Travelogue: From Ekpoma to Benin with pain

I write this material with a profound sense of pain, a hapless witness to a history of degeneration, and painful descent into a life of near worthlessness and hopelessness, a sustained devaluation of the 70s and 80s quality of living which has become a referenced nostalgia.

I write in honour of the voiceless and the traumatised people of Edo state of Esan, Etsako and Uhumonde extraction, especially those living in the propinquity of Ekpoma and Ehor axis, whose means of livelihood have been denuded and totally ruined by an express road that has become a curse, people who die or see death daily, people for whom frustration has become even an acceptable standard of living because the government has left them behind or totally abandoned them to atrophy slowly.

I write in recollection of the beauty of life, growing up in Ishan and attending one of the best secondary schools in the old Bendel state, Annunciation Catholic College, Irrua, and being privileged to go into the University of Benin for undergraduate studies. Life was good. There was water, electricity and the roads were well maintained. One could travel to any part of Ishan at any particular time, day and night, and evil was hardly a consideration.

Reflections and recollections can make a smile break on the face. Such recall can be so overwhelming and really therapeutic, living in the present a life once lived but which has now receded to the realm of the dodos, a life fabled into existence but which once upon a time, was reality.

How can Esan land become a fabled reality to me, a native son, who grew his wisdom teeth in the village and can lay claim to knowing some of the mores and deep secrets of the people?

Pain! Lots of pain!! Life has hardly grown here ever since instead, a shameful diminishment, forlornness and recourse to primitivity, sheer wickedness and mindless humiliation of a whole race, has been steadily elevated.

I am seated in this Big Joe bus, which is more of a contraption than a vehicle that should actually be on the road. A friend is by my side but he doesn’t know the storm going on inside of me but which almost immediately is finding an expression through my nose as it is beginning to run immediately from dust and the threatening environment.

The journey from Ekpoma to Benin was a dash in those days, a quick trip that cost very little but not any more. The road is broken extensively and completely dilapidated. This road built in the 70s was one of the very best; they called it an express road even when that name was an overfit. The road is in ruins and one can say it has nearly assumed the ignominy of wreck and devastation.

One part of the road is completely taken over by trucks or trailers, and the trailer line on this very day was close to Ehor, which is midway between Ishan and Benin City. That is the way we used to estimate the journey but is actually about 22km. Just imagine the horror of fighting for space with angry trailer drivers for all of 22km!

Some of these vehicles are trying to make their way to Okpella, to the cement factories owned by either Dangote or BUA. Some of the trucks should be heading to other parts of the country including Abuja. But they are stuck on this disaster called a road that looks more like an entrapment than a road. Some of the vehicles have also succumbed to the harshness and cruelty of the road, broken down with help very far away. Yet some others simply just tumble over and deposit that load and sometimes containers by the roadside. It is a chaos that is playing out between Ekpoma and Benin and the situation could boil over very soon.

In my growing years, I used to be very angry with trailer drivers because of the menace they cause on the roads, because of their speed, and sometimes some accidents that could be very fatal. But growing up has come with some more understanding, that the vehicles wasting on the road are peoples’ investments, their goods, including perishable items; they are wasting because the government they voted into power over time filled their hopes with sawdust.

Some guy lamented that Governor Godwin Obaseki has let Ishan people down. I found myself defending him in spite of myself. Ishan is at the centre of an orchestrated neglect and rot. The major roads leading to Ishan — Benin to Ewu, Ewu through Auchi to Lokoja and Abuja, and the road from Uromi to Agbor — are all federal government roads. It is the failure of governance at the federal level that has brought a lot of shade to the state. Unfortunately, some unnecessary distractions from his administration have not helped his case at all.

I am aware that the contract for the dualisation of the Benin-Ishan-Abuja road was awarded under former President Goodluck Jonathan’s administration but the contract was hardly funded. Under this administration, the road has enjoyed no attention at all despite its strategic importance to vehicular movements. The story ahead is not very good because a government that lives a life of borrowing has predicated its next year’s budget on what it can scrounge from people, and has no provisions for infrastructural development.

The story gets even worse. The wait for any intervening amelioration may be much longer. In the past, efforts were focused on dualisation but with the road having failed completely, only a complete reconstruction will return life to that part of the state. Business and social activities on that route have to be restored. The people have to be reassured that they are part of the state and part of this country.

But I feel a lot of premonition because life has been politicised in our nation, even truth is politicised, to the extent that a failed government will want to paint pictures that don’t exist, pictures quite antithetical to the lived experience of the people.

This is not just a story of gloom and doom. The time has come for the truth to win. I am old enough to know that this government does not have the money to embark on massive road construction across the states of the federation. But something needs to happen. The government must confess that truth and spruce up its image to attract organisations that are ready to participate in public-private partnership (PPP) projects. The government must do documentation with sincerity to protect participants from unnecessary litigation. This is one strand of development in most parts of the world. People must be able to collect their money once an investment has been made.

Unfortunately, this government has spent nearly eight years pursuing shadows and sowing untruths, and it is the lot of the people to suffer pain and frustration for not using their vote wisely.