Delta State Governor, Rt. Hon. Sheriff Oborevwori, on Tuesday underscored the importance of the East-West Road to the economic development of the oil-rich Niger Delta Region.
Oborevwori, while playing host to the Senate Adhoc Committee investigating the non-completion of the East-West Road at Government House, Asaba, said the road which connects the South-South, South-East and Western parts of the country remained in a bad state and uncompleted despite several attempts to complete it.
The Governor said the region which produces the highest wealth of the nation should be given better treatment by ensuring that the road was completed.
“The East-West Road is very strategic to all of us in this region. With what we have contributed to the nation in the past and with the region contributing the highest wealth to the nation today, it is proper that attention is paid to this region,” Oborevwori said.
The Governor said he was happy about the visit of the Senate Adhoc Committee because governors of the South-South region had collectively agreed in one of their National Economic Council meetings to work on the East-West Road.
“My appeal to you is that you fast-track whatever investigation and inspection you are to carry out, so that by the beginning of the next dry season, work can commence on the road,” Oborevwori said.
“So your coming is a good one and I know that we will enjoy a lot of benefits if the East-West Road is completed because apart from oil producing states, we also have agrarian states in this region,” he said.
Earlier, Chairman of the Senate Adhoc Committee, Senator Abdul Ningi, who led the team, had told Governor Oborevwori that they were in Delta State on a fact-finding mission on why successive administrations had failed to complete the East-West Road despite the enormous funds appropriated and disbursed for the road.
He further told Oborevwori that the committee would ascertain the level of work so far done on the East-West Road with a view to determining whether the work done was commensurate with what the Federal Government had spent on the road.
The Senator also pointed out that the East-West Road was a strategic and critical road infrastructure which cuts across the South-South geopolitical zone of the country and so cannot continue to suffer unnecessary delay because of its strategic importance to the economy of the people in the South-South.
“It is imperative to understand that the East-West Road occupies a very central nerve in this country and the Senate felt that the road has not gotten adequate attention that it deserves over time,” Ningi said.
“We are going to take a critical exercise of the entire stretch of the road and have some discussions with stakeholders because that road should not be in this condition that it is at the moment.
“That road shouldn’t be in that condition. We believe that there is a missing link and it is our view that this committee will be able to identify the missing link so that the road would be fixed,” he said.
