October 11, 2014

Help! The Igbos need a Brother.

Just finished reading a piece about the appalling condition of the Enugu-Onitsha express way and I am confusingly wound up. Not at the government but at the Igbo people.
I can remember driving down that road Christmas of 2012 with my dad and it was so terrible that on the return trip we had to use the narrow, ox-bow-lake-like old express road. This is arguably the most important road in the South East as it links two commercial power houses together and the volume of trade that happens as a result of this road can be said to be the highest in the region. It is a federal road and it makes the Lagos-Ibadan road look like an F1 speed track in comparison.

If you ask the typical Igbo man about GEJ, he would spew the disgraceful ethnic-religious rhetoric of "Jonathan is my brother" as an answer. Seriously it baffles me how such an eyesore which is constantly before the Igbo people is left unattended to and they still get up in arms all in support of GEJ. It can be said that Obasanjo started the Onitsha-Owerri express way and Yaradua completed it. But what has GEJ done for the South-East region except from promising an invisible 2nd bridge that is of little or no significance because the iconic current bridge serves its purpose adequately. I am not trying to slight PDP or gain rep for APC, I'm just stating the facts as they are.

This begs the question of if the Igbos really have a "brother". I certainly do not think so. The Chairman, Senate Committee on works, Sen. Ayogu Eze is from Enugu state and not one word has come from him about repairing the road. His counterpart in the lower house (Chairman, House Committee on Works), Hon. Ogbuefi Ozomgbachi, coincidentally is also from Enugu State and no work is being done on the road. The Finance Minister, while approving trillions of Naira for other projects has not deemed it fit to push for a fraction to make the road that leads to a close ally of her father's Kingdom. Stella Oduah (former aviation minster) is from Anambra and couldn't push for the major road that leads the whole of Anambra state to Enugu International Airport to be made. At the risk of sounding like a superficially tribalistic person, if these people are (were) all in power and the road is still in an abysmal condition, then seriously, who can be said to be a "brother" to the Igbo people?

BUT SERIOUSLY... The Igbos are pretty stuck.