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The old Niger Bridge
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PO.com: You all recollect the Obasanjo ground-breaking ceremony of this same Niger Bridge which ended up ended up being a calculated deceit with so much fanfare. L
Let me take you all back memory lane.....three days after Obasanjo’s ground-breaking, the bags of cement, iron rod, rock like stones deposited at the site to mark the ceremony disappeared overnight and locals helped
themselves with the concrete stones and trips of white sand heaped at the site of the
ground-breaking.
Hmmn! I do hope that President Jonathan’s ground breaking is the real deal, if not APC would tear him apart with political criticism. It's big one for him, too much talk and no action from him would do the Nation no good, he should get his presidential feet up and about on this one .
A point
of correction: the Niger Bridge also serves Akwa Ibom, Rivers, Cross River,
Benue and Bayelsa states
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President Jonathan performing the ground breaking ceremony for new Niger Bridge
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NIGERIA: Sometimes a bridge is more than just a bridge
After years of delays and empty promises, Nigeria has finally begun work on a
new bridge across the vast River Niger, connecting states in the southeast to
major commercial hubs in the southwest.
Many of the Igbo ethnic group that dominates in the southeast have applauded
the project as a crucial step towards improving trade and travel between two of
Nigeria’s most populous regions.
But others have charged that the bridge was delayed as punishment to a people
still persecuted more than four decades after a civil war that followed the
southeast’s attempt to secede.
They charge that the project has been launched now merely to improve
President Goodluck Jonathan’s political fortunes as he heads towards an expected
re-election bid less than a year away.
- Keeping his ‘promise’ -
“This project is very dear to the people of the southeast,” Anambra state
spokesman Mike Udah said of the proposed 1500 metre (5,000 feet) bridge project
which broke ground last month.
The existing River Niger overpass, built in 1963, is decaying and cannot cope
with the massive flows of traffic between the southeast, which has a population
of roughly 50 million, and the major cities of the southwest, including Lagos,
sub-Saharan Africa’s largest city with some 20 million people.
Crossing the current bridge has become a hellish experience with
“excruciating traffic” disrupting business and commercial travel, Udah said.
The new structure being built by the German construction firm Julius Berger
at a projected cost of 17.8 billion naira ($108 million dollars, 78 million
euros) has the backing of many economists who say infrastructure spending needs
to become a top priority for Africa’s most populous country and top oil
producer.
Regardless of how people in the region feel about their government, Udah, an
opposition party member, urged southeast residents “to put politics aside and
support the president to ensure the success of this laudable project.”
At the groundbreaking ceremony, Jonathan described the new bridge as a piece
of “strategic national infrastructure” and said that by pushing the project
forward he had fulfilled “a sincere promise” from his 2011 campaign.
- Political ploy? -
Hardliners in the southeast said they were not persuaded that the president
was working in their interest.
“The project is a drop in the ocean,” said Madu Uchenna, spokesman for a
group pressuring for southeastern sovereignty. “It cannot make us forget the
injustice and marginalisation of our people by the Nigerian state.”
The southeast unilaterally declared independence in 1967 following waves of
killings of Igbos in the mainly Muslim north, reportedly by members of the Hausa
ethnic group.
Calling itself the Republic of Biafra, the southeast fought a brutal
1967-1970 civil war that killed more than a million people, many from
starvation.
Uchenna’s group, the Movement for the Actualisation of the Sovereign State of
Biafra (MASSOB), and others have long alleged that Igbos receive inferior
treatment from the federal government in areas ranging from prominent political
and military appointments to infrastructure projects.
Writing for the widely read Sahara Reporters news website, columnist Frank
Onia suggested the new bridge would have been built years ago if not for an
official, undeclared policy that calls for “holding down the southeast.”
“No other conclusion is possible from the continued neglect of the (River)
Niger bridge,” he wrote.
Ex-president Olusegun Obasanjo also held a groundbreaking ceremony in 2007,
but funds to actually build the project were never approved.
Unfinished public projects are a scourge across the country and are not
specific to the southeast, but the delays still raised resentment in the
region.
Fierce rhetoric from some Igbo hardliners aside, Jonathan’s Peoples
Democratic Party (PDP) has performed well in the southeast since civilian rule
was restored in 1999.
But the president is facing an unprecedented crisis within the PDP and will,
should he run again at the election in February 2015, be up against a new
opposition mega-coalition which groups his most prominent rivals.
His support in the southeast is also thought to be eroding, with two of five
states in the region now controlled by opposition governors.
“If Jonathan thinks giving us another bridge will make him get our votes, he
is joking,” said Uchenna.
.Joel Olatunde Agoi
AFP
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