The federal government has being urged to act quickly to repair the state’s terrible roads.
The Commissioner for Information, Mr. Charles Aniagwu, stated that the terrible condition of federal highways throughout the nation justified calls for devolution of power in the polity while speaking at a news conference in Asaba.
The commissioner brought up a popular video about an unsuccessful section of the Uromi (Edo)-Agbor (Delta) road, which he said is a federal route.
He claimed that despite the state government’s massive expenditures on repairs for federal roads, some of them had deteriorated without receiving any attention from the federal government.
He emphasized that transferring authority to component units would provide them more funding to take on the work of developing the state’s infrastructure, especially the highways that appeared to have overwhelmed the federal government.
Since 2015, we have continued to intervene on state-owned federal roadways, and some of you have been required to go with us as we inspect these routes.
“You also know that we have intervened three times on the federally funded Eku-Agbor-Uromi road.
It was exceedingly challenging for us to carry out the necessary work because the Federal Government claimed the road had been given to a contractor not long ago, he said.
He clarified that the state administration had interfered twice on the highway that gained widespread attention on social media.
“Until the Federal Government informed us that the work of building the road had already been allocated to a contractor, we were intervening on that road and other federal roads in the state.
We begged the federal government to take another look at that road because it is in such horrible state. “The road has gotten quite awful to the point where commuters are having a lot of problems on it.
You may remember that when we interfered on that road to renovate the Agbor Technical College, we never requested a reimbursement.
People have been requesting the devolution of powers to the component units since the Federal Government has taken on more than it can handle in a lot of these projects, which has become a challenge.
This is crucial because when authority is decentralized and the constituent parts are given the freedom to address these problems, the revenue-sharing formula will be changed, giving the states additional resources to address some of the problems that impact our citizens.
“As a government, we are really saddened by the dreadful state in which these federal roads are in, and by the hellish conditions that commuters from all over the nation are actually experiencing to go through these routes.” Aniagwu stated.
“We spent several billions of naira on all the federal roads where we interfered, but we aren’t even going to approach the federal government for a reimbursement because our goal was to improve the status on those roads.
“We would have preferred if the Federal Government had given us permission to potentially intervene fully because that would have given us hope that we would be able to recover the funds, but even when we were aware that we wouldn’t recover the funds, we continued to attempt to intervene on these roads.
Because Nigerians are suffering on these roads, he continued, “we are requesting that the federal government mobilize the contractors to come and work on these roads.”
Aniagwu advised the populace to maintain their composure about the recent demonstration against the EFCC by suspected “Yahoo guys” in the state, noting that the government had commissioned an investigation into the matter.
He gave the assurance that while the government would continue to defend the rights of law-abiding citizens, it would not defend those who were found to have broken the law.
