FG and Umahi’s roads to hell, by Dele Sobowale

By Dele Sobowale Vanguard recently published pathetic pictures of the Benin-Sapele-Warri Expressway; and Punch revealed to us what happens to the Lagos-Calabar Expressway, not even 15 per cent completed, each time there is a heavy downpour in the Lekki peninsula. The road becomes so flooded, it becomes barely usable. If Tinubu-Umahi’s legacy road already shows evidence of long-term stress, pity the Nigerians who will ply that road ten years from now.

The Minister was in Lagos State recently, half-begging, half attempting to blackmail Governor Sanwo-Olu to cough up funds to repair the mistakes made by Engineer Umahi and the contractors who hastily embarked on the road without Environmental Impact Assessment. He is building in Lagos and coastal states the sort of rickety roads he left in Ebonyi State. He has the right President for that sort of shoddy business.

Right now, parts of the road have been vandalized – even before completion. Fellow Nigerians are not paying attention as they should. Vanguard, Punch and Daily Trust have been doing Nigerians a favour by pointing to one of the greatest failures of the Tinubu administration – the maintenance of federal highways under Minister David Umahi – whose major achievement in three years had been attracting attention to himself through a scandal involving homicide.

On the whole, Nigerian roads, federal and state, have not been receiving the attention they deserve in the last eleven years; the neglect just got worse. Experience on Nigerian roads from 1974-2019 “Hit the road, Jack”. Advice from my Sales Manager, in Boston, USA, 1968.

My first full time job was in selling. It was as a salesman for a leading pharmaceutical company, Lederle Laboratories, in 1968, that Mr. Al, for Albert, Abby, came into my life.

As my Sales Manager, he monitored my activities and also as my mentor. He drilled into my head the idea that a salesman’s work consists of being on the road as much as possible; in order to meet customers. By the time I arrived in Nigeria, in 1974, to start work as the Marketing Manager of Abbott Laboratories, marketers of SIMILAC baby food, being on the road 70 per cent of the time had become routine.