Rivers State Governor, Sir Siminalayi Fubara, has said the bad state of the East-West road must become history.
Fubara was speaking when the Senate Adhoc Committee on East-West Road and Eleme-Ogoni paid a courtesy call on him in Port Harcourt on Wednesday.
The Committee was led by its chairman, Senator Abdul Ningi.
He urged the Senate Committee to ensure the commencement of reconstruction work on the road in order to end the intractable suffering experienced by the people using the road.
Fubara recalled years of federal government deductions from the FAAC account to fund critical national projects and wondered why the East-West Road was never captured and funded, especially when it leads to locations where essential national economic assets are operational.
The governor emphasised that the most deplorable sections are not more than 20 kilometres from the Eleme junction interchange bridge into Ogoniland on the East-West Road.
According to him, the most deplorable sections of the road can not be too expensive for the federal government to handle.
Sir Fubara urged the Committee not to end their activities with only field assessment of the state of the road, conducting public hearings and submission of their reports but to push further to see to the commencement and completion of reconstruction work on the road.
Commenting, Senator Ningi informed the governor that their visit was predicated on a motion adopted by the Senate concerning the state of the road.
He said they needed to physically assess the current condition of the road preparatory for a public hearing to come later, which will assist in the reconstruction of the road to the required standard.
The governor later took the Ad-hoc Committee on a visit to the failed portions of the Eleme section of the road.
