For a government that has made infrastructure one of the defining pillars of President Bola Tinubu’s Renewed Hope Agenda, the condition of some of the most important highways in South-South geo-political zone presents an uncomfortable political and administrative question: has the Minister of Works, David Umahi, failed to deliver the road transformation expected of him in the region? Iyobosa Uwugiaren writes.
A baby cried through the night as exhausted passengers waited helplessly on a failed section of the Benin-Warri Highway. Pregnant women sat in vehicles that could not move. Families travelling from Benin City to Asaba—for what should have been an ordinary journey—found themselves trapped for hours and, in some cases, days, as mud, potholes, broken pavement and stranded heavy-duty trucks turned the highway into a nightmare.
For passengers, there was no political theory in that moment. No argument about whether “Edo is shining” or not. No argument about contracts, budgets or procurement could explain why a journey between major cities in the South-South had become a test of endurance.
There was only the road—and the inability of the President Bola Tinubu-led government to make it passable.
