By Chinedu Agu
You may have heard about the Jacob Zuma road in Owerri. A double lane road intersected by vigilantly manicured lawn and flanked by very beautiful houses. Its a highbrow area tenanted by the Rich and Mighty.
You may also have heard about Ellen Sirleaf Road hurriedly completed and commissioned on 10/11/2017. It is a convenient Bypass for Amakohia-bound Traffic arriving from Onitsha. They need not drive through Assumpta Round about and Warehouse Roundabout Imo has plenty of them before negotiating to Amakohia. What a Sirleaf Relief!
You may have heard about the massive road dualization, sorry ‘quadrupularization’ ongoing in Owerri. Bank road, Amakohia/Akwakuma Road, New Road, Ikenegbu road, Mbari Road, Okigwe Road etc.
It is not exactly the way you have heard it. Unfortunately, these roads suffer from ombrophobia; phobia for rain; they fear rainfall; they don’t withstand rainfall; they don’t agree with rain. Like salt, they melt at the sight of rain.
Amakohia road (particularly from Warehouse roundabout to New road junction) was ‘quadrupularised’ sometime in June, 2017. Barely 4months thereafter, it is now strewn with potholes at the sight of rainfall.
Ikenegbu road, Mbari road New road, Okigwe road etc, suffer similar fate. If there will be a second missionary journey of Zuma and Sirleaf in Owerri by March of 2018, they will scarcely recognize ‘their’ roads.
These ombrophobic roads are embarrassingly large, they are unmarked, they are not pedestrianized. If you must cross them, you must do so with Usain Bolt-eque speed or risk being knocked down by a wayward Traffic.
Motorists and Pedestrians move in staccato like retreating Bees with neither knowing his boundary. These roads have multiple points of elevation where you hear a shocking sound that ushers you to either the quadrupled lane or the old lane with very dangerous potholes menacingly littered thereon. Make no mistake, they are not the only roads in the municipal that are affected few of the asphalted rural roads also share same malignant familiarity.
The very roads that take my Statue-loving governor and I home are like that too. Orlu/Ideato roads have been re-coated and re-asphalted almost every dry season. Rain has washed away one lane of the road from Total Junction Orlu to Orie Akokwa Roundabout, a road solidly constructed by Achike Udenwa that even outlived Ikedi Ohakim’s administration. Then this present administration came with a promise of ‘quadrupulization’ which has made it the deathtrap it is currently.
From Total Junction in Orlu through Mgbee, Umuchima, Obiohia/Ogboko, Ntueke/Urualla, Osina and Akokwa, motorists are restricted to one narrow lane causing several accidents on that road. Take a visit to Abakaliki, Enugu and Awka and you will weep for Imolites.
Again and again, when the first rain comes, these roads are washed away and are turned into famished Beasts which must be constantly fed with the blood of Imolites.
As I drove down the sprawling and undulating road of Njaba from Orlu on Friday evening (24/11/2017) a Motorcyclist was waving feverishly at me and shouting ‘no road, no road.’
I stopped and pulled over to ask why there was no road. One of the Roadside Cashew Nut Hawkers told me there was an accident ahead involving a Tanker. I peered down the road and saw very dark and thick smoke renting the air. My curiosity got better of me and i drove down further. The charred lifeless bodies of the victims, the burning Tanker and the smell of roasted flesh formed the goriest spectacles of my life.
In a long litany of ghastly accidents on that road due to its dilapidated state, this 24/11 accident stands out in its goriness and gruesomeness. Perhaps, just perhaps, this accident would have been avoidable but for bad road.
This is a road expanded since the first 2years of this administration with a hope to quadrupularize it.
The very spot of this accident has been a very very dangerous spot because of bad road. Perhaps, just perhaps these lives wouldn’t have been wasted in that avoidable manner. The life of a pregnant woman, her two other kids and the entire passengers of that Bus wouldn’t have been snuffed out but for our pluviophobic roads. Imolites mourn deeply with these families. It is our fervent prayer that Christ will take over the leadership of this State and rescue us (as prophesied by Ezekiel) from a leadership that pours honey into our ears and sends Bees after us.
