Road Construction: Time to Fire on Again

To say that the Governor Chukwuma Soludo’s Administration has not started off well in the area of road construction will be to sound mischievous. From the get-go, Soludo had made it clear that he was not afraid to take on the daunting task of tackling the enormous challenge posed by bad roads across the state. At this moment many road contracts have been awarded with work going on.

However, there are areas where work has stopped after the roads were scrapped, perhaps owing to the onset of the Rainy Season. But the scrapping of those roads have caused much damage due to the rains, thus making the roads barely passable. Some of such roads can be found in the Okpuno and Unizik Temp Site Areas of Awka where the earth was scrapped preparatory for reconstruction but abandoned.

It is understood that the rainy season is a bad time for road construction, especially in this part of the world where appropriate technology seems not to have been found yet to do so. But then the rains don’t last forever and very soon the dry season will set in.

We are therefore calling on the state government to quickly compel the contractors to return to site and quickly finish the projects so that those returning for the Christmas festivities will have something to cheer about. It will also gladden the hearts of those living and doing business in those places, as well as reduce crime.

It is a known fact that criminals often target people at bad spots of the road to rob them when they slow down their vehicles but when the roads are good, people move about freely and it becomes difficult for anyone to stop them.

We want to commend the governor for appreciating the urgent need to fix the road infrastructure which is almost collapsing. Roads are one of the most important things any government should tackle as it is what everybody uses. Good roads boost businesses and help in combating flooding. And we are therefore happy that the governor has found it proper to handle it.

The near neglect of roads by the previous regime brought about the present state of collapse of our road infrastructure, making it even necessary for government to declare a state of emergency on roads.

As the state government has seen reason to tackle this aspect of development, we also plead that attention is paid to quality, so that resources are not wasted soon after in reconstructing the roads or patching them up. Indeed, what is worth doing at all, is worth doing well.

Let the action on roads resume in earnest.