Tag: Warri

Nigeria’s famous oil city, Warri, is fast losing its attractions. The state of infrastructure is nothing cheering, BOLAJI OGUNDELE, reports.

IT is most times almost equated with the other well known communities of the West African sub region, but some rather awkward ‘issues’ about it always manage to take the shine off it and take it back to some rather oblivious background. Warri was yes, was – that town of blossoming commerce, unusual industry and of course, roughened style, where one thing or the other used to take prospectors from far and near in the days of yore. However, not much of this description can be said to still be fitting for the now sliding culture; sliding back into an all time imaginable rot.
From the moral or human factor to the physical look of the town, everything, as it stands now, seem to be on a steady decline
The roads are in a sorry state- decrepit, pot holes riddled and in complete shambles. Although people say that Warri; not including the surrounding communities and towns that make up the larger metropolis, is rather small. Its smallness has not really helped it develop physically. From part to part and area to area, residents of Warri, right before the current administration, have had to groan and curse over the state of the roads around their neighbourhoods.

The road to hell and tales of woes
While one can say that the people have been used to riding on bad roads for a long time, especially right from the time of the immediate past administration, a more recent reality is the fact that many more residents have become really wary of having to go distances that will require them driving or boarding commercial vehicles because they do not want to go through the traumatic road experience that commuting in the metropolis has become. According to some of the people who spoke to The Nation on Sunday about their experiences in different parts of the metropolis, it has become scarier plying the roads in the last one and a half years.
Many of the residents complain that the terrible state of the roads have led to shorter lifespan for vehicles, more hectic time and painful joints for passengers, more man hour wasted in traffic snarls for business people and more stories of street robberies for those caught at bad spots by bad boys. On some occasions, passengers of commercial vehicles, especially the tricycle, popularly called Keke NAPEP, go home with injuries sustained from incidents of their vehicle running into flood-leveled gullies in the middle of the road.
A Warri resident, living in the Ugborikoko area, Collins Oghenero, while narrating some of the unpleasant experiences he has encountered in different parts of the metropolis, driving his Toyota Camry, said he had to decide at some point to drop the idea of driving to everywhere he has to go.
He said ”I realised that might car might not last very long if I’ll have to take it to all the places I have to go to. For my kind of profession, I have to do a lot of movement daily, but with the kind of roads in most parts of Warri, Uvwie and Udu, one may just go out with the car one day and not be able to bring it back because it would have packed up. To drive out of my street everyday is tough enough because the road is not tarred and is full of deep bad spots. Then when I manage to drive out of the area, I still have to waddle through a lot of terrible roads in most parts of the places I have to go.
”What I have decided is to restrict my driving to only the most important places; like taking my family to church on Sundays, attending some appointments where one has to keep up the appearance, as a matter of fact, I now have to contract a keke man to be doing my children’s school runs for me; he will take them to school and go back to pick them in the afternoon, accompanied by my wife’s niece who stays with us. I know that is an inconvenience for my children, but I see it as a sacrifice that all of us have to make,” Oghenero said.
Also relaying his experience on the roads, a commercial tricycle operator, John Eze, said his tricycle is fast dilapidating as a result of the pressure that the roads have put on it. He lamented how impossible the roads in the metropolis have become, especially with the coming of the raining season and the seeming helplessness that road users have to live with daily.
”My keke is falling apart already, so bad that even if all the roads in Warri become like those of Abuja today, I am afraid I won’t be able to enjoy it for long before it finally breaks down beyond repairs or I will be forced to leave the road by VIO. The roads, besides the damage the economy is doing to the ordinary man in Warri, are reducing the people’s capacity gradually. Until about a week ago when the state government started patching some bad spots, especially those ones that have been gathering heavy traffic jam, I don’t think there was any part of Warri where you could drive one straight kilometer without running into one very bad spot or the other. As if the suffering is not enough, some over-zealous policemen, especially those ones from Enerhen and Ugborikoko, will come to the road to be forcing everybody to be driving into the ditches on the very bad parts of the Warri/Sapele Road.
”The other day, I ran into one very big traffic jam at Odibo Estate/Urhobo College area of the Warri/Sapele Road, a standstill for several hours, most keke and cars had to turn back to the direction they were coming from because it was like there was no way in the front. That was just last week before they came to fix one side of the road. I also went to Sedico area, off Udu Road the other day and I ran into a serious trouble. Just as you enter the road, not too far from Odibo Roundabout, there is this very bad, deep gully that has taken over the road, everybody was parking their vehicles and keke were not going beyond that point. But I carried a drop that was going somewhere towards the end of the road. If I knew it was that bad, I would have just dropped the passenger at the point of the bad spot, but I decided to brave it, went into the water and that was the end of that journey; my keke went off and it took me up to about four days before I could put back on the road,” Eze narrated.
A brief look round the metropolis gives an idea of the agony and suffering the roads daily inflict on those who have to traverse them. Some have even reasoned that the situation may not get better soon because the larger part of the problem, which is the smaller street roads and lay-offs, may not easily gain attention of the government, compared to those that are considered to be major roads. These majors ones have not fared better than the lesser ones, they are mostly in deplorable states and seriously in need of repairs. Although a few remedial works have been carried out on a few spots, such as around the Urhobo College axis of the Warri Sapele Road, the works are still like a drop into an ocean; hardly making any difference other than creating a fleeting ripple.
From the very deplorable point of the Effurun Market to parts of PTI Road, to the annoying traffic jam-prone spot at Enerhen Junction, the story is the same. Other parts of the metropolis like McDermott Road, Estate Roundabout, Esisi Road, Soko Estate Road, Emebiren Road, Ugborikoko, Ubeji, Boloko, Cinema Side and Ogboroke areas and so on. The story of the people living in the Marine Quarters area seems to be most pathetic, considering the fact that they seem to have been cut off from the rest part of the Warri town. All the access into the community; First and Third Marine Gate Roads have broken down so badly that commercial tricycles no longer ply the area because of the terrible state of the internal layout roads, so for residents to access the rest part of the town, they have to trek long distances to either Deco Road, Warri/Sapele Road or Enerhen Junction.

Insensitive leadership
Opinions are diverse on the plight of the people. While some blame government for abusing the trust of the people by wasting their commonwealth on ventures that really have no impact on their lives as a collective, others think the situation cannot be blamed entirely on the state government as the business of providing social-infrastructural amenities like roads have gone outside the sole purview of governments in other parts of the world.
National Coordinator of the Niger Delta Peace Coalition (NDPC), Zik Gbemre, who spoke lengthily on the failure of government, resulting from this poor sense of judgement and putting the need to satisfy acolytes and party faithful before the general good of the people, said the current economic recession is not enough reason for the persisting terrible state of roads in Warri metropolis and its environs. According to Gbemre, the roads in the town, as well as most parts of Delta State, would have fared better had the government not been feeding the lust of its leadership and those very close to it with the state’s resources, at the expense of the masses.
”We are getting it wrong, it is the responsibility of government to provide infrastructure, it is not my responsibility. Why are people elected into office? I didn’t ask (Gov Ifeanyi) Okowa to seek for election and he is elected, then he owes it as obligation to perform. It pains me that both the Delta State government and the local governments are doing nothing. You employ people, doing nothing. They resume, sit down till 5pm and close to go home and at the end of the month you pay them salaries for doing nothing. We are not even asking them to do new roads, we just ask that they maintain the old ones; they should patch them and make them motorable.
”However, they have been buying jeeps and creating new offices everyday and yet you say you have no money. Just check out the governor’s entourage, you will see so many empty cars. There are so many special advisers; Special Adviser on Advocacy and other nonsense just creating offices. Now you tell me what the difference between the Chief of Staff and the Secretary to the Delta State Government is? They are the same. They create unimportant offices, wasting money on some people. This money could have been used to either create or maintain existing infrastructure. If they had no money, how did they get money to buy all those jeeps? How did they get money to pay all these several Special Advisers? Miscreants are now special advisers to the governor. The difference between Nigeria and the developed nation is the basic infrastructure. White people do not have money, but they don’t create offices for miscreants. All the roads in Warri are bad and they are getting worse every day, but they don’t care,” Gbemre said.
However, the Commissioner for Works, James Augoye, could not be reached; he did not answer calls put across to him neither did he reply a text message sent to his phone. But a social activist, Oghenejabor Ikimi, said everything cannot be blamed on government. According to him, the trend across the world now is not for governments to solely be responsible for public roads, citing the United Arab Emirates (UAE), as his example.
Ikimi, who is the Executive Director at the Centre for the Vulnerable and the Underprivileged (CENTREP), said ”the worsening state of roads is not peculiar to Warri or Delta State alone. It’s a national challenge, begging to be tackled. I think government alone can’t tackle the problem with her present lean resources. We can overcome the above challenge through public/private partnerships. It is now old fashioned worldwide for government to budget billions for road construction and other public infrastructure for her citizens. For example countries like the United Arab Emirate went into partnership with foreign companies, such as Smart City, to build mega cities in hitherto deserts of Dubai, Shanja and Abu Dhabi, with the help of public/private partnership funds. MoUs were entered into and signed with government committing a particular amount while foreign partners provided the remainder with a proviso on how to recoup their funds over a period of time. The above would no doubt eliminate incidents of corruption, looting, mismanagement and substandard projects associated with road construction and other public infrastructure.”
It has taken a long time for Warri, the famed oil city to fall from grace, the decay and rottenness is so overwhelming that many residents are worried that the city may have lost its glamour, warmth and rhythm forever. Who will restore it to its lost glory? The city is in search of the person with the golden torch.