Warri is the city of my boyhood, where I walked barefoot, and played in the sands. It was in the early 1970’s. School, play, dirt, joy, tragedy. I lost my kid sister Sarah.
But Warri is not the city I grew up in. The city of exuberance, of a lilting, syncopating pidgin English, of spontaneous eruption of youths on football fields. We lofted kites into a benevolent sky. We threw stones to pluck down rubber seeds before we stacked up the seeds to aim and scatter. Of lo- hanging ebelebo. We adored the wealthy of those days, especially their cars. 1960 car plates belonged to Edewor. And for Odibo it was 4444. We hailed whites, quite a few in Warri, then. Oyibo Pepper if you eatie pepper, you go yellow more more. It was a revelry in chants and dances as the Caucasians walked away as though oblivious of the giddy rapture about them.
It is a city with a great past, of proud people and fertility of business and mental agility. For business, we had oil, and companies like Chevron, Shell, AGIP had offices there, and their workers thrived and swaggered. In fact, it was urban legend that apartheid abounded in the markets. For wives of oil workers, sellers charged special prices. You anticipated their ornate appearances.
The port worked, and some people boasted as NPA workers. Its stadium was a place of footwork. The Warri Wolves had such star players as Martins, Owolo and Didiare. What tearjerker for me when the Benin Vipers – now Bendel Insurance – roared into Warri to humble my team. Josiah Dombraye’s ball juggling wizardry and devil’s footwork made mincemeat of us. Such a spirit with the ball. My father Moses had to console me. I saw the match, though, at Hussey College grounds.
But the city fell. It saw quite a few bad times. There was the violence between the Itsekiri and the Ijaws. A needless cousin war, a conflagration that lapped up the young and the sap of the city. It choked the entrepreneur’s elan and sent businesses out of town. Exit Chevron. Exit Shell. Exit profit. It brought a history to its knees. It was not a place we used to call Wafi, with its echoes of street life, parties, bonhomie, commerce. It stooped as any place bowed by blood and bombs.
Warri went down in gasps. Some of its youth became part of the army of militants. For a long time, rather than divert resources to save the city, the state governments wanted to save the state from the ravages of errant youth stalking the city, domiciled in creeks and bushes.
But in this republic, a lot of resources have gone to the state capital Asaba. Asaba was not “Warri’s mate”, in the language of the area. It was a sleepy town known as a gateway to the east. IBB made it capital as tribute to his late wife, the charismatic Maryam. Asaba’s gain, Warri’s gloom.
Warri now needs a warrior, a new kind of Warri, a warrior of rebirth. A Warri(or), that is. The new Sheriff in town has now wagered part of his legacy on bringing back Warri to its lost glory. He wants to be, in the words of Isaiah, the “repairer of the breach… restorer of paths to dwell in.” He has vowed to “build up the old waste places.”
With a new project amounting to N78 billion, Delta State Governor Sheriff Oborevwori is putting Warri on notice. With Julius Berger, it has a 27-month onslaught into the city’s infrastructure. This will cover Enerhen Junction Flyover, the Effurun Roundabout ¾ Cloverleaf as well as expansion and pedestrian bridges. It will also have DSC roundabout flyover which will, as the Commissioner of Works, Reuben Izeze explains, will work simultaneously after the groundbreaking ceremony next month. The PTI Junction will not be left out but may have to wait for the relocation of the 330KVA power transmission lines on its path. This will not compromise the 27-month deadline.
Izeze says funding is not an issue as the budgetary arrangement is in place. “The funding came and shall be coming from His Excellency’s determined and courageous decision to tighten our vaults, eradicate frivolous spending and channel our resources into meaningful development.” This will combine FAAC receipts, 13 percent derivation and internally generated revenue. Already, 25 percent of the contract sum has been mobilized.
This is perhaps Gov. Oborevwori’s fulfilment of a vow when flood ravaged a part of the city, and it went viral. He responded with a virile pledge: “We must revamp Warri.”
The news waves failed to capture this news item that ranks as one of the largest ever investment in infrastructure in a city of its size in one lump in this country. It is an effort of enthusiasm, and a scaling of Warri as priority.
The greater story is not to rival Asaba but to deploy infrastructure as a conveyor belt for commercial renaissance. Asaba remains administrative capital, Warri the commercial nerve centre, much like Lagos and Abuja, New York and Washington.
Infrastructure work is not just about fancy roads and flyovers, although its aesthetics boosters the soul. The Warri environment can, at times, be an eyesore. I expect that the new lease will embolden the people to move from filth to finesse. It is in itself an economic venture. It means purchases of materials to make blocks and irons to prop the bridges. That is in itself a revival of market. It brings a lot of employment, and ancillary jobs, in agriculture and medicine and services.
This is what Maynard Keynes described as demand pull. FDR revived American economy after the great Depression and even today, Joe Biden has rebooted America as the most thriving economy today after years of slow growth with his Infrastructure Plan Act.
Infrastructure work of this sort can also signal an event as we read in David Mcculough’s epic story of the building of the Brooklyn Bridge. It was not only about building the best suspension bridge but also about landmark events in the lives of people. It was a well of memories of those born, those who died, those who committed crime. It was noted that Mark Twain was writing Huckleberry Finn, then.
The suite of flyovers, bridges, road expansions and roundabouts should stir the city. It is how governors make things happen. It is, if carried out with due diligence, a triumph of the imagination. It will be a project of peace. All the work will illumine at night with streets lights. So, with work, crime will retreat. It is lack of self-pride that actuates criminal propensity.
The project will also dovetail into the east-west road project, just as the Fourth Mainland Bridge proposed for Lagos will link the Coastal Road imagined by Works minister David Umahi.
There are other things to do for Warri, including the ports and stadium and schools. But with a project like this, others will find a way. Warri will no longer be a city where only comedians and stage clowns survive. The city itself gave us comedy as if laughing at itself and its squalor. It is time for the city to laugh. It is part of the governor’s MORE agenda, and one can only say, MORE of that.
