling their produce and catch-of-the-day inland; new industrial opportunities were opened, and ecotourism for the region’s marshes, mangroves, and coasts rose.  That was back in the day! The situation as it stands today is different! The road has become an emblem of national shame.

Aside from bringing about increased transportation costs for commuters and leaving local economies bereft of means to move agricultural products to larger markets, also disturbing is the new awareness that the road that was constructed to revitalise the region has overtly become a threat of a sort to the nation’s economy and negatively impacts the generality of innocent Nigerians that have one business or another to do in the region. Their time and man hours are daily wasted on the road. As an illustration, a journey from Lagos to Abraka, Delta State, which ordinarily should not exceed seven hours, now takes a minimum of 17 hours.

It was so bad lately that some of the prospective candidates that travelled in the early hours from Lagos to Delta State University, Abraka, for their Post-Unified Tertiary Matriculation Examination could not get to their destination till the following day, no thanks to the bad condition of the road. To these innocent students who will become the future leaders of the country, the experience will remain a pain deepened by the fact that it was avoidable if the Federal Government had done the needful. Most shocking is the awareness that former President Goodluck Ebele Jonathan, who is from the region, could not fix the East-West road despite it being the only major road that connects his home state, Bayelsa, to the ‘wider world’. 

Also devastating are the media reports that the road has remained in bad shape for over 13 years or more with no respite in sight and ‘enjoyed’ a series of failed promises and aborted efforts from successive Federal Governments. In February 2013, following the criticism President Jonathan received on the deplorable state of the road and its non-completion, Godsday Orubebe, Minister of Niger-Delta Affairs during GEJ’s days in office, promised that the Federal Government would complete the project by December 2014. Orubebe, whose assurance came a few days after he made a similar one in Benin City, the Edo State capital, said the road project, which was about 53 per cent completed, is not as bad as many of his political detractors claimed. 

Indeed, no Nigerian took that promise seriously because, at the time it was made, President Jonathan’s administration had already established itself in all facets as a government reputed for lacking in commitment to promises. Illustratively, back in 2010, during the launch of a similar road map for the power sector in Nigeria, President Jonathan, among other things, stated thus: “As President and Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces, I and my Vice President, Namadi Sambo, are conscious that what we do with the Nigerian electricity supply industry will go a long way in determining whether Nigeria remains in darkness or joins the rest of the world in the race for development. Our commitment is to bring an end to our nation’s stunted growth and usher in the fresh air of prosperity by pursuing a new era of sector-wide reform that is driven by improved service delivery to every class of customer in the Nigerian electricity sector.”

Promising that with diligent implementation and meticulous application of what this road map provides, we will see an end to the chronic electrical power supply shortages. Regrettably, the declaration existed not only in frames but turned out to be a political gimmick with no traces of an appreciable increase in power generation until the administration elapsed in May 2015. What about the administrations that emerged after President Jonathan? The answer is simple. In management, every nation or institution develops a culture of its own.

And the success or failure of such an institution is closely tied to that culture. Working under this premise, no administration in Nigeria can boast of clean hands when it comes to issues that have to do with the unacceptable condition of the East-West road. 

President Muhammadu Buhari, who succeeded former President Jonathan, inherited the road, but to the consternation of Nigerians, he brazenly continued with the culture of ‘promise and fail’. In fact, if what happened under President Jonathan was a challenge, the experience under President Buhari’s administration was a crisis. For example, in June 2020, President Buhari reportedly approved the immediate release of N19.67 billion to ramp up efforts in completing sections I–IV of the East-West Road project by 2021.

The presidential directive was part of efforts to address the infrastructure deficit in the Niger Delta region and boost its economy. Recall that Buhari had, in his Democracy Day address, said the funding of the sections of the road project would be duly released to better the lot of the people and would be followed by a forensic audit. That directive only existed in frames as the condition of the road remains without any appreciable change. In February 2021, President Buhari again established the Infrastructure Corporation of Nigeria, InfraCorp, with an initial seed capital of N1 trillion provided by the Central Bank of Nigeria, CBN, the Nigerian Sovereign Investment Authority, NSIA, and the Africa Finance Corporation, AFC.

InfraCorp was also expected to mobilise up to N14 trillion in additional debt capital. Through InfraCorp, Buhari catalysed and accelerated investment into Nigeria’s infrastructure sector by originating, structuring, executing, and managing end-to-end bankable projects in the country. According to reports, the administration invested over a billion dollars in three flagship projects: the Lagos-Ibadan Expressway (for completion in May 2023), the Second Niger Bridge (for completion in May 2023), and the Abuja-Kaduna-Zaria-Kano Expressway (two of the three sections for completion in May 2023), among others.

*Utomi, Programme Coordinator (Media and Public Policy), Social and Economic Justice Advocacy, SEJA, Lagos, wrote via: jeromeutomi@yahoo.com