By Amanze Akpuda, Vanguard
In his book, Cyprian Ekwensi, Ernest Emenyonu captures aspects of Ekwensi’s disposition to film in the 1950s. For instance, beyond revealing how Ekwensi “wrote and broadcast plays and stories for the BBC Overseas Service” , Emenyonu demonstrates how “once in 1954 his voice was ‘dubbed’ on to the sound track of the film Man of Africa, which was shown at the Venice Film Festival that year” .
Furthermore, Emenyonu also observes that before appearing as a University Professor in a film meant to celebrate Ghana’s political independence in 1957, Ekwensi had functioned in an important way in presenting a film commemorating Queen Elizabeth 11’s visit to Nigeria in 1956. According to Emenyonu, Ekwensi performed the role of one of the commentators when the film Nigeria Greets the Queen was produced.
That Ekwensi wrote a memorable film script called Bend a Little in the same 1950s is a good indication that he must have been a film addict having seen enough films to be able to develop interest in giving back to the cinema world what he derived from same.
The remarkable acknowledgement in West African Review of June 1955 of Ekwensi’s great contribution to the film industry as a script writer must be properly contextualized to affirm that it must be a man from a culture that cherishes films who would go the extra mile of involving himself in script writing, acting and part production.
The 1960s decade is also another era that shows that Ekwensi was like some of his peers, a highly sensitive moviegoer. It is in this period that Ekwensi reveals through interviews he granted Lewis Nkosi and Dennis Duerden that he was a remarkable film connoisseur. Both interviews show what the author of Jagua Nana has in common with the film world and part of what qualifies the need to have it filmed in the 1960s.
In an earlier study, I had cause to state that Cyprian Ekwensi’s knowledge of tendencies in film cultures was comparable to Wole Soyinka’s. My argument then as now is that as with Wole Soyinka who in a 1963 essay also talks knowledgeably about Japanese cinema, Cyprian Ekwensi also showed a high level of acquaintance in an interview with Dennis Duerden, comparing what he tries to do in his novel, Jagua Nana to details from the Japanese feature film, Rashomon, His is the disposition of a man who has been to the movie world and invariably sought to domesticate perspective drawn from such a world in some of his novels (“Ekwensi”).
No doubt, the November, 1964, interview Ekwensi had with Dennis Duerden is one which shows Ekwensi’s predisposition to cinema and at the same time theatre. While emphasizing to what extent it can be said that “the duty of any fiction writer is to seek truth” or that “truth can be seen in many facets”, Ekwensi makes the following provocative analogy:
I don’t know if you remember the Japanese film ‘Rashomon’, in which a woman tells a story that she was raped in the middle of a forest Now this is the simple story of ‘Rashomon’ and then we begin to see this incident through various eyes-the man himself, who is a soldier who is accused of this-the woman herself and so on. It is the duty of the novelist like a surgeon to keep dissecting until he gets to this cancer, to the truth, to where truth is embedded.
In other words, Ekwensi was the type of novelist who apart from being addicted to the film world would also wish to translate the multiple points of view with which film narratives are often constructed into the world of the novel. His familiarity with Japanese cinema would demonstrate his level of versatility and leisure preferences.
However, It is in the earlier August, 1962, interview with Lewis Nkosi that Cyprian Ekwensi also proves the axiom that like his mentor, Nnamdi Azikiwe, that his knowledge of happenings in national cinemas in Europe and the Americas must have been a follow-up of a tradition of longstanding film viewership. While responding to Nkosi’s question about the filming of Jagua Nana, Cyprian Ekwensi volunteers as follows:
the work is to be filmed in the dry season, that is end of October, beginning of November. And the company is called Delphia. It’s a new company, but all the members are old and famous filmmakers. The producer is going to be Alberto Latuada who’s well known internationally. And Italy, as you know is an up-and-coming center for filmmaking, almost stealing the Oscar from Hollywood.
Granted the projection that Cyprian Ekwensi gives to Alberto Latuada as a leading Italian filmmaker, one can be convinced that he was a very knowledgeable film addict. In other words, Ekwensi’s emphasis that although the company filming his Jagua Nana may be new, “the members are old and famous filmmakers” is not a casual remark.
That Ekwensi would show such familiarity with Italian Cinema, especially in terms of its overall rating through its major producers and maybe actors and actresses, is quite revealing.
This is moreso when his assessment was meant to have taken care of Latuada’s reputation, as a filmmaker at the end of the 1950s. Comparatively, it can be argued that Latuada by the end of the 1950s had not really made the type of names film makers such as Federico Fellini, Michelangelo Antonioni and Robert Rosellini from his country or Satyajit Ray, Martin Scorcese or Cecil De Mille, the maker of Ten Commandments (1923) among others had. Nonetheless, the type of identification Ekwensi gives Latuada is a good confirmation of the fact that he was familiar with Alberto Latuada’s films and the reception they had got, hence Ekwensi’s admission that Latuada is ‘’well-known internationally”.
After all, in the period immediately after the Second World War, Alberto Latuada (also Lattuada) had become justifiably famous for such films as II Bandito (“The Bandit) in 1946 and II Mulino del Po (The Mill on the Po River) in 1948. By 1950, Alberto Lattuada had in association with his famous countryman and colleague, Federico Fellini, produced Luci del varieta (Variety Lights) (see Thompson and Bordwell 416).
At the same time, one finds in the submission that “and Italy, as you know, is an up-and-coming center for filmmaking, almost stealing the Oscar from Hollywood” evidence to confirm Ekwensi’s deep familiarity with Italian cinema.
For anyone to be following the trend in the famous Oscar Awards, which may well be the equivalent of the Nobel Prize for cinema as to make such a definitive statement way back in the early 1960s such a fellow must have been, literally speaking, a reader of films and especially national cinemas.
No doubt, long before 1954 when, according to Emenyonu, Ekwensi’s voice graced the sound track of Man of Africa shown at the 1954 Venice Film Festival, Ekwensi had displayed a strong attachment to movies and their rating at International cinema events. For instance, it is instructive to note that the Japanese film, Akira Kurosawa’s Rashomon, that he mentions in his November, 1964 interview with Dennis Duerden won the Best Foreign Film award at the Oscar Awards of 1951. In other words, Ekwensi was very early in the day, very conversant with developments at major film festivals and Award ceremonies.
Cyprian Ekwensi’s familiarity with Italian cinema and the waves it was making in the international circuit in the period before his August, 1962 interview with Lewis Nkosi can be best gauged by his knowledge of Albert Lattuada and by implication Lattuada’s collaborator, Federico Fellini.
Although Ekwensi does not emphasize the fact that Federico Fellini and Alberto Lattuada owned Capitolium Film, the outfit that produced Luci el Varieta (or Variety Lights) in 1950, there is no doubt that Ekwensi’s claim that the team to be led by Lattuada had “old and famous filmmakers” or that “the producer is going to be Alberto Latuada who’s well known internationally” must have derived from his first hand knowledge of Lattuada’s profile in the late 1940s and probably through the 1950s. In this regard, notwithstanding Fellini’s claim that “I regard the film [Variety lights] as one of mine”, he concedes that given that “it’s very hard for me to remember things … Lattuada and I formed a company with our wives, and everything was a cooperative venture, I can’t remember exactly what I directed or what he directed” .
However, while accepting responsibility for the imperfections associated with The White Sheik which Charles Thomas Samuels regards as Fellini’s “greatest” film, Fellini reasons that it was because “that was the first scene I directed myself”. Fellini confesses that “earlier Lattuada has given me technical advice”. Of course, that is as it should be. After all, long before 1950, Fellini had collaborated with Lattuada on two films.
The years include 1947, when, according to Bert Cardullo, Fellini “collaborates with director Alberto Latuada on the screenplay for If delilto di Giovanni £p/scapo”and in 1948, when Fellini “works with Latuada on the scripts of Senza pieta and // Mulino del po”. In his introduction to Federico Fellini: Interviews, Bert Cardulllo is more assertive in acknowledging Fellini’s “several assignments in the late 1940s as a co-screenwriter or assistant director for Pietro Gerrni and Alberto Lattuada” .
Granted the foregoing, one can then appreciate the background to Ekwensi’s observation that Italy was in contention with Hollywood for the Oscar Awards. Ekwensi no doubt must have been responding to the fact that the Oscar Awards for Best Foreign Film had gone to Italy twice in the 1950s and twice in the early 1960s. And somehow, Lattuada’s partner, Federico Fellini had a fair share of those Oscars. Outside the general information gleaned from Chambers Film and TV Handbook, Bert Cardullo provides more detailed information about Federico Fellini’s rating as a leading Italian filmmaker. For instance, in 1954 the same year that Ekwensi’s voice made the soundtrack of Man of Africa premiered at the Venice Film Festival, Fellini received the Silver Lion Award at the same festival.
In 1956, Fellini’s La Strada received the Oscar for the Best Foreign Film. That same year, La Strada won a New York Film Critics’ Award for Best Foreign Film. 1957 saw Fellini’s Le notti di Cabiria (The Nights of Cabiria) win an Oscar as Best Foreign Film. According to Bert Cardullo, in 1957 at the Cannes Film Festival, “Giulietta Masina is voted Best Actress … for her work in this film”.
The early 1960s is another remarkable period for Italian cinema as almost personified in the work of Federico Fellini. In this regard, Bert Cardullo reveals that apart from receiving “the Best Film Award at Cannes” in 1960, Fellini’s La doice vita also made film history in 1961 when it garnered awards for the Director. According to Cardullo, in 1961, “La Dolce Vita receives a New York Film Critics’ Award and a National Board of Review citation as Best Foreign Film. Nominated for an Academy Award for Best Director for his work on this picture”. 1963 would be another significant year for Fellini and Italian cinema as a whole. It is the year Feilini’s 81/2 also called Otto e Mezzo got released and, according to Bert Carduilo, “receives an Academy Award, a New York Film Critics’ Award, and a National Board of Review Citation as Best Foreign Film” . At the same time, 8 1/2 got Fellini a nomination “for an Academy Award as Best Director for his work on this picture”.
As the foregoing demonstrate, one can with hindsight describe Ekwensi as a highly perceptive film addict and commentator. Outside intellectuals like Wole Soyinka and Chinua Achebe this type of film knowledge is almost unrivalled in the Nigerian society of the time Ekwensi got interviewed in 1962,
The 1973 interview Cyprian Ekwensi granted Bernth Lindfors is yet another source that throws more light on Ekwensi’s multiple experience in the film industry as a fan, writer, actor, producer, editor and critic. No doubt, as with what we have said about Azikiwe, from the various responses Ekwensi gives in this interview it would be intellectually fraudulent to dismiss the Igbo man as a newcomer tc the world of Cinema spectatorship.
As a film fan, Ekwensi makes quite significant statements about his familiarity with Hollywood and Bollywood film traditions. It is in the Lindfors interview that Ekwensi robustly admits that the influence of films in his stories is derived from the fact that “I’m a great Cinema fan” (Lindfors Interviews 122). Moreover, he reveals that he is acquainted with the star system in the Hollywood of that era. Such explains why Ekwensi enthusiastically admits that “I used to know all the actors by name – people like Robert Taylor, Randolph Scott, Gary Cooper and Bill Boys” . Furthermore, he demonstrates some knowledge of the plot and general ideology of the Hollywood film. As he confesses “all those stones about Wyoming and the ranches and the trails and so on. I loved that kind of thing, just for the joy of it”. Concerning the improbability of the film ideology promoted by Hollywood, Ekwensi observes that “it’s not meant to be anything serious. Nobody takes it seriously or really believes that one cowboy holding a revolver with a range of fifty yards can kill a whole tribe of Indians. It’s not true”.
The Gary Cooper that Ekwensi acknowledges as a major actor was prominent in Hollywood of the 1940s and 1950s. Beyond appearing in Meet John Doe (1941) and High Noon (1952) among several others, Gary Cooper is isolated by Richard Maltby as one of the “top stars” in 1944 recognized alongside Bing Crosby (566). In 1953, according to Maltby, Gary Cooper is identified as “the top box office star”. Two other film critics, Lee Strasberg and Richard Dyer demonstrate why one should see Ekwensi’s recognition of Gary Cooper as very significant. For instance, “Gary Cooper, John Wayne and Spencer Tracy”, according to Lee Strasberg, are remarkable for their perfection of the Stanislavskian idea of acting whereby “they try not to act but to be themselves, to respond or react.
They refuse to do or say anything they feel not to be consonant with their own characters”. Elsewhere, in 1987, Richard Dyer, the author of Heavenly Bodies: Film Stars and Society corroborates the same testimony. In Dyer’s reasoning whoever appreciates Gary Cooper or Doris Day, “precisely what you value about them is that they are always ‘themselves’ – no matter how different their roles, they bear witness to the continuousness of their own roles”.
It is Ekwensi the playwright who had “also written radio plays, including a radio adaptation of People of the City which was broadcast by the BBC” that we also encounter as a writer of film scripts. Here, it is instructive to note that way back in 1962 when he granted an interview to Afrique, Chinua Achebe had acknowledged that Ekwensi “does articles and film scripts” . Thus Ekwensi’s profile as a writer of film scripts was almost public knowledge by 1962. Of the filmscripts he may have written, Ekwensi in his interview with Bernth Lindfors seems to remember only one humorous one entitled “Stretch a Little, Bend a Little” and the one he did for Nigeria’s Independence. After explaining the characteristically allegorical feature of the “Stretch a Little … “ filmscript, Ekwensi informs Lindfors that “the film was produced by Victor Gover around the 1960s – a short film, about ten minutes. And it was done by puppets on strings, not real wives, not breathing human beings”.
Although Ekwensi admits to Bernth Lindfors that”! have also acted in films”, it is only one that he talks about. This is the Ghana independence film, “Work in Transit” which Ekwensi notes was “produced by an Englishman named Scan Graham”. In narrating his level of involvement, Ekwensi remarks that “I played the part of a University lecturer. One of the difficult scenes was where I had to do an Ewe dance”. Knowing that Ekwensi had acted in the 1960s in a film called Omowaie as reported by Chidi Ikonne, one can then appreciate that given the forum of an interview that was not necessarily focused on his exploits as a film person, Ekwensi may have had to be as sketchy as possible.
Cyprian Ekwensi features in John A. William’s Omowaie, The Chid Returns Home a 1960s film which, according to Chidi Ikonne, numbers among those that “have made definite attempts to break away from the stereotyped ‘African’ film with its implicit or explicit racial prejudice” . Regarding the focus of Omowaie which he observes as having been “produced in Nigeria in the early sixties”, Ikonne reveals that “the picture not only dramatizes what should be the attitude of the modern black man to his past, but also explored the past and present heritage of the black man”.
Probably in his capacity as the Director of Information at the Federal Ministry of Imformation, Lagos, Cyprian Ekwensi acts as a cultural ambassador and in his interaction with John A. Williams is presented as informing him about the urgency of the need for the black man to “retain the essences of his own blackness” .
In the same 1960s, 1965 to be precise, Cyprian Ekwensi featured in another film. This is a documentary entitled In Search of Myself. According to Femi Shaka, “the film featured renowned Nigerian artistic figures such as Chinua Achebe, Onuora Nzekwu, Cyprian Ekwensi, Demas Nwoko, Simon Okeke, and Duro Ladipo”.
The production of “a film on Nigeria’s independence” is another experience that presents Cyprian Ekwensi not only as a film script writer but also an editor and producer. Concerning his job as an editor of the film in question, Ekwensi reveals to Lindfors as follows:
the Nigerian Film Unit – this was before I became Director – spent a lot of time shooting throughout the country, and they had this mass of celluloid and scenes which they didn’t know what to do with. So I sat for hours and hours and hours in London (I was flown over to London specially for this), trying to make some sense out of it.
In addressing what became of the tamed “mass of celluloid and scenes”, Ekwensi admits that “eventually I was able to produce a script and to do the narration myself”. Thus, we have from Ekwensi’s testimony another evidence of his sense of versatility as a film hand.
Perhaps what remains to complete the picture on Ekwensi’s profile as a film buff is to highlight his status as a film critic (and censor). As with his model, Nnamdi Azikiwe, Ekwensi shows a sensitivity to the offerings from Hollywood. Beyond admitting that in the pre-independence era, “there were really serious films – Humphrey Bogart and so forth, mainly American films”, Cyprian Ekwensi also reflects on his rating of Indian films.
For instance, while he has a very low regard for Indian films, he still has reservations for the excesses of Hollywood. Concerning what he considers the low quality of Indian movies, Ekwensi notes that “at Independence the film distributors suddenly discovered that they didn’t need to wrack their brains going through lists of the best films in different countries – they didn’t need to make the effort. Provided they got an Indian film full of fantasy, this was enough to earn them their money, so why work, why worry?” . In appreciating what was made of Mario Puzo’s novel, The Godfather, Ekwensi notes that today we are being treated to The Godfather in Lagos.
I’ve seen The Godfather, I’ve read the novel, and I think it’s a corrupting film. We live now in an age of violence, and I didn’t think that there should be this dramatization of the techniques of violence. There are incidents in that film (and I know the censor must have cut a lot) which are suggestive of killing, which would make one try to kill. If I were the censor, I wouldn’t have passed that film.
From the foregoing, one can appreciate that the Cyprian Ekwensi who started his entertainment career on the stage in Jos in the late 1930s and who would later become a major film addict, actor, scriptwriter, producer, editor, director and so on is like Nnamdi Azikiwe’s case another concrete illustration of the fact that the Igbo man is not hostile to the world of cinema. If the British Broadcasting Corporation would refer to Ekwensi’s film heritage way back in 1947, long before Onitsha Market Literature proclaimed such a group sensibility to the literary world, it then means that Ekwensi must have displayed this taste quite early in his life. And having grown among his kith and kin, there is no doubt that as would be shown in texts of Onitsha market Literature, Ekwensi’s disposition to cinema is representative of a group consciousness. It is within this contest that Adiele Afigbo informed me that “in the 1950s the halls were always packed full in cinema houses in Onitsha, Aba and Enugu”.
Sunday, January 17, 2010
Wednesday, January 13, 2010
Prof Soyinka..Only a blighted Nation Neglects Its Brightest…
Prof. Wole Soyinka at a press briefing in Lagos on the Niger Delta crisis. Photo: Sylva Eleanya.By Emma Okocha, Vanguard
”A dying man needs to die, as a sleeping man needs to sleep , and there comes a time when it is wrong , as well as useless to resist.” – Stewart Alsop; Stay of Execution.
”Even in totalitarian states, the time comes when past errors are admitted. In Nigeria , we fail to establish a climate of inquiry.When power is placed in the service of vicious reaction a language must be called into being which does its best to appropriate such obscenity of power and fling its excesses back in its face.
The cold reality of power is, of course, that it has to be endured. Even when it is culpable and seen to be so, its effective reality is that it cannot be escaped for a duration, be this regulated by constitutional agreements, or subject to abrupt termination by a contending interest.
All that is left then to the populace over which it is made manifest, is an attitude towards it, outwardly expressed or internalized. It is this, which constitutes the accessible arena of public activity – acknowledged to be also of the mind as of public expression – media criticism, street demonstrations civil disobedience etc….Books and all forms of writing have always been objects of terror to those who seek to suppress truth.”
‘The level of contempt for civilian life has finally reached its nadir, more armor is seen patrolling the townships and the villages today than any during the civil war. I believe, however, that the will of our people cannot be broken.
The current phase of despondency is understandable; one does not see the the tentative foundations of one’s nation smashed repeatedly by juggernauts out of control without an acute sense of futility. Yet the alternative, to abandon one’s goal is such a negation of existence that one can only view it as worse than physical annihilation. Our people have just undergone a savaging , contemptuously inflicted upon them …..”
Nobel Laurette Wole Soyinka in his Preface, The Man Died, October 1983
”It is only a blighted nation that neglects its brightest….these people, I’m talking about are not produced in hundreds.”
1975 Coup Destroyed Nigeria, Chief P. C . Asiodu, to Willy Eya, the Sunday Sun, Jan.10, 2010
Norman Cantor and Richard Scneider in their classic, How To Study History, defines history as a study of what men have done and said and thought in the past.
Progressively, they went on to describe History as a biography, that is, a work of the creative imagination in which the author attempts to recreate the life and thoughts of particular men who actually lived at a certain time. While the political-institutional historians may not come with us on this , we may borrow a leaf from the school of intellectual historians.
To this school, History is regarded as the development of higher thoughts and feeling, that is, embracing the study of of philosophy, art, literature, science and mathematics.
Hence, in the waning days of 2008 autumn, at a Harvard International Conference, enter the Nigerian world renowned bard. Not given to much hyperbole, Chinua Achebe on his wheel chair, decided to don the hat of an intellectual historian, as he tried very hard to acknowledge the presence of the multidimensional, genius in our midst.
The revered author, recounted the misery that was Biafra. The starvation of children, the bombs that destroyed families and cities. He stated that eventhough the enclave took the very worse, the saddest day for Biafra and Biafrans was the day it was rumored that ”The Man had died in a Nigerian cell.”
Biafra flew their flag at half mast and for days amidst more destruction and casualties from the air, across the battle fields, the Biafran people mourned the ’supposed passage’ of the only true Nigerian they dearly loved and respected for his courage and friendship.
When the Niger Delta insurgents, refused to trust their destiny in the hands of the Nigerian diplomat at the UN, it was Professor Wole Soyinka they chose, to negotiate for them and represent their interests with the Federal government.
When the same Niger Delta militants struck the Atlas doves in Lagos and the OPC wanted some fight, it was Prof. Soyinka that intervened to save the day.
The OPC did not listen to any other but would rather defer to him. They have followed him and know he would not betray their cause.
At the last Achebe Colloquium in Rhode Island, after everybody had gone to bed, we discussed the Nigerian problem and in the presence of Chief Solomon Asemota, the leader of the Niger Delta.
Without much sleep the Professor was on his way to Boston the following morning for another conference this time on Darfur, Sudan. Apart from Sudan, was he not the international voice that stood against the tyranny and the savagery of Ugandan’sIdiAmin.
While his fellow renowned Literati mused their opposition in their kitchens, the Shango apostle, was all over the world openly, condemning the cannibal Head of State for his grave human rights violations against his people, and specifically exonerating a confused African perspective from the heinous crimes of the former Ugandan heavyweight champion, who had boasted of his love and readiness to marry the Queen of England. In search of heroes, some of the uninitiated African actors were already falling to the Amin ploy.
They were falling to the evil machinations of the IdiAmin propaganda of not only ”marrying the Queen” but of his plans to cage the imperialistic hold on Uganda.
Professor Soyinka was unrelenting and having suffered from IdiAmin’s kind, he was able to discern and define the beast for what he was.
Always staking his life, his safety, Professor Wole Soyinka has over the years, continued to dare the African oppressors, starting from the eerie day, an unknown masked man took over the radio station in Ibadan in 1965, to announce the correct election results!!
In his war classic of the Man Died he was the first Nigerian from inside the sordid incaceration of Kikiri maximum security prisons, to announce to the world the horrific death of the late Nigerian Secretary- General of the Post and Telegraph Workers Union.
According to courageous the Professor, ”GogoNzeribe was arrested for some undisclosed offence during Gowon’s regime,and imprisoned in Dodan
Barracks, where he died of starvation…!! He was arrested and brought out daily, for flogging.
One day he fought back, and this resulted in orders that he should be permanently locked up in a solitary cell and forgotten. ” He was the first and only voice that blew the whistle on the Asaba, Ishiagu and Igbodo genocide visited on the Western Ibos, when the Federal Army took over the Midwest, in September, 1967. When the butchers were sure that Ogbeosuwah was covered up by sand it was the same Shango prophet, who
characteristically from a detention hole, wrote about the Midwest atrocities. ”In Shaki before my transfer, I received eye witness accounts from a Federal soldier, a young school -leaver who saw his ideals shattered by the wanton execution of civilians.
He protested and feeling that his life was in danger, he fled to Lagos. He was arrested and incarcerated. The daily executions and torture were still in progress when he left.
He saw entire Mid West Ibo families wiped out in cold blood….” [ See, The Man Died, page 121-122] Therefore we are not surprised that after the deaths of GaniFawehmni, ChumaUbani, BekoRansomeKuti, TunjiOtagbeye the mantle of Civic Society leadership should now naturally fall on the shoulders of the prophet the masses already know his own sacrifices for their cause.
So who is that historian of whatever school, who would attempt writing the history of contemporary Nigeria, without first giving to his readers, some chapters, on the life and times of the most activist renaissance leader of our people.
Professor Emeritus, Wole Soyinka, Nobel Laurette, Poet, Playwrite, Dramatist, Novelist, Essayist, Activist, Human Rights Crusader, Nigeria’s most internationally recognized face, African Ambassador, Alphonse Fletcher Fellow, Honorary Doctorate of Letters, Yale and Visiting Professor, Harvard, please take over the ship and in your own fraternal orders, AHOY!!
Whatever is happening now in Abuja with him in command, speaks of his restless foolhardiness and his abiding patriotism.
Countrymen, a lot is amiss within the Nigerian federation. This is the time to ride the train or remain a sinner spectator. Such men like Professor Wole Soyinka are not produced in hundreds. Only the blighted nation neglects its bright minds.
Wednesday, January 6, 2010
Imo: Story of decay despite Ohakim's promises of a New Face
By Kodilinye Obiagwu, Guardian
NEAR a major roundabout leading to the Imo State Government House, Owerri, a billboard displays in very bold and unmistakeable features, the picture of the state governor, Ikedi Ohakim: A pair of cupped palms cradles the governor's smiling bust. Inscribed on the billboard are these words: "Imo is in the hands of God." Those words were taken from an address, "A Blueprint For The New Face Of Imo," delivered by Ohakim as governor-elect on May 16, 2007 to the 2007 Transition Committee of the new face of Imo. In that speech, Ohakim said, "I shall do a new thing in Imo State."
Two years after, the people of Imo State have experienced those "new things" in radio jingles, newspaper advertorials, glossy state-sponsored publications and colourful billboards. Very little are on the ground.
At inception, the State Government harped on sanitation of the state. Two years later, a billboard at the gate of Dan Anyiam Stadium proclaims that sense of cleanliness amid empty water sachets littering the gutters. This is despite the ban on sachet water (pure water). The story is told of how shortly after the ban, the producers of sachet water reached an agreement with the enforcers of the ban, the Environmental Transformation Commission (ENTRACO). Part of the deal was that the producers would manage the disposal of the sachets and for that, a packet of sachet water, N5 elsewhere, costs N10 in Owerri metropolis. As it is, the deal is not working.
Mr. Edwin Akubuiro an engineer and Director of Research and Publicity for the New Face Organisation, said that Ohakim's new face agenda goes beyond cleaning Imo. He claims that it is visible in the roads construction "as all the entry points into Owerri city are dualised."
However, of the five entry points to Owerri, only the Onitsha-Owerri Road, a federal road, is dualised.
The Owerri-Okigwe exit road, which presently terminates at Orji, has been under construction in the last two years. The story is that the contract was awarded to Zerok, a construction firm said to be owned by the former governor of Abia State, Orji Uzor Kalu, who is also chairman of the Board of Trustees (BoT) of the Peoples Progressive Alliance (PPA) on which ticket Ohakim was elected. And when Ohakim fell out with Kalu, he (governor) eased up on the road after the contractor had started work. The Orji Road (a nightmare for motorists), is the shortest route to the governor's village in Okohia, Isiala Mbano. But the story is that with work dragging and in virtual abeyance, the governor opts for a longer route through the Mbaise Road.
the dualised Owerri-Umuahia Road is one point of controversy. In reality, there is nothing like a dualised Owerri-Umuahia Road. The part of the dualised road ends at Egbu, only three kilometres from the Owerri city. And derisively, it is called the dualised Owerri-Egbu Road. President Musa Yar'Adua commissioned the road as Owerri-Umuahia Road in July 2009, when Ohakim decamped to the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP). A bill of N6 billion is tagged on the road.
the Owerri-Orlu road is demarcated by concrete boulders and the 'dualisation' terminates within Owerri city.
Owerri-Port Harcourt Road, another federal road, is not dualised.
Another new thing according to Akubuiro is "the establishment of the Royal Orks Refining and Petrochemical Company, which is sited in Egbema, Oguta council." This is still a plan, yet to take off.
The refinery located in Umuokanne in Ohaji Egbema close to the village of the Speaker of the State House of Assembly, Goodluck Opiah, is there only in name. Recently, some members of the community protested and wanted to reclaim their lands since government was not ready to commence work beyond laying the foundation. It is said that over N93 million has been committed to the project.
Another example of the new face of Imo "is seen in the Oguta Wonder Lake made up of a resort and conference centre designed as a tourist haven." This also is yet to take off. The project is linked to a N40 billion Imo State Development Bond from which the state has received N18.5 billion. It is said that the Oguta Wonder Lake has gulped the money. When the State House of Assembly approved the now controversial bond, the House ad hoc committee stated that the bond would be used to finance specific projects. The projects are: "Imo State equity investment in the Imo Wonder Lake resort and conference centre; Critical Road projects; various water schemes and all other capital projects as encapsulated in the 2008 project." Some stakeholders have dragged the governor and the House of Assembly to court over the loan.
Another "big" project going on in Imo is the dredging of the Nworie River. The dredging, has attracted a lot of controversy essentially because, few people see the economic necessity of the project. "Dredging is a wrong term for the work we see on the river or stream," said Ikenna Opara, an architect in Owerri.
In addition to the vague purpose of the project, the cost of the project is another subject of controversy. Akubuiro had said that Ohakim "used his sagacity and got the intervention of the Federal Government and N8.5 billion of Niger Delta Development Commission (NNDC) funds." He explains that, "Imo is not a counterpart funder," but got the NDDC support "since Imo is a littoral state." But a lot of confusion surrounds this. For example, in his first briefing on the project at the Assumpta Pastoral Centre, Owerri, the then Project Co-ordinator and the Commissioner for Petroleum and Environment, Dr. Aloysius Agunwa put the cost at N8 billion of the state government's fund.
The Commissioner for Information and Strategy Dr. Amanze Obi restated this to journalists in Owerri.
The former Special Adviser to the governor on project, monitoring, Ben Ekwueme, also an engineer, told reporters in Owerri that the cost was N9 billion.
With the conflicting positions of the government officials over the funding and cost of the project, sources in the project monitoring of the NDDC however said that, "the project is not on NDDC list. But the project could be listed in the 2010 budget." The sources clarified further that it is unlikely that the NDDC will commit more that N1 billion in the project and that the funding will be implemented in phases and not once and for all remittance.
A billboard at the dredging site, which displays a picture of President Umaru Yar'Adua and Ohakim hints at the idea behind the project, something to the effect that, "Ohakim wants to create a waterfront along the banks of the river," explained Opara. A taxi driver said: "The money being spent here could have been used to revive some of the dead industries like the Standard Shoe Industry so that unemployed graduates will have jobs. The governor cannot point to any project that has had an impact on the lives of the people."
Of serious concern is the state's debt profile. The revenue allocation to the state by the federation account allocation committee for the month of September alone shows that the contractual obligation, the Irrevocable Standing Payment Order (ISPO) for Imo amounted to N358, 424, 768.53k, a staggering debt, a substantial part of which was traced to the era of the late Dr. Sam Mbakwe. Those who spoke about it, sounded quite worried particularly when put beside the N40 billion Imo State Development Bond. A fallout of this is that at maturity, the loan will be deducted from the state's federal allocation at source and 27 councils show that on the average, the councils of the state are directly suffering from this. The details of revenue allocation to the 27 councils show that on average they realise about N75 million monthly. But they get between N20 million and N25 million monthly. The National Chairman of the African Liberation Party (ALP), Chief Emmanuel Osita Okereke, believes bankruptcy is staring Imo in the face.
Ohakim's agenda on rural roads seems pegged on what is called IRROMA (Imo Rural Roads Maintenance Agency). Despite the investment in this agency, not much is seen in rural roads. The Commissioner for Local Government and Chieftaincy Affairs, Kezie Ogaziechi had told an interviewer that the money deducted at source from the joint account with councils was used "to fund seminars, workshops and IRROMA." Actually, caterpillars, heavy-duty trucks and some equipment were purchased and distributed to the councils. But a council chairman who preferred anonymity said, "they came and carried away all the trucks. And we hear they used them to set up a very visible construction company in the state."
Although road construction and maintenance got N16, 066,422,000 in the 2008 budget, in Owerri, most layout roads are not tarred or constructed; and most of the major roads are in disrepair. The Assumpta Cathedral Roundabout popularly called 'Control' is chaotic as vehicles coming from or going to Port Harcourt (Rivers State) or Onitsha, (Anambra State) or to the New Owerri pass through it. The ring road network in Owerri, which is designed to divert traffic from the city centre, is not functional because the roads are bad. The access road into the park of the Imo Transport Corporation (ITC) in Owerri and the entire park is as if the place is recovering from the physical devastation of a war.
The kerbs or walkways in New Owerri, are overtaken by weeds and in various stages of abandonment; the gutters are filled with sand. Most parts of the median on the dualised carriageway into New Owerri are overgrown with bush. The joke is - "there is so much green and no clean in New Owerri." The Kim Kim tricycle and the Keke Keke New Face, which replaced the commercial motor bikes (okada) find it difficult to manoeuvre through the bad spots while the flood ravaged urban roads in Orlu urban beg for maintenance.
Early this year, the Federal Government released N12 million to Imo for control of erosion. When the money was released, members of the New Face Organisation in Ideato South in a newspaper advert praised the governor. Despite their praises, work is yet to commence on the Dikenafai Ideato South, erosion site, one of the worst erosion spots in the state.
Other points of concern are the epileptic solar powered streetlights in New Owerri and the abandoned residential houses for parliamentarians, which was built by the late Mbakwe. The buildings are overgrown with bushes.
The Ohakim administration touts the maintenance culture. But little of that is seen at the Imo State University Teaching Hospital (IMSUTH), which was commissioned by former president, Olusegun Obasanjo on May 23, 2007. Although the lawns are well kept and the flowers are green, but the road leading to the hospital is in a state of disrepair. Equipment like the Magnetic Resonance Imaging machine (MRI), CT scan etc procured by the former administration have been abandoned for sometime now.
However, the health sector boasts the accreditation of the Imo State University College of Medicine and the graduation of the first batch of medical doctors this year.
On his first visit to Imo on January 21, 2008, President Musa Yar'Adua commissioned the Okigwe water scheme. The scheme, built since 1980, had laid waste since 2006. The government claimed to have spent over N1 billion to rehabilitate the project, but the scheme is not so functional. Public water supply is poor despite the other water schemes the government said it has put in place.
President Yar'Adua laid the foundation stone of the New Imo Government House in the New Nekede Area. Weeds have taken over the place, no access road, and the only sign of work is the foundation of a multipurpose hall. On July 25, 2009 Yar'Adua commissioned the ultra modern complex of the Court of Appeal, the digitalised studios and transmitters of the over N2 billion Imo Broadcasting Corporation (IBC) in New Owerri and the new secretariat of the PDP. But the radio did not even transmit on the day of its commissioning. The Appeal Court complex is a refurbished building that used to house a trade union secretariat.
In Imo, there is lamentation in many quarters that the governor has mobilised for a relentless media campaign whose refrain, "a new thing is happening in Imo" is rated as fictitious.
An Imo resident, Noberth Ekendu stated: "It is time Ohakim and his men started documenting the number and length of roads they have either built or rehabilitated in each of the 27 councils, the number of schools and hospitals they have built or rehabilitated, the number of water works they have initiated, completed or rehabilitated, the number of social amenities they have built or rehabilitated, the actual contribution they have made to the security of the state, the structures and institutional facilities they have erected for the past two years, the number of employment they have generated and where and what they have contributed to the growth of agriculture, science and technology, sports; what they have done to the industrial development of Imo. These are the measures they would be judged with and not the number of pages of newspapers they buy to celebrate their fictitious achievements or the number of giant bill boards they erect to advertise themselves."
Sunday, December 20, 2009
Roads To Hell
BY CHRIS AJAERO, NEWSWATCH
Travelling by road in Nigeria is still a nightmare as the roads are in terrible condition despite the huge expenditure on their reconstruction and maintenance.
The condition of our roads, both the major arteries of this country and the roads in most of our major cities beggars imagination. And here I must ask the question do our government, ministers and leaders who travel often and see the condition in other countries ever feel embarrassed by the condition of roads in our resource-rich country? Do they notice the large potholes that litter the roads and even bridges?”
Those words, coming from Emeka Anyaoku, former secretary general of the Commonwealth, vividly captures the dismal failure of the Nigerian state to maintain its roads. The diplomat, who gave the damning verdict on the state of the nation’s roads at a recent public lecture in Abuja, said the consequence of such has been the soaring rate of accidents which have turned them into “a huge slaughter slab where human lives are worth little or nothing.”
Indeed, Anyaoku has bluntly spoken the mind of almost every road user in Nigerians. He has lent his weighty voice of courage and candour to the cries of most Nigerians who have had harrowing experiences while travelling on some of the roads that are in critical conditions across the country. Recent investigations by Newswatch revealed that, although the federal government has spent more than one trillion Naira on contracts for the rehabilitation of these roads in the past ten years, about 30 of the major federal roads are in deplorable conditions.
Some of the federal roads that have collapsed include the Lagos-Ore-Benin expressway, the Ibadan-New Ife-Ilesha-Akure expressway and the Lagos-Ibadan expressway in the South-West zone. In the South-East zone, the roads that have so many failed portions are the Onitsha-Enugu expressway, the Enugu-Abakaliki highway, the Enugu-Port Harcourt road, the Onitsha-Owerri highway and the Umuahia-Ikot Ekpene road. The roads in the South-South zone that have collapsed are the East-West road, the Calabar-Itu-Ogoja-Katsina Ala road, the Aba-Ikot Ekpene road, Aba-Ekparakwa-Etinan road and the Ini-Ekpe-Ikot Nkon-Arochukwu road.
There are also some roads in dilapidated conditions in the northern part of the country. They include the Okene-Lokoja-Abuja road, Okene-Ajaokuta-Anyigba road, Kaduna-Jos road and the Kano-Azare-Damaturu road.
One federal road that has remained a nightmare for motorists is the Lagos-Ore-Benin expressway. In spite of several reports in the media about the bad state of the road, which is the major link road between the western and eastern parts of Nigeria, its situation has not improved. At the inception of the administration of President Umaru Musa Yar’Adua, Diezani Allison-Madueke, immediate past minister of transportation, had visited the road. She was there on August 6, 2007 and wept because of its dilapidated state. “I am actually very, very unhappy today at what I have seen. I am very displeased that this road was allowed to degenerate to this level. I want to apologise to Nigerians for the deplorable state that I found this road in. This is inhuman and unacceptable,” Allison-Madueke said.
However, more than two years after the former minister of transportation’s lamentation over the sorry state of the road which raised the hope of many Nigerians of a quick solution to the problem, the condition of the road has continued to deteriorate. When Newswatch visited the road last week, the failed portions of the road still had craters wide enough to swallow vehicles. Commuters who were travelling to the South-East and South-South zones of the country for Christmas had harrowing experiences, as they had to spend several hours at the failed portion of the road between Ore and Ofosu in Ondo State. This was as a result of the serious traffic gridlock on the road as the vehicles tried to wade through the failed portions of the road. Some of the vehicles had to divert through the bush path in Ofosu in a bid to beat the gridlock.
Sampson Raymond, one of the drivers, caught up in the traffic jam, told Newswatch that he left Lagos at about 8 a.m. on that day enroute Okada in Edo State. Unfortunately, he ran into the traffic gridlock at Ore by 11:30 a.m. By 3:30 p.m. when Newswatch met him, he was still trying to manoeuvre his way out of the jam which he attributed to bad spots along the expressway.
Emeka Nwokeke, a driver of a luxurious bus conveying passengers to Aba, told Newswatch that he spent more than five hours in the gridlock. “I left Lagos at 7:30 a.m. for Aba and you can see where we are. There is no way I can get to Aba today. You can see that the traffic is not flowing at all. We have been stuck in this traffic for the past five hours,” he said. Eberechukwu Anyanwu, one of the passengers on the bus, could not control his temper as he rained abuses on those in power for allowing the road deteriorate to the point that it has become almost impassable thereby making those travelling home for Christmas to pass through hell. “You can see how bad it is and yet we have people who claim to be our leaders. This road could be best described as Nigerians' expressway to hell,” he told Newswatch.
Worried by the hazards the deplorable condition of the Ore axis of the Lagos-Ore-Benin expressway and other highways across the country have constituted for transporters, the Association of Luxury Bus Owners of Nigeria, ALBON, met in Lagos recently to deliberate on the issue. In a communiqué issued after the emergency meeting, the governing council of the association threatened to withdraw their vehicles from the roads unless the federal government instituted a programmed maintenance on all the major highways in the country.
In the communiqué jointly signed by Prince Ejike Okoli and Frank Nneji, national president and secretary respectively of the association, they drew government’s attention to the need for an “urgent intervention programme on the Shagamu-Ore-Benin road to ensure that normal flow of traffic is restored.” The luxurious bus owners were concerned that though this road is one of the busiest arterial roads in the country, government has not accorded the maintenance of the road the priority attention it deserves. They frowned at the situation whereby motorists sometimes spend as much as 12 hours on that stretch alone due to its dilapidated condition.
The association stated that the abysmal state of roads across the country has resulted in the depletion of its fleet due to constant damages leading to high cost of maintenance. “In the year 2000, we had a capacity of 6,000 buses but these have been depleted to less than 1,500 buses with over 80 operators being forced out of business because of harsh operating condition.” The governing council of ALBON passionately appealed to the president of the Federal Republic of Nigeria through the minister of works to come to its aid and the aid of other Nigerian road users who daily suffer untold hardship on major Nigerian roads.
ALBON also urged the federal government to separate funding for road maintenance from the budget for road development, rehabilitation and reconstruction because “the two are clearly distinct.” The group noted that it is common for thieves to rob the drivers and their passengers at the failed portions of the roads where the vehicles virtually come to a halt.
Okoli told Newswatch last week that ALBON was compelled to take such an action because the deplorable condition of the roads has taken its toll on their vehicles as it now costs them so much money to maintain them. He explained that most luxurious buses now strip their vehicles of the overhangs of the front and rear fenders, because they usually hit the surface of the bad roads and break whenever the tyres sink into the ground or run through large potholes. “The impact of the bad road not only lead to heavy maintenance costs, but ultimately reduces the lifespan of the buses,” he said. He explained that because of the failed portion of the Lagos-Ore-Benin expressway, some luxurious buses travelling from Lagos to Owerri, Enugu, Port Harcourt and Uyo spend two days on the road before reaching their destinations.
According to him, the association often bought truck loads of chippings and brick objects with which its members tried to repair the failed portions of the road. He lamented that the wear-and-tear the bad roads have constituted for their vehicles is so much that some transporters had contemplated leaving the business since it was no longer lucrative. “We spend so much money repairing knocked engines as a result of the bad roads. The engines are at the back and when the rear keeps hitting the ground, the oil drains away and could spoil the engine if the driver could not notice it in time. It costs as much as N1.3 million to repair an engine of a luxurious bus,” Okoli told Newswatch.
Corroborating Okoli’s position, Nneji, who is also the managing director of ABC Transport, described 2009 as the worst year for transporters. “It is only in 2009 that you have vehicles leaving Lagos and never got to the East until after 36 hours,” he said. He attributed the problem to lack of proper management of the roads by the government. He explained that some of the roads have not been rehabilitated and reconstructed as they ought to. He believes that the federal government should treat the issue of roads as an emergency because if the nation’s economy must grow, the transportation infrastructure have to grow too.
Apparently taking a cue from the leadership of ALBON, Patrick Obahiagbon, the lawmaker representing Oredo federal constituency in the House of Representatives, early this month threatened to lead a mass protest over the poor state of the Benin-Ore road. He, however, gave the federal government a “reasonable period in 2010” to fix the road or face mass protest. “I have resolved as the representative of the good people of Oredo federal constituency in Edo State who have suffered a great deal on the collapsed Benin-Ore-Lagos road to tackle the gauntlet posed by the exigencies of the times to compel the federal government to act expeditiously in fixing the road once and for all,” Obahiagbon said.
In response to public outcry over the deplorable condition of the road, Hassan Muhammed Lawal, minister of works, housing, and urban development, recently visited the road. He was accompanied by Olusegun Mimiko, governor of Ondo State, who suggested outright reconstruction of the road.
Coincidentally, on the day of their visit, they were caught in the traffic gridlock that had become a common scene on the road. Lawal, who was overwhelmed by the traffic jam and the complaints of commuters, acknowledged the fact that the road has expired and required reconstruction. “We are all witnesses to the congestion this afternoon. There are several stages of fixing a road. It could be repaired; it could be rehabilitation and it could be outright reconstruction. The road was repaired, now they are doing rehabilitation and like he (governor) suggested, there is need for outright reconstruction of the road and I couldn’t agree with him more. However, I want to reiterate the need for patience,” he said.
In the wake of the mounting public complaints over the deplorable state of the road, the federal government, last month, awarded contracts to the tune of N12.2 billon for the reconstruction and rehabilitation of two sections of the road. The multinational civil engineering companies commissioned to execute the contracts are Reynolds Construction Company Limited, RCC, handling the Ajebandele-Ofosu road axis, and Borini Prono and Company Limited repairing the Shagamu-Ajebandele-Ore-Benin section of the expressway. While RCC’s contract is worth N9.7 billion, that of Borini Prono is put at the cost of N2.5 billion. When Newswatch visited the road last week, the two construction companies had already commenced work on their respective sections of the road. While RCC was given 30 months to complete its contract, Borini Prono is expected to complete its job within 18 months. Officials of the two companies at the site refused to oblige Newswatch with details of their plan to beat the target.
Like the Lagos-Ore-Benin expressway, the Ibadan-New Ife-Ilesa-Akure road is also in a deplorable condition. The first noticeable bad portion of the road is by Oludare block industry, about five kilometres from Ibadan metropolis. However, the bad portion has been graded by RATCON Construction Company handling the rehabilitation of the road under the supervision of the Federal Road Maintenance Agency, FERMA. Another failed portion of the road is in Asejire, also in Oyo State. This failed portion begging for rehabilitation is 53 kilometres from Ibadan. Equally in a deplorable state is the portion of the road at Ikoyi junction in Osun State. At Ikire town still in Osun State, there is another failed portion of the road.
The road is dualised but one side of the road has been closed for maintenance and motorists are forced to use one way. Samuel Adesina, a driver who plies the Ibadan-Akure route, told Newswatch that motorists have been encountering problems on the failed portion of the road for six months now.
At Gbongan, there is another failed portion of the expressway. For instance, between Gbongan and Akinlalu, a distance of 10 kilometres, Newswatch counted five failed portions of the road. Tayo Azeez, an Akure-based driver who plies the road, told Newswatch that traffic congestions is a daily affair on the road. Azeez added that accidents are regular occurrences on the road because of its poor state. Unfortunately, there is no ongoing rehabilitation work on the road.
On Saturday, December 1, there was a fatal accident at Onimu village in Gbongan. According to an eye witness, the accident occurred when a driver of one of the buses who was on high speed attempted to dodge a bad portion of the road and rammed into the on-coming vehicle. The collision of the two vehicles ignited fire and they were burnt with all the passengers on board. Adesina, who witnessed the accident, told Newswatch that it was a gory sight as they watched human beings roasted to death like goats.
Although the Ife-Ilesha road is relatively motorable, at least up to Oloko where the dual carriage way terminates, the same cannot be said of Ilesha-Akure road which is a single narrow road. From Arakeje, where Joseph Ayo Babalola University is located, to Ilaramokin, there are several failed portions on the road. Indeed, Newswatch gathered that traffic congestion is a common phenomenon on the road which makes users spend longer hours to get to their destinations.
In the South-East, many federal roads are still in deplorable conditions. Although the contract for the dualisation of the Onitsha-Owerri highway was awarded in 2002, some portions of the road are still in a state of disrepair. Not even the splitting of the contract between the Consolidated Construction Company, CCC, and Julius Berger PLC has facilitated the construction of the road. The contract for the dualisation of the entire stretch of the 90.3-kilometre road was initially awarded by the administration of President Olusegun Obasanjo to CCC at the cost of N24.5 billion with a three-year completion period.
However, due to the slow pace of work, the former president had in 2005 approved extra N20 billion for the project and directed Julius Berger to handle the Owerri end of road up to the boundary between Imo and Anambra states. CCC was then asked to concentrate on the Onitsha end of the road while the contract sum was increased to N36 billion.
Adeseye Ogunlewe, the then minister of works, had promised that with the involvement of the two construction companies in the project, the dualisation of the Onitsha-Owerri road would be completed within 18 months. But three years after the federal government’s promise, work on the Onitsha-Owerri road is still progressing at a snail speed.
Julius Berger has done substantial work on its own part of the contract. When Newswatch visited the operational base of the German constructions giant at Njaba bridge, the dreaded bridge which had caused several accidents in the past was wearing a new look. The bridge had been completed and opened for use by motorists. Chijioke Nnanna, a commercial driver who plies the road regularly, told Newswatch that transporters were glad that Julius Berger built a solid and standard bridge across the Njaba River. “I am very happy with the fantastic job done by Julius Berger on the Njaba bridge. Before now, the bridge was a death trap because of the winding nature of the road, but today, we have an ultramodern bridge and we thank the federal government for awarding the contract to a reputable construction firm,” Nnanna told Newswatch.
The construction giant has taken the work beyond Awo-Omamma and is now grading the portion of the road at Mgbidi, the boundary between Imo and Anambra states. A supervisor with Julius Berger who spoke to Newswatch on condition of anonymity said the company was determined to complete the contract early next year.
Like Julius Berger, CCC has also made some progress on its own part of the road. Despite the delay in the construction of the Onitsha end of the road, the CCC, which is from Greece, did a standard job on the areas it has so far covered. The CCC has constructed the road from Onitsha to Ihembosi in Ekwusigo local government area of Anambra State and provided good drainage system on both sides of the road. The company has also graded the road from Okija junction to Ihiala. It has tried to cover some of the gullies on the road. However, the portion of the road graded is constituting problems for motorist because it is very dusty.
Newswatch learnt that before the dry season set in, the portion of the road that was graded was so slippery that many vehicles avoided it. Some of the vehicles coming from Onitsha had to divert to the Okija community through the junction from where they come out at Ihiala junction. Consequently, this has led to the dilapidation of the local road in Okija built during the Chinwoke Mbadiniju administration. Vehicles coming from Owerri had to divert to the old road leading to Nnewi and come out at Ihembosi. Sylvanus Ike Nweme, former chairman of Ihiala local government area who hails from Okija, told Newswatch that although CCC could be said to be slow in handling the contract, the people of the South-East are happy with the quality of job they are doing. “I must confess that we are very pleased with the quality of job CCC is doing. The work is progressing irrespective of the nature of Okija area. The topography of our area is one factor that is slowing down the job. It is not a table land. That is why the job was delayed from Ihembosi to Ihiala,” Nweme said.
The Onitsha-Enugu expressway is another road in the South-East that is in a poor state. However, the people of the area heaved a sigh of relief when the federal government recently awarded contract for the reconstruction of the road to CCC and Nigercat. While CCC is handling the Onitsha end of the road up to Awka, Nigercat was awarded the contract for the construction of the road from Ugwuoba part of the expressway leading to Enugu. Ugwuoba is a border town between Enugu and Anambra states.
For Boniface Egboka, a professor of environmental hydrogeology and vice chancellor, Nnamdi Azikiwe University, Awka, there is nothing to celebrate yet until evidence of work is seen. He recalled that the bad condition of the Onitsha-Enugu road recently led to the death of many people at Umunya.
The accident at Umunya was nothing short of a tragedy because it involved no less than nine vehicles and reportedly led to the death of more than 50 persons. The accident was said to have been caused by the bad portion of the highway at Umunya which is no different from the situation in many other parts of the dual carriageway in both the Enugu and Onitsha axes.
The Onitsha-Enugu road is replete with potholes, bad patches and gullies from Upper Iweka to MCC junction. This extended to New Spare Parts Market, Umunya, Awka, Ugwuorji and 9th Mile Corner. Indeed, the Onitsha-Enugu road is anything but an expressway. According to Mike Udah, chief press secretary to Governor Peter Obi, governor of Anambra State, “nightmare” is a word that best describes a journey on the road.
Paul Okoye, a commercial bus driver, agrees. He told Newswatch in Awka, last week, that the Enugu-Awka expressway is bad and full of potholes. Another accident happened last week in Umunya due to the bad road.
Cyril Ike, a commercial bus driver who plies the road, said the potholes on the road destroy tyres and shock absorbers, cause accidents and make travelling very unpleasant. Eugene Chime, a staff of the Onitsha South Mass Transit who plies the Enugu-Onitsha route, told Newswatch that the road is so bad and often causes “accidents because when you try to avoid the bad spots, you might mistakenly run into the bush.” His view was buttressed by Ejim John, a commercial bus driver, who recently escaped death by the whiskers because of the bad road. He complained that there is a place at the 9th Mile Corner that has a lot of potholes and armed robbers take advantage of it to rob passengers. Although John is happy that the contract has been awarded, he wants the companies working on it to increase the pace of work to alleviate the suffering of commuters on the road. He said he wants the highway to return to its former state of the early 80s when it was first constructed. He traced its deterioration to long neglect. “It became worse about four years ago and we kept hearing promises about repairing it but nothing happened.”
When Newswatch visited the road last week, CCC officials were seen working on the expressway from the Onitsha axis leading to Awka. But no work has commenced on the Onitsha portion yet as evidence of work could only be seen at the nearby Nkpor and the expressway linking the former toll gate. The company closed down a portion of the expressway near the toll gate which it is currently working on. That, however, is already a source of concern to some residents of the state who are afraid that closing down a part of the road might pose a problem for road users.
Like the CCC, Nigercat also closed a part of the expressway it is currently working on and this has resulted in traffic congestion.
Enugu-Abakaliki expressway is yet another road in terrible shape. The road needs rehabilitation. Beginning from Emene, Enugu, many parts of the one-lane highway leading into Abakaliki, the capital of Ebonyi State, are in bad shape. Emeka Nwokike, a commercial bus driver, told Newswatch that the Enugu-Abakaliki expressway is in a sorry state despite some “patchings” done in some parts of the road two months ago. He appealed to the federal government to show seriousness on the road project.
But the condition of the Abakaliki-Enugu expressway is not as bad as some others in the state. For instance, Ladan Umaru, a commercial driver, said that the Ogoja-Abakiliki road is horrible. “The road has been bad for a long time. Now that there is no rain, we spend three to four hours from Abakaliki to Ogoja. During the rainy season, it is five to six hours,” he told Newswatch. Ben Perni said that recently, when he travelled to Calabar from Abuja, they spent longer time on the journey due to delays experienced on the Ogoja axis of the road. “Under normal circumstances, the journey from Ogoja to Calabar is supposed to take five hours, but we ended up spending seven hours.”
Adenike Yesiru, a transporter, gave his own verdict on the Abakaliki–Ikom route. “The road is bad. Before now, we used to spend one hour, forty minutes, but now, its three hours plus and that is for a sound vehicle. There are so many bad spots on the road,” he said.
Paul Okorie, Ebonyi State commissioner for works and transport, told Newswatch that most of the federal roads, especially in the South-East, have become death traps. One of such roads is the Abakaliki-Ogoja-Manfe-Cameroon border road which Okorie described as probably “the worst road in the country.” Others include the Enugu-Port Harcourt road, Enugu-Afikpo road, Okposi-Amasiri-Ota-Nguzu road and the Abakaliki-Offerekpe road. Okorie, however, said that recently, the federal government awarded contract for the reconstruction of the Abakaliki-Ogoja-Manfe-Cameroon border road to the China Civil Engineering Construction Company, CCECC, just as the Abakaliki-Afikpo road was awarded to Bulletine Nigeria Limited.
The Enugu-Port Harcourt expressway is not without its challenges. Many parts of the expressway linking Mgbowo to Isuochi in Abia State to Amaorji and Okigwe in Imo State have failed. But one of the worst roads where the commuters experience a lot of hardship is the Umuahia-Ikot Ekpene road. On December 15, when Newswatch visited the road, some caterpillars were seen working on the Obot Akera part of the road with “caution” sign belonging to FERMA displayed. Even then, it was no fun driving through the one-lane expressway due to the bumpy and dusty nature of the road.
Godwin Ben, a driver with Akwa Ibom Transport Company, told Newswatch that during the rainy season, drivers often diverted to some villages to avoid the deep gullies on the Umuahia-Ikot Ekpene road.
However, on scale of degradation, the Umuahia-Ikot Ekpene road is no match to the Uyo-Calabar highway. There are many failed portions of the expressway around Odukpani local government area and Okoyong, begging for attention. In view of the bad road network in these areas, Nsiebong Etim, a commercial driver, wants the government to make road repairs a top priority. He told Newswatch at the Etim Edem Park, Calabar, that “the roads are very bad, whether it is Aba road, the Ikot-Ekpene road or Umuahia road, they are all bad and deserve to be rehabilitated.”
The East-West road which cuts across the South-South states including Delta, Bayelsa, Rivers and Akwa Ibom is equally in deplorable state. Contract for the dualisation of the 337-kilometre road was initially awarded to Julius Berger in 2005 at a cost of N220 billion. However, in 2008, Julius Berger pulled out after two expatriates working with it were abducted and later killed by militants. At that time, only six percent of the job had been done. The federal government then directed Julius Berger to refund N6.1 billion being balance of the job not executed. The contract was then reawarded to three other construction companies namely Setraco, Reynolds Construction Company and Gitto Construction Generalli. The section of the road from Warri in Delta State to Kaima in Bayelsa which is 87 kilometres was awarded to Setraco at the cost of N64 billion and is expected to be completed in August 2010. The 101 kilometres of the road from Kaima to Ahoada and Port Harcourt was also awarded to Setraco at the cost of N74.7 billion. The third section comprising 99 kilometres stretching from Eleme Junction in Rivers State to Eket in Akwa Ibom was awarded to RCC at N35.6 billion and is expected to be completed in April 2010. The fourth section, which covered 50 kilomtres, stretched from Eket to Oron in Akwa Ibom and awarded to Gitto at N26 billion with April 2010 as completed date. When Uffot Ekaette, minister for Niger Delta affairs, inspected the projects recently, he expressed satisfaction with the work being done by Setraco and RCC but frowned at the slow pace of work by Gitto.
However, when Newswatch visited the East-West road last week, the progress of work by Setraco from Warri to Port Harcourt was not quite encouraging. But Chidi Lloyd, majority leader, Rivers State House of Assembly, whose constituency falls on the East-West road, told Newswatch that the slow pace of the work was to enable the contractor do a good job. He explained that since the contract was initially awarded to Julius Berger, Setraco would have to go back to the drawing board, study what is on ground and then proceed with the job. He urged the people to be patient. “We know that our patience may have been overstretched but we also have to thank the administration of President Yar’Adua for awarding the contract,” he said.
In the northern part of the country, the federal road linking Okene to Ajaokuta, the location of the nation’s ill-fated steel industry, is in a terrible state. Hilary Abuh, a lorry driver, told Newswatch that his vehicle fell into a gully while trying to avoid the failed portion of the road.
Murtala Momoh, a father of five, said he narrowly escaped being burnt to death recently when a tanker conveying fuel fell on the failed portion of the road and caught fire. Three houses around the area were gutted by fire but no life was lost.
Another federal road in bad shape is the Lokoja-Abuja road which has recorded a lot of accidents in recent times. Yomo Ashanghan, sector commander of the Federal Road Safety Commission, in Kogi State said the road records an average of one accident daily. He attributed this to overspeeding and bad nature of the road. “If the roads were good, accidents would have been reduced,” he said.
Yaguda Ali, secretary general, National Union of Road Transport Workers, Kogi State chapter, urged the government to dualise the road from Abaji to Kabba junction. However, the contract for the dualisation of the road from Yongga to Abaji is now being handled by RCC. The rehabilitation of the road from Abaji to Kotongarfi is being handled by Bulletine while the road from Kabba Junction to Kotongarfi was awarded to Dantata and Sowoe. However, these companies have only graded the roads.
The Kaduna-Minna road is equally bad. The failed portions of the road are the Suleja junction, Minna Park and Shiroro junction. It has so many potholes which often cause accidents. The situation is the same in some portions of the Kaduna-Jese road, especially Saminaka.
The deplorable condition of the federal roads across the country has led to a lot of avoidable accidents. The recent statistics released by the FRSC on the spate of accidents on Nigerian roads is mind-boggling. According to the FRSC, the number of reported cases of road accidents on the country’s highways between January and October is 8,553. About 4,120 persons lost their lives while 20,875 others were seriously injured in the accidents that involved 11,031 vehicles across the country.
Egboka, vice chancellor of UNIZIK, believes that these accidents would have been avoided if the roads were in good shape. He is very sad that despite the huge amount of money voted annually for the Nigerian roads, they are still horrible. “I had to travel to Ilorin from Awka by road, it was horrible. I suffered. My waist suffered. Travelling to Lagos now by road is like going through hell. I love travelling because I love seeing the environment. But my experience has been terrible. Accidents all over the place because of bad roads, potholes, dangerous bends... It is most saddening and regrettable,” Egboka told Newswatch.
Reported by Emmanuel Uffot, Dike Onwuamaeze, Anthony Akaeze,Godfrey Azubike and Pita Ochai
Travelling by road in Nigeria is still a nightmare as the roads are in terrible condition despite the huge expenditure on their reconstruction and maintenance.
The condition of our roads, both the major arteries of this country and the roads in most of our major cities beggars imagination. And here I must ask the question do our government, ministers and leaders who travel often and see the condition in other countries ever feel embarrassed by the condition of roads in our resource-rich country? Do they notice the large potholes that litter the roads and even bridges?”
Those words, coming from Emeka Anyaoku, former secretary general of the Commonwealth, vividly captures the dismal failure of the Nigerian state to maintain its roads. The diplomat, who gave the damning verdict on the state of the nation’s roads at a recent public lecture in Abuja, said the consequence of such has been the soaring rate of accidents which have turned them into “a huge slaughter slab where human lives are worth little or nothing.”
Indeed, Anyaoku has bluntly spoken the mind of almost every road user in Nigerians. He has lent his weighty voice of courage and candour to the cries of most Nigerians who have had harrowing experiences while travelling on some of the roads that are in critical conditions across the country. Recent investigations by Newswatch revealed that, although the federal government has spent more than one trillion Naira on contracts for the rehabilitation of these roads in the past ten years, about 30 of the major federal roads are in deplorable conditions.
Some of the federal roads that have collapsed include the Lagos-Ore-Benin expressway, the Ibadan-New Ife-Ilesha-Akure expressway and the Lagos-Ibadan expressway in the South-West zone. In the South-East zone, the roads that have so many failed portions are the Onitsha-Enugu expressway, the Enugu-Abakaliki highway, the Enugu-Port Harcourt road, the Onitsha-Owerri highway and the Umuahia-Ikot Ekpene road. The roads in the South-South zone that have collapsed are the East-West road, the Calabar-Itu-Ogoja-Katsina Ala road, the Aba-Ikot Ekpene road, Aba-Ekparakwa-Etinan road and the Ini-Ekpe-Ikot Nkon-Arochukwu road.
There are also some roads in dilapidated conditions in the northern part of the country. They include the Okene-Lokoja-Abuja road, Okene-Ajaokuta-Anyigba road, Kaduna-Jos road and the Kano-Azare-Damaturu road.
One federal road that has remained a nightmare for motorists is the Lagos-Ore-Benin expressway. In spite of several reports in the media about the bad state of the road, which is the major link road between the western and eastern parts of Nigeria, its situation has not improved. At the inception of the administration of President Umaru Musa Yar’Adua, Diezani Allison-Madueke, immediate past minister of transportation, had visited the road. She was there on August 6, 2007 and wept because of its dilapidated state. “I am actually very, very unhappy today at what I have seen. I am very displeased that this road was allowed to degenerate to this level. I want to apologise to Nigerians for the deplorable state that I found this road in. This is inhuman and unacceptable,” Allison-Madueke said.
However, more than two years after the former minister of transportation’s lamentation over the sorry state of the road which raised the hope of many Nigerians of a quick solution to the problem, the condition of the road has continued to deteriorate. When Newswatch visited the road last week, the failed portions of the road still had craters wide enough to swallow vehicles. Commuters who were travelling to the South-East and South-South zones of the country for Christmas had harrowing experiences, as they had to spend several hours at the failed portion of the road between Ore and Ofosu in Ondo State. This was as a result of the serious traffic gridlock on the road as the vehicles tried to wade through the failed portions of the road. Some of the vehicles had to divert through the bush path in Ofosu in a bid to beat the gridlock.
Sampson Raymond, one of the drivers, caught up in the traffic jam, told Newswatch that he left Lagos at about 8 a.m. on that day enroute Okada in Edo State. Unfortunately, he ran into the traffic gridlock at Ore by 11:30 a.m. By 3:30 p.m. when Newswatch met him, he was still trying to manoeuvre his way out of the jam which he attributed to bad spots along the expressway.
Emeka Nwokeke, a driver of a luxurious bus conveying passengers to Aba, told Newswatch that he spent more than five hours in the gridlock. “I left Lagos at 7:30 a.m. for Aba and you can see where we are. There is no way I can get to Aba today. You can see that the traffic is not flowing at all. We have been stuck in this traffic for the past five hours,” he said. Eberechukwu Anyanwu, one of the passengers on the bus, could not control his temper as he rained abuses on those in power for allowing the road deteriorate to the point that it has become almost impassable thereby making those travelling home for Christmas to pass through hell. “You can see how bad it is and yet we have people who claim to be our leaders. This road could be best described as Nigerians' expressway to hell,” he told Newswatch.
Worried by the hazards the deplorable condition of the Ore axis of the Lagos-Ore-Benin expressway and other highways across the country have constituted for transporters, the Association of Luxury Bus Owners of Nigeria, ALBON, met in Lagos recently to deliberate on the issue. In a communiqué issued after the emergency meeting, the governing council of the association threatened to withdraw their vehicles from the roads unless the federal government instituted a programmed maintenance on all the major highways in the country.
In the communiqué jointly signed by Prince Ejike Okoli and Frank Nneji, national president and secretary respectively of the association, they drew government’s attention to the need for an “urgent intervention programme on the Shagamu-Ore-Benin road to ensure that normal flow of traffic is restored.” The luxurious bus owners were concerned that though this road is one of the busiest arterial roads in the country, government has not accorded the maintenance of the road the priority attention it deserves. They frowned at the situation whereby motorists sometimes spend as much as 12 hours on that stretch alone due to its dilapidated condition.
The association stated that the abysmal state of roads across the country has resulted in the depletion of its fleet due to constant damages leading to high cost of maintenance. “In the year 2000, we had a capacity of 6,000 buses but these have been depleted to less than 1,500 buses with over 80 operators being forced out of business because of harsh operating condition.” The governing council of ALBON passionately appealed to the president of the Federal Republic of Nigeria through the minister of works to come to its aid and the aid of other Nigerian road users who daily suffer untold hardship on major Nigerian roads.
ALBON also urged the federal government to separate funding for road maintenance from the budget for road development, rehabilitation and reconstruction because “the two are clearly distinct.” The group noted that it is common for thieves to rob the drivers and their passengers at the failed portions of the roads where the vehicles virtually come to a halt.
Okoli told Newswatch last week that ALBON was compelled to take such an action because the deplorable condition of the roads has taken its toll on their vehicles as it now costs them so much money to maintain them. He explained that most luxurious buses now strip their vehicles of the overhangs of the front and rear fenders, because they usually hit the surface of the bad roads and break whenever the tyres sink into the ground or run through large potholes. “The impact of the bad road not only lead to heavy maintenance costs, but ultimately reduces the lifespan of the buses,” he said. He explained that because of the failed portion of the Lagos-Ore-Benin expressway, some luxurious buses travelling from Lagos to Owerri, Enugu, Port Harcourt and Uyo spend two days on the road before reaching their destinations.
According to him, the association often bought truck loads of chippings and brick objects with which its members tried to repair the failed portions of the road. He lamented that the wear-and-tear the bad roads have constituted for their vehicles is so much that some transporters had contemplated leaving the business since it was no longer lucrative. “We spend so much money repairing knocked engines as a result of the bad roads. The engines are at the back and when the rear keeps hitting the ground, the oil drains away and could spoil the engine if the driver could not notice it in time. It costs as much as N1.3 million to repair an engine of a luxurious bus,” Okoli told Newswatch.
Corroborating Okoli’s position, Nneji, who is also the managing director of ABC Transport, described 2009 as the worst year for transporters. “It is only in 2009 that you have vehicles leaving Lagos and never got to the East until after 36 hours,” he said. He attributed the problem to lack of proper management of the roads by the government. He explained that some of the roads have not been rehabilitated and reconstructed as they ought to. He believes that the federal government should treat the issue of roads as an emergency because if the nation’s economy must grow, the transportation infrastructure have to grow too.
Apparently taking a cue from the leadership of ALBON, Patrick Obahiagbon, the lawmaker representing Oredo federal constituency in the House of Representatives, early this month threatened to lead a mass protest over the poor state of the Benin-Ore road. He, however, gave the federal government a “reasonable period in 2010” to fix the road or face mass protest. “I have resolved as the representative of the good people of Oredo federal constituency in Edo State who have suffered a great deal on the collapsed Benin-Ore-Lagos road to tackle the gauntlet posed by the exigencies of the times to compel the federal government to act expeditiously in fixing the road once and for all,” Obahiagbon said.
In response to public outcry over the deplorable condition of the road, Hassan Muhammed Lawal, minister of works, housing, and urban development, recently visited the road. He was accompanied by Olusegun Mimiko, governor of Ondo State, who suggested outright reconstruction of the road.
Coincidentally, on the day of their visit, they were caught in the traffic gridlock that had become a common scene on the road. Lawal, who was overwhelmed by the traffic jam and the complaints of commuters, acknowledged the fact that the road has expired and required reconstruction. “We are all witnesses to the congestion this afternoon. There are several stages of fixing a road. It could be repaired; it could be rehabilitation and it could be outright reconstruction. The road was repaired, now they are doing rehabilitation and like he (governor) suggested, there is need for outright reconstruction of the road and I couldn’t agree with him more. However, I want to reiterate the need for patience,” he said.
In the wake of the mounting public complaints over the deplorable state of the road, the federal government, last month, awarded contracts to the tune of N12.2 billon for the reconstruction and rehabilitation of two sections of the road. The multinational civil engineering companies commissioned to execute the contracts are Reynolds Construction Company Limited, RCC, handling the Ajebandele-Ofosu road axis, and Borini Prono and Company Limited repairing the Shagamu-Ajebandele-Ore-Benin section of the expressway. While RCC’s contract is worth N9.7 billion, that of Borini Prono is put at the cost of N2.5 billion. When Newswatch visited the road last week, the two construction companies had already commenced work on their respective sections of the road. While RCC was given 30 months to complete its contract, Borini Prono is expected to complete its job within 18 months. Officials of the two companies at the site refused to oblige Newswatch with details of their plan to beat the target.
Like the Lagos-Ore-Benin expressway, the Ibadan-New Ife-Ilesa-Akure road is also in a deplorable condition. The first noticeable bad portion of the road is by Oludare block industry, about five kilometres from Ibadan metropolis. However, the bad portion has been graded by RATCON Construction Company handling the rehabilitation of the road under the supervision of the Federal Road Maintenance Agency, FERMA. Another failed portion of the road is in Asejire, also in Oyo State. This failed portion begging for rehabilitation is 53 kilometres from Ibadan. Equally in a deplorable state is the portion of the road at Ikoyi junction in Osun State. At Ikire town still in Osun State, there is another failed portion of the road.
The road is dualised but one side of the road has been closed for maintenance and motorists are forced to use one way. Samuel Adesina, a driver who plies the Ibadan-Akure route, told Newswatch that motorists have been encountering problems on the failed portion of the road for six months now.
At Gbongan, there is another failed portion of the expressway. For instance, between Gbongan and Akinlalu, a distance of 10 kilometres, Newswatch counted five failed portions of the road. Tayo Azeez, an Akure-based driver who plies the road, told Newswatch that traffic congestions is a daily affair on the road. Azeez added that accidents are regular occurrences on the road because of its poor state. Unfortunately, there is no ongoing rehabilitation work on the road.
On Saturday, December 1, there was a fatal accident at Onimu village in Gbongan. According to an eye witness, the accident occurred when a driver of one of the buses who was on high speed attempted to dodge a bad portion of the road and rammed into the on-coming vehicle. The collision of the two vehicles ignited fire and they were burnt with all the passengers on board. Adesina, who witnessed the accident, told Newswatch that it was a gory sight as they watched human beings roasted to death like goats.
Although the Ife-Ilesha road is relatively motorable, at least up to Oloko where the dual carriage way terminates, the same cannot be said of Ilesha-Akure road which is a single narrow road. From Arakeje, where Joseph Ayo Babalola University is located, to Ilaramokin, there are several failed portions on the road. Indeed, Newswatch gathered that traffic congestion is a common phenomenon on the road which makes users spend longer hours to get to their destinations.
In the South-East, many federal roads are still in deplorable conditions. Although the contract for the dualisation of the Onitsha-Owerri highway was awarded in 2002, some portions of the road are still in a state of disrepair. Not even the splitting of the contract between the Consolidated Construction Company, CCC, and Julius Berger PLC has facilitated the construction of the road. The contract for the dualisation of the entire stretch of the 90.3-kilometre road was initially awarded by the administration of President Olusegun Obasanjo to CCC at the cost of N24.5 billion with a three-year completion period.
However, due to the slow pace of work, the former president had in 2005 approved extra N20 billion for the project and directed Julius Berger to handle the Owerri end of road up to the boundary between Imo and Anambra states. CCC was then asked to concentrate on the Onitsha end of the road while the contract sum was increased to N36 billion.
Adeseye Ogunlewe, the then minister of works, had promised that with the involvement of the two construction companies in the project, the dualisation of the Onitsha-Owerri road would be completed within 18 months. But three years after the federal government’s promise, work on the Onitsha-Owerri road is still progressing at a snail speed.
Julius Berger has done substantial work on its own part of the contract. When Newswatch visited the operational base of the German constructions giant at Njaba bridge, the dreaded bridge which had caused several accidents in the past was wearing a new look. The bridge had been completed and opened for use by motorists. Chijioke Nnanna, a commercial driver who plies the road regularly, told Newswatch that transporters were glad that Julius Berger built a solid and standard bridge across the Njaba River. “I am very happy with the fantastic job done by Julius Berger on the Njaba bridge. Before now, the bridge was a death trap because of the winding nature of the road, but today, we have an ultramodern bridge and we thank the federal government for awarding the contract to a reputable construction firm,” Nnanna told Newswatch.
The construction giant has taken the work beyond Awo-Omamma and is now grading the portion of the road at Mgbidi, the boundary between Imo and Anambra states. A supervisor with Julius Berger who spoke to Newswatch on condition of anonymity said the company was determined to complete the contract early next year.
Like Julius Berger, CCC has also made some progress on its own part of the road. Despite the delay in the construction of the Onitsha end of the road, the CCC, which is from Greece, did a standard job on the areas it has so far covered. The CCC has constructed the road from Onitsha to Ihembosi in Ekwusigo local government area of Anambra State and provided good drainage system on both sides of the road. The company has also graded the road from Okija junction to Ihiala. It has tried to cover some of the gullies on the road. However, the portion of the road graded is constituting problems for motorist because it is very dusty.
Newswatch learnt that before the dry season set in, the portion of the road that was graded was so slippery that many vehicles avoided it. Some of the vehicles coming from Onitsha had to divert to the Okija community through the junction from where they come out at Ihiala junction. Consequently, this has led to the dilapidation of the local road in Okija built during the Chinwoke Mbadiniju administration. Vehicles coming from Owerri had to divert to the old road leading to Nnewi and come out at Ihembosi. Sylvanus Ike Nweme, former chairman of Ihiala local government area who hails from Okija, told Newswatch that although CCC could be said to be slow in handling the contract, the people of the South-East are happy with the quality of job they are doing. “I must confess that we are very pleased with the quality of job CCC is doing. The work is progressing irrespective of the nature of Okija area. The topography of our area is one factor that is slowing down the job. It is not a table land. That is why the job was delayed from Ihembosi to Ihiala,” Nweme said.
The Onitsha-Enugu expressway is another road in the South-East that is in a poor state. However, the people of the area heaved a sigh of relief when the federal government recently awarded contract for the reconstruction of the road to CCC and Nigercat. While CCC is handling the Onitsha end of the road up to Awka, Nigercat was awarded the contract for the construction of the road from Ugwuoba part of the expressway leading to Enugu. Ugwuoba is a border town between Enugu and Anambra states.
For Boniface Egboka, a professor of environmental hydrogeology and vice chancellor, Nnamdi Azikiwe University, Awka, there is nothing to celebrate yet until evidence of work is seen. He recalled that the bad condition of the Onitsha-Enugu road recently led to the death of many people at Umunya.
The accident at Umunya was nothing short of a tragedy because it involved no less than nine vehicles and reportedly led to the death of more than 50 persons. The accident was said to have been caused by the bad portion of the highway at Umunya which is no different from the situation in many other parts of the dual carriageway in both the Enugu and Onitsha axes.
The Onitsha-Enugu road is replete with potholes, bad patches and gullies from Upper Iweka to MCC junction. This extended to New Spare Parts Market, Umunya, Awka, Ugwuorji and 9th Mile Corner. Indeed, the Onitsha-Enugu road is anything but an expressway. According to Mike Udah, chief press secretary to Governor Peter Obi, governor of Anambra State, “nightmare” is a word that best describes a journey on the road.
Paul Okoye, a commercial bus driver, agrees. He told Newswatch in Awka, last week, that the Enugu-Awka expressway is bad and full of potholes. Another accident happened last week in Umunya due to the bad road.
Cyril Ike, a commercial bus driver who plies the road, said the potholes on the road destroy tyres and shock absorbers, cause accidents and make travelling very unpleasant. Eugene Chime, a staff of the Onitsha South Mass Transit who plies the Enugu-Onitsha route, told Newswatch that the road is so bad and often causes “accidents because when you try to avoid the bad spots, you might mistakenly run into the bush.” His view was buttressed by Ejim John, a commercial bus driver, who recently escaped death by the whiskers because of the bad road. He complained that there is a place at the 9th Mile Corner that has a lot of potholes and armed robbers take advantage of it to rob passengers. Although John is happy that the contract has been awarded, he wants the companies working on it to increase the pace of work to alleviate the suffering of commuters on the road. He said he wants the highway to return to its former state of the early 80s when it was first constructed. He traced its deterioration to long neglect. “It became worse about four years ago and we kept hearing promises about repairing it but nothing happened.”
When Newswatch visited the road last week, CCC officials were seen working on the expressway from the Onitsha axis leading to Awka. But no work has commenced on the Onitsha portion yet as evidence of work could only be seen at the nearby Nkpor and the expressway linking the former toll gate. The company closed down a portion of the expressway near the toll gate which it is currently working on. That, however, is already a source of concern to some residents of the state who are afraid that closing down a part of the road might pose a problem for road users.
Like the CCC, Nigercat also closed a part of the expressway it is currently working on and this has resulted in traffic congestion.
Enugu-Abakaliki expressway is yet another road in terrible shape. The road needs rehabilitation. Beginning from Emene, Enugu, many parts of the one-lane highway leading into Abakaliki, the capital of Ebonyi State, are in bad shape. Emeka Nwokike, a commercial bus driver, told Newswatch that the Enugu-Abakaliki expressway is in a sorry state despite some “patchings” done in some parts of the road two months ago. He appealed to the federal government to show seriousness on the road project.
But the condition of the Abakaliki-Enugu expressway is not as bad as some others in the state. For instance, Ladan Umaru, a commercial driver, said that the Ogoja-Abakiliki road is horrible. “The road has been bad for a long time. Now that there is no rain, we spend three to four hours from Abakaliki to Ogoja. During the rainy season, it is five to six hours,” he told Newswatch. Ben Perni said that recently, when he travelled to Calabar from Abuja, they spent longer time on the journey due to delays experienced on the Ogoja axis of the road. “Under normal circumstances, the journey from Ogoja to Calabar is supposed to take five hours, but we ended up spending seven hours.”
Adenike Yesiru, a transporter, gave his own verdict on the Abakaliki–Ikom route. “The road is bad. Before now, we used to spend one hour, forty minutes, but now, its three hours plus and that is for a sound vehicle. There are so many bad spots on the road,” he said.
Paul Okorie, Ebonyi State commissioner for works and transport, told Newswatch that most of the federal roads, especially in the South-East, have become death traps. One of such roads is the Abakaliki-Ogoja-Manfe-Cameroon border road which Okorie described as probably “the worst road in the country.” Others include the Enugu-Port Harcourt road, Enugu-Afikpo road, Okposi-Amasiri-Ota-Nguzu road and the Abakaliki-Offerekpe road. Okorie, however, said that recently, the federal government awarded contract for the reconstruction of the Abakaliki-Ogoja-Manfe-Cameroon border road to the China Civil Engineering Construction Company, CCECC, just as the Abakaliki-Afikpo road was awarded to Bulletine Nigeria Limited.
The Enugu-Port Harcourt expressway is not without its challenges. Many parts of the expressway linking Mgbowo to Isuochi in Abia State to Amaorji and Okigwe in Imo State have failed. But one of the worst roads where the commuters experience a lot of hardship is the Umuahia-Ikot Ekpene road. On December 15, when Newswatch visited the road, some caterpillars were seen working on the Obot Akera part of the road with “caution” sign belonging to FERMA displayed. Even then, it was no fun driving through the one-lane expressway due to the bumpy and dusty nature of the road.
Godwin Ben, a driver with Akwa Ibom Transport Company, told Newswatch that during the rainy season, drivers often diverted to some villages to avoid the deep gullies on the Umuahia-Ikot Ekpene road.
However, on scale of degradation, the Umuahia-Ikot Ekpene road is no match to the Uyo-Calabar highway. There are many failed portions of the expressway around Odukpani local government area and Okoyong, begging for attention. In view of the bad road network in these areas, Nsiebong Etim, a commercial driver, wants the government to make road repairs a top priority. He told Newswatch at the Etim Edem Park, Calabar, that “the roads are very bad, whether it is Aba road, the Ikot-Ekpene road or Umuahia road, they are all bad and deserve to be rehabilitated.”
The East-West road which cuts across the South-South states including Delta, Bayelsa, Rivers and Akwa Ibom is equally in deplorable state. Contract for the dualisation of the 337-kilometre road was initially awarded to Julius Berger in 2005 at a cost of N220 billion. However, in 2008, Julius Berger pulled out after two expatriates working with it were abducted and later killed by militants. At that time, only six percent of the job had been done. The federal government then directed Julius Berger to refund N6.1 billion being balance of the job not executed. The contract was then reawarded to three other construction companies namely Setraco, Reynolds Construction Company and Gitto Construction Generalli. The section of the road from Warri in Delta State to Kaima in Bayelsa which is 87 kilometres was awarded to Setraco at the cost of N64 billion and is expected to be completed in August 2010. The 101 kilometres of the road from Kaima to Ahoada and Port Harcourt was also awarded to Setraco at the cost of N74.7 billion. The third section comprising 99 kilometres stretching from Eleme Junction in Rivers State to Eket in Akwa Ibom was awarded to RCC at N35.6 billion and is expected to be completed in April 2010. The fourth section, which covered 50 kilomtres, stretched from Eket to Oron in Akwa Ibom and awarded to Gitto at N26 billion with April 2010 as completed date. When Uffot Ekaette, minister for Niger Delta affairs, inspected the projects recently, he expressed satisfaction with the work being done by Setraco and RCC but frowned at the slow pace of work by Gitto.
However, when Newswatch visited the East-West road last week, the progress of work by Setraco from Warri to Port Harcourt was not quite encouraging. But Chidi Lloyd, majority leader, Rivers State House of Assembly, whose constituency falls on the East-West road, told Newswatch that the slow pace of the work was to enable the contractor do a good job. He explained that since the contract was initially awarded to Julius Berger, Setraco would have to go back to the drawing board, study what is on ground and then proceed with the job. He urged the people to be patient. “We know that our patience may have been overstretched but we also have to thank the administration of President Yar’Adua for awarding the contract,” he said.
In the northern part of the country, the federal road linking Okene to Ajaokuta, the location of the nation’s ill-fated steel industry, is in a terrible state. Hilary Abuh, a lorry driver, told Newswatch that his vehicle fell into a gully while trying to avoid the failed portion of the road.
Murtala Momoh, a father of five, said he narrowly escaped being burnt to death recently when a tanker conveying fuel fell on the failed portion of the road and caught fire. Three houses around the area were gutted by fire but no life was lost.
Another federal road in bad shape is the Lokoja-Abuja road which has recorded a lot of accidents in recent times. Yomo Ashanghan, sector commander of the Federal Road Safety Commission, in Kogi State said the road records an average of one accident daily. He attributed this to overspeeding and bad nature of the road. “If the roads were good, accidents would have been reduced,” he said.
Yaguda Ali, secretary general, National Union of Road Transport Workers, Kogi State chapter, urged the government to dualise the road from Abaji to Kabba junction. However, the contract for the dualisation of the road from Yongga to Abaji is now being handled by RCC. The rehabilitation of the road from Abaji to Kotongarfi is being handled by Bulletine while the road from Kabba Junction to Kotongarfi was awarded to Dantata and Sowoe. However, these companies have only graded the roads.
The Kaduna-Minna road is equally bad. The failed portions of the road are the Suleja junction, Minna Park and Shiroro junction. It has so many potholes which often cause accidents. The situation is the same in some portions of the Kaduna-Jese road, especially Saminaka.
The deplorable condition of the federal roads across the country has led to a lot of avoidable accidents. The recent statistics released by the FRSC on the spate of accidents on Nigerian roads is mind-boggling. According to the FRSC, the number of reported cases of road accidents on the country’s highways between January and October is 8,553. About 4,120 persons lost their lives while 20,875 others were seriously injured in the accidents that involved 11,031 vehicles across the country.
Egboka, vice chancellor of UNIZIK, believes that these accidents would have been avoided if the roads were in good shape. He is very sad that despite the huge amount of money voted annually for the Nigerian roads, they are still horrible. “I had to travel to Ilorin from Awka by road, it was horrible. I suffered. My waist suffered. Travelling to Lagos now by road is like going through hell. I love travelling because I love seeing the environment. But my experience has been terrible. Accidents all over the place because of bad roads, potholes, dangerous bends... It is most saddening and regrettable,” Egboka told Newswatch.
Reported by Emmanuel Uffot, Dike Onwuamaeze, Anthony Akaeze,Godfrey Azubike and Pita Ochai
Saturday, December 12, 2009
Nigeria needs a revolution now -- Umeagbasi
Emeka Umeagbasi is the Chairman, Board of Trustees, International Society for Civil Liberties and the Rule of Law (INTER-SOCIETY). He spoke with TONY OKAFOR and a few other journalists on the state of the nation.
Nigerian Compass
Excerpts:
What is your take on Nigeria’s budget since 1999?
It was Edwin H. Sutherland, a famous American criminologist, who in his 1940 book, “White Collar Criminality,” defined criminality as illegal acts committed by middle or upper-class persons in conjunction with their ordinary occupational pursuits.” He listed such illegal acts as fraud, embezzlement, price-fixing, antitrust violations, income tax evasion, and misuse of public funds, contract inflation/abandonment and abuse of public and legal powers. The foregoing, in addition to fiscal irresponsibility or recklessness, have marred our budget regimes since 1999. The stark truth is that what science is to philosophy, logic to philosophy/mathematics, reasoning and argumentation to science of logic is what white-collar criminality is to corruption in Nigeria and corruption to our electoral and budgeting system. Since 1999, budgets worth trillions of naira had been made, yet meaningful and verifiable, tangible and intangible benefits have eluded the over 140 million Nigerians, whom the budgets are traditionally meant for. Our unemployed graduates might have exceeded 25 million. In 2000, according to the Federal Office of Statistics, there were 20 million unemployed Nigerians. Out of this figure, five million and six hundred thousand were graduates of our tertiary institutions. Despite the multi-billion dollar or multi- trillion naira budgets, Nigeria, with a population of over 140 million, is still grappling with 103 public and private universities, in addition to dozens of polytechnics and colleges of education, while the USA, with a population of about 300 million is having over 5,700 universities and Japan with a population of about 127 million, has over 1,200 universities. Out of over one million candidates that sat for the universities entrance examinations yearly in recent times, only about 300,000 were offered admission yearly by the universities and about 50 per cent of this figure graduate on annual basis with poverty/unemployment passports issued to them. Our health sector is also nothing to write home about. Tens of millions of Nigerians are still drinking acidic water from unprotected sources. Our agriculture is steadily drifting towards pre-subsistence level. The Malaysians and Indonesians, who came to us in the 1960s and 1970s, so as to be taught the secrets of palm tree cultivation, weeding and harvesting, have not only mastered them, but also they have mechanised the palm industry, which now earns them billions of dollars annually and feeds millions of their skilled and unskilled nationals. As at 2002, the government of Indonesia was earning about $5 billion from her mechanised palm produce.
Do you have the statistics to buttress your points?
From the 2008 to 2010 budget regimes, Nigeria had budgeted a total of over N10.9 trillion. In 2008, it was N3.3 trillion (main and supplementary budgets). In 2009, it was N3.55 trillion and another sum of N4.0079 trillion, excluding the expected supplementary appropriation, has been budgeted for the 2010 fiscal year. Over N1 trillion had also been channeled into the foreign and domestic debts servicing, while over N500 billion was supposedly channeled into transportation, with road transport taking the lion share. Till date, the true positions of Nigeria’s foreign and domestic debts have remained sketchy. Also, the microscopic view of the three budget regimes showed that the recurrent expenditures, which are funds meant for about 17,500 Nigeria’s political office holders and some 500,000-man federal civil service had continued to take a lead over the capital expenditures, funds for the infrastructural developments and other welfares of over 140 million Nigerians, including the beneficiaries of the recurrent expenditures. For instance, in the proposed budget of N4.0079 trillion for 2010, over N2.2 trillion is set aside for recurrent expenditures, while about N1.2 trillion is for capital expenditures.
For want of time, we shall only enquire into the state of federal roads in Nigeria with respect to over N500 billion budgeted for transportation in the last three budget regimes. Reliable statistics showed that there are 195,000 kilometres of Trunk A (federal), B (states) and C (local governments/ communities) road network in Nigeria. The Federal Government’s share of this road network is 65,000 kilometres. In Anambra State, for instance, there are about 14 federal roads. Statistically, among the three tiers of road network in Nigeria, federal roads are the most failed and deplorable. States’ roads or Trunk B roads are the most asphalted and most motorable. Presently, Anambra State has the best Trunk B road network in the entire South-East, thanks to the illegal regime of Dr. Chris Ngige, which unevenly started it, and that of Mr. Peter Obi, which silently, but evenly, revolutionalised same. On the other hand, Trunk C road network across the federation is far better than Trunk A (Federal) roads. Though Trunk C roads are least asphalted, but they are very motorable and passable because they receive constant attention from communities’ and local council authorities. Furthermore, it is a known fact that a good number of federal roads in Nigeria have either been rehabilitated or reconstructed or are being rehabilitated or reconstructed by the various state governments. In Anambra State, for instance, Ngige rehabilitated the Onitsha-Niger Bridge-Upper-Iweka portion of the all-important Onitsha-Enugu Dual Carriage Way. The failed portions of the said road, until recently, had also been rehabilitated by the Obi administration. Presently, the Government of Anambra State, under Obi is reconstructing Onitsha-Nnewi Old Road and Onitsha-Enugu Old Road, which are all federal roads. Ngige and Obi jointly reconstructed the all-important Igbo-Ukwu-Ezinifite-Uga-Umuchu- Umunze federal road, with a spur to the Enugu- Port Harcourt Dual Carriage Way. Also, the all-important Atani-Ogwuikpere-Ndoni federal road is being reconstructed by the Obi administration, though the quality of work being delivered on the road by the Inter-Bua Construction Company is very horrible. These federal roads as mentioned are few of such roads being reconstructed by the present government of Anambra State. Apart from the foregoing, most of the busiest and uttermost important federal roads in Nigeria are acutely deplorable. Some of them are: Benin-Ore Road, Onitsha-Enugu Dual Carriage Way, Enugu-Port Harcourt Dual Carriage Way, Ninth Mile-Nsukka-Benue Road, Owerri-Port Harcourt Road, Agbor-Ekpoma-Auchi-Lokoja-Abuja Road, to mention but a few. The horrible state of federal roads in Nigeria is worst in the South-East, followed by the South-West, then the South-South and then the North-Central.
Our questions now are: where did the over N500 billion budgeted for transportation since 2008 go? And where did all the trillions budgeted at least since 2008 go?
If we are to hazard an answer, then choice properties magically springing up in some alleged corrupt foreign capitals such as Dubai may be the answer. Such choice properties are also springing up in some of the Nigeria’s rich capital cities, in addition to privately-owned refineries in foreign lands. Nigerian traders who transact businesses in Dubai, the United Arab Emirate, have been giving first hand accounts of sudden flooding of the kingdom with high cost boutiques and other shopping malls possibly by Nigerian white-collar criminals. We are not surprised at the ongoing baptism of criminality through budgeting. What do you expect in a country where a senator reportedly receives N15 million monthly or N180 million yearly in the form of constituency project? What do you expect where a Rep reportedly receives N156 million yearly for constituency project? What do you expect where the House of Reps allegedly squandered a whopping N52 billion on foreign trips in the past two years and “attracted” $1 billion or N150 billion foreign investments from the Republic of Turkey? Till date, the Federal Republic of Nigeria does not have a 100 per cent-owned functional commercial airline industry. This is unlike Air Italia for Italy, Air I for Israel, KLM for Holland, British Airways for Great Britain, PAN American Airline for USA, etc. The corruption termites had eaten up the Nigerian Airways more than 10 years ago. The N52 billion allegedly wasted on foreign trips, which the House Speaker had admitted and later denied, can comfortably build five to 10 sound conventional universities in Nigeria, going by experts’ opinion. Can we ever expect anything good from our leaders, more so when our foreign reserves had depreciated steadily from over $60 billion in 2007 to about $42 billion in 2009 and our excess crude oil sales reserves dried up? Whereas China’s foreign reserves had increased from about $700 billion in 2006 to $2.3 trillion in 2009, despite the global economic recession. Our currency, the Naira, has further been devalued from N142 per dollar in January 2009 to N150 per dollar in November 2009, a difference of N8 in a period of just 10 months.
By the way, how much is Nigeria’s investments abroad? Do we have any?
China is now the highest foreign investor in the USA Bond Market. The condition of this country is acutely pitiable. White-collar criminals with beastly idiosyncrasies are on rampage. They have run riot in the sacred altar of our commonwealth. Whenever a N5 billion road contract is awarded in their zone, they will ambush the contractor with utter alacrity, muzzle N4.5 billion out of his or her hands and leave him or her with paltry N500 million. With this, the contractor now settles by the roadside where he or she burns bitumen in a drum with charcoal and settles for work with shovels, diggers, measuring tapes and head pans, in company with his or her “Ogbo-mmanu” labourers. This explains why most of the federal roads rehabilitation projects such as the Onitsha-Enugu Dual Carriage Way, Onitsha-Oba-Nnewi-Okigwe federal road have been reportedly hijacked by “10 percenters” and white-collar criminals.
What is the way out of this?
If a revolution truly means “an abrupt political change not within the contemplation of the existing constitution, but with fundamental political changes and a new legal order,” then its imminence in Nigeria’s polity is a matter of time. Angelic democrats, wherever they are in Nigeria, must buckle up to effect a peaceful or quiet revolution before the patience of the angered elapses. Lagos, Edo and Anambra States must sustain their quiet revolutions. We also see a similar revolution coming the way of Imo State very soon. Nigeria must be saved from the hands of the buccaneers, the mentally deformed and the white-collar criminals, otherwise we will be doomed irreparably. It is deeply sad that the three tiers of government in Nigeria (federal, states and local government areas) have nothing to show for a whopping N32 trillion received and shared since 1999, out of which the Niger Delta region got a whopping N8 trillion, most of which were ferried away to foreign safety vaults by their leaders with utter impunity.
Tuesday, December 1, 2009
Intellectual Rumble Over Igbo Origin
By Mazi Ebuzeme, Sun News Online
One Dr. Charles Ujah granted an interview on 19th August 2009 to the sun newspaper making claims on Ibo Jewish origin and that the Yoruba was founded by the Ibo with Oduduwa as Oduduwa (meaning last born in Ibo) e.t.c. His claims are based on the bible and probably linguistic and cultural similarities.
In a rejoinder of September 18th , 2009 published by the sun newspaper, one Dr. P.J Eze challenged and dismissed Dr. Ujah’s Claims as false and unintellectual.
He even called it ‘Red Herring’, but I call it Ujah’s postulation for the purpose of this exercise. However I attribute their intellectual face off to the philosophy of a late highlife maestro Rex Jim Lawson.
Hear his lyrics ‘Am Green turtle, me clever turtle, for clever turtle, me no get equal. For wisdom me sabi pass all animal, for clever, me clever pass everyone; for cunning turtle, that same green turtle, for green turtle me no hate anyone’. So this is Dr. Ujah’s red bearing and Dr. Eze’s green turtle. I thank both of them for their thought and efforts in teaching us new things. It is noteworthy to appreciate Dr. Eze’s intellectual set up over what he called a fiction from Dr. Ujah’s postulation on the Igbo race.
The Claim that Oduduwa means Odudunwa is not realistic especially to the Yorubas. It is euphemistic to think so just like the myth surrounding several other origins of nations. The false start in Dr. Eze’s rejoinder is his prognosis without complete diagnosis.
History: In his book” The Origin of Ibos”, Dr. Ujah mentioned historical traces which he equally obtained from different other writers and religious book. The book “sight on the scripture – a watch Tower research publication has some section on the origin of nations and I recommend that to Dr. Eze. There are several other postulants and references of the historical traces of Ibo’s having Jewish or Canaanite antecedents. One of such books is the Sephardic revolution by Yitzak David Israel, a Sephardic Jew.
Archaeology: I suggest that Dr. Eze should take a trip to Aguleri and some other Ibo enclaves and see the artefacts and other interesting discoveries pointing towards the direction of Dr. Ujah’s postulation. On September 25th, 2009, another postulant, Eng. Ayodabo Esuola , another Nigerian researcher claimed that the earliest Jews were Africans in his book “Tourism and Hidden Treasures of Nigeria”. Hope Dr. Eze would read this also before condemnation. In addition, how would Dr. Eze treat the issue of myth e.g. that the Ibo progenitor fell from the sky, the way Oduduwa is believed to have evolved? Corrected or condemned, one cannot erase the myth in people’s psyche which had come from several generations. Some archaeological findings are mentioned in Dr. Ujah’s book.
Ethnography: some of us are yet to see or read about some physical parameters mentioned at the time of creation, where colour, ethnicity, morphology, phylogeny. Some people today believe the theory of the egg before the chicken or that God first made the female who gave birth to the male. It may not be regional or place but all in the mind. Ethnographic descriptions of mankind are regional or geographical, racial and migrational. See references in “Insight on the scriptures, origins of Nations.
Comparative linguistics: This is the area of intellectual interest to this Igbo relevance to Ujah’s postulation and Eze’s correction and condemnation. Dr. Ujah may have made some sweeping statements along the line of claim but those I attribute to some emotional exuberance in his conviction. May I ask, can anyone intentionally go wrong intellectually of the knew what is right? Dr. Ujah may not be wrong after all if he has positive references for his research work. Don’t be surprised that a lot of Nigerians including linguists get excited to discover the similarities of Yoruba and Igbo languages with the Jewish antecedents.
Just recently a book on how Yoruba and Igbo became different languages was launched. The author Bolaji Aremo was formerly of Obafemi Awolowo University. There are other writers who even go beyond Yoruba and Igbo by adding Hausa language similarities despite its extraneous phylum or family. Similarities in lexicostatistics both in basic and non basic vocabularies are available. Relevant statements come alive in unique forms e.g. “ Me nini ka ce” – Hausa and “ma nini ka iche” – Igbo meaning what do you think or what is your opinion. “ci gaba”- Hausa and “si gaba” – Igbo meaning advance, proceed or progress.
Basically we expect the experts like Dr. Eze to assist us in this area too. We want to know the way we are or have been in the area of languages. When non formal linguists come up with some thought provoking research findings, they are easily prejudiced. The formal linguists fail to realize according to Aubrey T De Vera that “prejudice which sees only what it pleases cannot see what is plain”.
Let us consider some of those words used by Dr. Ujah in his interview and the corrections cited by Dr. Eze discredited the word jenisisi in Igbo for Genesis used by Ujah as Hebrew, the Hebrew for the semantics go to the beginning.
The first book of the Septuagint (Pentateuch) is bereshith, according to Eze. Genesis is Greek but one may question whether the word Genesis in Greek or something similar was borrowed as a language universal from Hebrew or the other way round with similar semantics. Eze as an anthropological linguist will have to help us further with the root source.
However jenisisi in Igbo may have been a co-operation by its phonotactic similarity rather than semantics. Nevertheless, there were Grecian Jews even among scripture writers who spoke both Hebrew and Greek hence the possibility of vocabulary transformation from one tongue to another. Ibo land is not where God first made man and since there was no spontaneous generation there, everybody came from somewhere. Remember that the word Ibo as a name, race and language arguably existed in ancient time.
If as true, is it not possible that such an express equally existed? As a name “Ibo” existed because in 219 AD, there were some Babylonian Jews who went to Palestine to study in the academies under a Jewish Rabbi called Juda Ha Nasi. One of such Jews was by name Abba Ben Ibo. Ibo was Abba’s last or family name. For further story one this, see the research Watch Tower magazine of May 15 1998 under the caption “what is the Talmud.” So the name Ibo as a word or person and Igbo as a vernacular is very ancient. Remember also that Ajayi Crowther who coined the Ibo alphabets said in 1864 that Ibos are Igbos.
The Hebrew word “Bereshith” is Eze’s correction agreed, but I recall that Dr. Ujah used the expression “Mbido ni ishi.” In one of his details but then Eze has not read the book to see this. However the word Bereshith has no cognate with the Igbo language but can be pronounced as “Mbido ni ishi” when one stammers.
When speaking with difficulty, repeating sounds and syllables and making frequent pauses it can phonotactically broker. A curious syllogism can be language existed before 219AD as testified by the antecedents of Abba Ben Ibo mentioned earlier. Dr. Eze chronicled the Septuagint to be between 250 to 100BC. So these events were close in time. Do not forget that the new testament of the Bible was written long time after Jesus’ had left the earth. The word Ibo existed even before the compilation of the book.
Another cited by Eze as dissimilar is the Hebrew for eye as “ain” and the Igbo anya/enya. He was emphatic on the palatal nasal [NY] in Ujah’s explanation of Hebrew with anya in Igbo. Many see no wrong in that if the semantics are similar. After all the palatal nasal [NY] is a way of speech developed overtime. In the U.S New York natives- not immigrants pronounce the city as “Nyew Yorq” retaining the nasal palatial in question.
Another contention is the Igbo word isi and the Hebrew for head which is rosh, Arabic Ras. Ujah refers to the Bible for his similarity of the word. As a third party, the Hebrew “Rosh” is just a compounding or blending of two distinct root words in KWA languages of Yoruba and Ibo, or rather a Hebrew word factor that yields the phonemes of the words for head in Yoruba and Ibo. Applying clipping as a language universal “Ro/Sh” to give “Ori” – Yoruba for head “Ishi”, Igbo for head. Integrating them into Ro + Sh – RoSh, (Ori + Ishi -> Orishi sounds like Rosh). Another Hebrew word in this category is Ru’ach – Spirit which is upon clipping yields several vocabularies in Yoruba and Ibo languages. Further details see Bolaji Aremo – Yoruba and Igbo – 2009.
The next word is Hebrew “bara”, to create, which Eze has introduced to our advantage. Yes to create is “ike” in Igbo. In euphemistic etymology, the word blood has been used as creation both in the bible and the Koran. In several languages, blood is akin to life, even the word is used as to create, to mate to copulate especially in animals when paired. Take the Hebrew word bara, add a prefix vowel “o” and you obtain “obara” – blood in Igbo. Apply the clipping mode ba/ra and you get Yoruba word “ba” to mate and Igbo “ra” to mate or copulate.
The “ba” in Yoruba is “gba” in Igbo where “b” comes as “gb” as in the word Ibo and Igbo, Also “gba” is Igbo to copulate among animals. Another Hebrew word for blood is dam – Arabic dam also. When the word is clipped as Da/m or D/m because the letter “a” is an infix vowel , the root letter “m” is same in Igbo as “mme” – blood. It is called etymo-scrabbling. In the book “fundamentals of Islam” by P.J. Stewart, a college fellow at oxford, he posits that vowel elimination or addition leads to variation of words and meanings. Changes in the pattern of vowels are used together with prefixes, infixes and suffixes to indicate variations of meaning thus the Arabic root for example SLM gives “Salam - peace, (Hebrew Shalom, Igbo Challum- yield, Solum- respect or submit), Sallam – he grants peace, Islam-submission Muslim one who submits.
I wish to suggest to Eze as a scientist that 100% is sometimes unattainable even in nature. There is always a fraction and even precision machines are constantly calibrated to maintain a balance. So it is with panthenic totem in Igbo land. It differs as the Igbo dialects differentiate. Dr. Ujah’s efforts are not in vain as Eze may think. There are several other authors that have equally expressed Ujah’s postulation.
He cannot be crucified for his attempts to do what some linguists have refused to do. Just recently Professor Catherine Acholonu came up with evidence about the Jews. Hear her as published in daily sun of October 6 2008 - Jews inherited Ibo traditions. “When you find words with the same meaning, 3, 4, 5, 6, 10, 11 times between Igbo language and another language, it means there are some relationship. In comparative linguistics, most scholars do not explore the benefits of language
universals in their search for roots to similarities in lexicostatistics. Languages do not have to agree in syntax, grammar, phonotactics e.t.c. before they can be seen as similar, otherwise why are they separate languages.
The phonemes and semantics are strong attributes of word similarities. According to Dr. Bolaji Aremo, “orthography may differ due to modus loquendum (mode of speech)”. In Dr. Eze’s environment, he must have heard a child say “tea and biye” in request for tea and bread. The child’s mother understands “biye” to mean bread. Even in one’s family there can be differentiation in words.
Dr. Ujah’s claims are still subject to further investigation and Dr. Eze should please help rather than condemn. Quod erat demonstrandum (QED).
One Dr. Charles Ujah granted an interview on 19th August 2009 to the sun newspaper making claims on Ibo Jewish origin and that the Yoruba was founded by the Ibo with Oduduwa as Oduduwa (meaning last born in Ibo) e.t.c. His claims are based on the bible and probably linguistic and cultural similarities.
In a rejoinder of September 18th , 2009 published by the sun newspaper, one Dr. P.J Eze challenged and dismissed Dr. Ujah’s Claims as false and unintellectual.
He even called it ‘Red Herring’, but I call it Ujah’s postulation for the purpose of this exercise. However I attribute their intellectual face off to the philosophy of a late highlife maestro Rex Jim Lawson.
Hear his lyrics ‘Am Green turtle, me clever turtle, for clever turtle, me no get equal. For wisdom me sabi pass all animal, for clever, me clever pass everyone; for cunning turtle, that same green turtle, for green turtle me no hate anyone’. So this is Dr. Ujah’s red bearing and Dr. Eze’s green turtle. I thank both of them for their thought and efforts in teaching us new things. It is noteworthy to appreciate Dr. Eze’s intellectual set up over what he called a fiction from Dr. Ujah’s postulation on the Igbo race.
The Claim that Oduduwa means Odudunwa is not realistic especially to the Yorubas. It is euphemistic to think so just like the myth surrounding several other origins of nations. The false start in Dr. Eze’s rejoinder is his prognosis without complete diagnosis.
History: In his book” The Origin of Ibos”, Dr. Ujah mentioned historical traces which he equally obtained from different other writers and religious book. The book “sight on the scripture – a watch Tower research publication has some section on the origin of nations and I recommend that to Dr. Eze. There are several other postulants and references of the historical traces of Ibo’s having Jewish or Canaanite antecedents. One of such books is the Sephardic revolution by Yitzak David Israel, a Sephardic Jew.
Archaeology: I suggest that Dr. Eze should take a trip to Aguleri and some other Ibo enclaves and see the artefacts and other interesting discoveries pointing towards the direction of Dr. Ujah’s postulation. On September 25th, 2009, another postulant, Eng. Ayodabo Esuola , another Nigerian researcher claimed that the earliest Jews were Africans in his book “Tourism and Hidden Treasures of Nigeria”. Hope Dr. Eze would read this also before condemnation. In addition, how would Dr. Eze treat the issue of myth e.g. that the Ibo progenitor fell from the sky, the way Oduduwa is believed to have evolved? Corrected or condemned, one cannot erase the myth in people’s psyche which had come from several generations. Some archaeological findings are mentioned in Dr. Ujah’s book.
Ethnography: some of us are yet to see or read about some physical parameters mentioned at the time of creation, where colour, ethnicity, morphology, phylogeny. Some people today believe the theory of the egg before the chicken or that God first made the female who gave birth to the male. It may not be regional or place but all in the mind. Ethnographic descriptions of mankind are regional or geographical, racial and migrational. See references in “Insight on the scriptures, origins of Nations.
Comparative linguistics: This is the area of intellectual interest to this Igbo relevance to Ujah’s postulation and Eze’s correction and condemnation. Dr. Ujah may have made some sweeping statements along the line of claim but those I attribute to some emotional exuberance in his conviction. May I ask, can anyone intentionally go wrong intellectually of the knew what is right? Dr. Ujah may not be wrong after all if he has positive references for his research work. Don’t be surprised that a lot of Nigerians including linguists get excited to discover the similarities of Yoruba and Igbo languages with the Jewish antecedents.
Just recently a book on how Yoruba and Igbo became different languages was launched. The author Bolaji Aremo was formerly of Obafemi Awolowo University. There are other writers who even go beyond Yoruba and Igbo by adding Hausa language similarities despite its extraneous phylum or family. Similarities in lexicostatistics both in basic and non basic vocabularies are available. Relevant statements come alive in unique forms e.g. “ Me nini ka ce” – Hausa and “ma nini ka iche” – Igbo meaning what do you think or what is your opinion. “ci gaba”- Hausa and “si gaba” – Igbo meaning advance, proceed or progress.
Basically we expect the experts like Dr. Eze to assist us in this area too. We want to know the way we are or have been in the area of languages. When non formal linguists come up with some thought provoking research findings, they are easily prejudiced. The formal linguists fail to realize according to Aubrey T De Vera that “prejudice which sees only what it pleases cannot see what is plain”.
Let us consider some of those words used by Dr. Ujah in his interview and the corrections cited by Dr. Eze discredited the word jenisisi in Igbo for Genesis used by Ujah as Hebrew, the Hebrew for the semantics go to the beginning.
The first book of the Septuagint (Pentateuch) is bereshith, according to Eze. Genesis is Greek but one may question whether the word Genesis in Greek or something similar was borrowed as a language universal from Hebrew or the other way round with similar semantics. Eze as an anthropological linguist will have to help us further with the root source.
However jenisisi in Igbo may have been a co-operation by its phonotactic similarity rather than semantics. Nevertheless, there were Grecian Jews even among scripture writers who spoke both Hebrew and Greek hence the possibility of vocabulary transformation from one tongue to another. Ibo land is not where God first made man and since there was no spontaneous generation there, everybody came from somewhere. Remember that the word Ibo as a name, race and language arguably existed in ancient time.
If as true, is it not possible that such an express equally existed? As a name “Ibo” existed because in 219 AD, there were some Babylonian Jews who went to Palestine to study in the academies under a Jewish Rabbi called Juda Ha Nasi. One of such Jews was by name Abba Ben Ibo. Ibo was Abba’s last or family name. For further story one this, see the research Watch Tower magazine of May 15 1998 under the caption “what is the Talmud.” So the name Ibo as a word or person and Igbo as a vernacular is very ancient. Remember also that Ajayi Crowther who coined the Ibo alphabets said in 1864 that Ibos are Igbos.
The Hebrew word “Bereshith” is Eze’s correction agreed, but I recall that Dr. Ujah used the expression “Mbido ni ishi.” In one of his details but then Eze has not read the book to see this. However the word Bereshith has no cognate with the Igbo language but can be pronounced as “Mbido ni ishi” when one stammers.
When speaking with difficulty, repeating sounds and syllables and making frequent pauses it can phonotactically broker. A curious syllogism can be language existed before 219AD as testified by the antecedents of Abba Ben Ibo mentioned earlier. Dr. Eze chronicled the Septuagint to be between 250 to 100BC. So these events were close in time. Do not forget that the new testament of the Bible was written long time after Jesus’ had left the earth. The word Ibo existed even before the compilation of the book.
Another cited by Eze as dissimilar is the Hebrew for eye as “ain” and the Igbo anya/enya. He was emphatic on the palatal nasal [NY] in Ujah’s explanation of Hebrew with anya in Igbo. Many see no wrong in that if the semantics are similar. After all the palatal nasal [NY] is a way of speech developed overtime. In the U.S New York natives- not immigrants pronounce the city as “Nyew Yorq” retaining the nasal palatial in question.
Another contention is the Igbo word isi and the Hebrew for head which is rosh, Arabic Ras. Ujah refers to the Bible for his similarity of the word. As a third party, the Hebrew “Rosh” is just a compounding or blending of two distinct root words in KWA languages of Yoruba and Ibo, or rather a Hebrew word factor that yields the phonemes of the words for head in Yoruba and Ibo. Applying clipping as a language universal “Ro/Sh” to give “Ori” – Yoruba for head “Ishi”, Igbo for head. Integrating them into Ro + Sh – RoSh, (Ori + Ishi -> Orishi sounds like Rosh). Another Hebrew word in this category is Ru’ach – Spirit which is upon clipping yields several vocabularies in Yoruba and Ibo languages. Further details see Bolaji Aremo – Yoruba and Igbo – 2009.
The next word is Hebrew “bara”, to create, which Eze has introduced to our advantage. Yes to create is “ike” in Igbo. In euphemistic etymology, the word blood has been used as creation both in the bible and the Koran. In several languages, blood is akin to life, even the word is used as to create, to mate to copulate especially in animals when paired. Take the Hebrew word bara, add a prefix vowel “o” and you obtain “obara” – blood in Igbo. Apply the clipping mode ba/ra and you get Yoruba word “ba” to mate and Igbo “ra” to mate or copulate.
The “ba” in Yoruba is “gba” in Igbo where “b” comes as “gb” as in the word Ibo and Igbo, Also “gba” is Igbo to copulate among animals. Another Hebrew word for blood is dam – Arabic dam also. When the word is clipped as Da/m or D/m because the letter “a” is an infix vowel , the root letter “m” is same in Igbo as “mme” – blood. It is called etymo-scrabbling. In the book “fundamentals of Islam” by P.J. Stewart, a college fellow at oxford, he posits that vowel elimination or addition leads to variation of words and meanings. Changes in the pattern of vowels are used together with prefixes, infixes and suffixes to indicate variations of meaning thus the Arabic root for example SLM gives “Salam - peace, (Hebrew Shalom, Igbo Challum- yield, Solum- respect or submit), Sallam – he grants peace, Islam-submission Muslim one who submits.
I wish to suggest to Eze as a scientist that 100% is sometimes unattainable even in nature. There is always a fraction and even precision machines are constantly calibrated to maintain a balance. So it is with panthenic totem in Igbo land. It differs as the Igbo dialects differentiate. Dr. Ujah’s efforts are not in vain as Eze may think. There are several other authors that have equally expressed Ujah’s postulation.
He cannot be crucified for his attempts to do what some linguists have refused to do. Just recently Professor Catherine Acholonu came up with evidence about the Jews. Hear her as published in daily sun of October 6 2008 - Jews inherited Ibo traditions. “When you find words with the same meaning, 3, 4, 5, 6, 10, 11 times between Igbo language and another language, it means there are some relationship. In comparative linguistics, most scholars do not explore the benefits of language
universals in their search for roots to similarities in lexicostatistics. Languages do not have to agree in syntax, grammar, phonotactics e.t.c. before they can be seen as similar, otherwise why are they separate languages.
The phonemes and semantics are strong attributes of word similarities. According to Dr. Bolaji Aremo, “orthography may differ due to modus loquendum (mode of speech)”. In Dr. Eze’s environment, he must have heard a child say “tea and biye” in request for tea and bread. The child’s mother understands “biye” to mean bread. Even in one’s family there can be differentiation in words.
Dr. Ujah’s claims are still subject to further investigation and Dr. Eze should please help rather than condemn. Quod erat demonstrandum (QED).
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