ABSTRACT
By Victor Paul Unoh
Development of rural roads brings multiple socio-economic benefits to the rural areas which form a strong base of the National economy and it is a powerful instrument for the socio-economic transformation of the villages. Awareness of these benefits and their evaluation plays a pivotal role for providing all weather rural roads. The quickly visible of these benefits are increased mobility, increased productivity, saving in cost of transportation of men and material and speedier flow of commodities beside, changes in the life style.
Introduction
.1 Rural roads provide basic inputs for all-round socio-economic development of the rural areas. The provision and construction of roads and road links brings multiple socio-economic benefits to the rural areas and results in forming a strong backbone for the agro-based economy. The importance of the rural roads has been emphasized in various plan documents.
I am writing this letter to the notice-of-all-Concern, the bad condition of Urutin»Eyede»Otieke»Nsie roads in-Okobo-LGA, Akwa Ibom State. For the last four months-of-rainfall the road has been almost impassable. We have made several complaints. But the road has been neglected for a long time-by-succeeding-Government. The surface of the road is broken by the heavy rains. There are heaps of road metal on both sides of the road. They leave only little room in the middle.
The first showers of-2016 rain season put things in worst shape. The residents are in deep distress on this account and have repeatedly expressed their resentment through Press as well as through written complaints but nothing has been done so far-by-the-Akwa Ibom State-PDP-Government.. So the road gets flooded even after a slight rain. There are potholes on the road.
“As a consequence of the perceived neglect of the area by the government and the relevant agencies, the lives of the indigenes and the residents alike have become deplorable.
“Churches’ population and enrollment in schools in the community have been on a steady decline because of inaccessibility and poor state of the existing roads.
“More so, businesses in our community have been seriously hampered due to the inability of vehicles to access the community with goods or for the vehicles to come in and purchase the farm produce from the community.
The broken culvert-at-Eyede-Offi is also a danger for vehicles especially at night. This road serves a large number of houses/residents in this area. There is a lot of stress for teachers-and-corpers posted-to-work-in-public-primary-and Communty-secondary-schools Offi-Oro-at any time of the day. The importance of a good road network is one of the bedrocks that drives development through increased investment and economic activities. There was an inspection team-sent from MOW,Uyo on-August15,2015 to-access-this-road, a couple of years back and the-commissioner-for-works-Mr-Ephraim-Inyang assured that the road would be repaired. However, the roads still remain in the bad condition. The importance of the rural roads has been emphasized in various plan documents. In Okobo, 40 per cent of the villages having a population of between 1000-1500 persons-dont-have-any-goodroads. . Moreover the importance of providing rural roads is hardly undermined in the context of Akwa Ibom State- economic and social goals.
The Government has nevertheless made significant efforts to improve the road situation as seen in the increased amounts allocated to the sector in-the-AkwaIbomState2016-appropriation. Hence it is the fundamental right of the citizens to have better roads for their vehicles.
This problem has reached at its extreme and is, consequently, creating panic among citizens. I hope that the concerned authorities must look into the matter seriously and must take some prompt and necessary action to overcome this problem.
Victor Unoh([email protected])National-President,OtiekeOffi-Youths-Development-Association.Okobo-LGA.AkwaIbomState.
