East-West road has collapsed, Bayelsa gov tells Tinubu

Bayelsa State Governor, Senator Douye Diri, has decried the deplorable state of the East-West Road, saying while the federal government is concentrating on building the Coastal Highway from Lagos to Calabar, it should immediately intervene on East-West Road.

Diri further called on the Federal Government to ensure that the coastal highway section from Calabar down to the South-South states should be given the same attention as the Lagos to Calabar axis.

The governor stated this while speaking at the 2024 Niger Delta Stakeholders Summit held in Port Harcourt, Rivers State capital with the theme ‘Renewed Hope for Sustainable of the Niger Delta’.

He said, “Let me also use the opportunity to appreciate the president of the Federal Republic of Nigeria for prioritising the Niger Delta by appointing a board on time and a management team on time. We have also witnessed recently the construction of the coastal road that is going to run from Lagos to Calabar and we want to appreciate and thank the president for that.

“However, I like to appeal that as the construction is commencing from Lagos, it also has a concurrent commencement from the Calabar axis of the road.

“Everything has been said by everybody here and for me, there is just one open thing that I will say, before today, the journey between Yenegoa and Port Harcourt is either one and a half hours or one hour.

“For those of us who even come with a convoy, in one hour, you are in Port Harcourt. But today, I traveled four hours between Yenagoa and Port Harcourt, our people are suffering. That road has collapsed. So while we appreciate Mr President for the coastal road, there is a need to immediately go into the East-West road.”

Also speaking at the programme, the Senate President, Godswill Akpabio, said, “The board of the NDDC is expected to work towards delivery of the Presidential Renewed Hope Agenda priorities. We are also aware that there have been a lot of complaints about the NDDC. And I want to use this opportunity to appeal and also direct that this time around, we need to change the narrative.

“Let me say on my part as a son of the Niger Delta. The East-West Road would have been completed under my tenure as the Minister of the Niger Delta during the last administration. But some stakeholders particularly of the Ogoni extraction led a delegation to meet with the then President, Muhammadu Buhari, to inform him that they do not want the Ministry of Niger Delta to complete the Road.

“That they wanted the road to be transferred to the Ministry of Works at that time headed by my brother, the former Governor of Lagos State, Fashola. I was very shocked. We had just secured about N75bn in our hands to conclude at least particularly from Eleme junction when that came. And the President said well if that was what you want, so be it. Therefore the road at that time was then transferred to the Ministry of Works that had no budget that year for it.”

In his welcome address, Chairman of the occasion and former President, Dr Goodluck Jonathan, said part of the reason the Niger Delta Development Commission was struggling to deliver on its mandate to the people of the region was due to the interference of politicians, who he said, were ‘over-stretching’ the interventionist agency.

He stated, “The first leadership of NDDC led by Onyema Ugochukwu as the chairman of the board and chief Timi Alaibe who was the Executive Director, Finance and Administration and he later became the Managing Director showed some clear leadership and it appears as if the Niger Delta was moving to some direction but after that leadership.

“I think NDDC got involved into too many, let me say we the politicians took over the NDDC and their progress was slowed down, their activities were slowed down and people started feeling that the impact of this agency was not well noticed.”