Eket People Carpet FG Over Shabby East-West Road Project

The people of Eket in Akwa Ibom state have risen in total condemnation over the shabby handling of the Eket section of the East-West road, describing it as an open cheat on the people of the area.

In a strongly worded letter addressed to the Minister of Niger Delta affairs, Pastor Usang Usang, the Eket people through their apex socio-cultural organization, Ekid People’s Union, rejected the alleged fraudulent conversion of the Eket axis of the road to a simple carriage way.

“Eket people totally reject the palliative rehabilitation of Eket-Oron road within Eket Township which Gitto Construction Company has been struggling to re-surface at a snail speed for the last two years”.

The letter endorsed by Professor Asindi Asindi, the national president of Ekid People’s Union, stated that the Eket people cannot accept the replacement of the dualization of the road with a single road in the Eket axis.

The people maintained that Eket, which produces 50% of the oil revenue in the country, could be so shabbily treated in infrastructural development programmes of the federal government.

“Our people continue to remain peaceful but Eket people must not be taken for granted in perpetuity. Note that Eket youths had initially protested by blocking the weird rehabilitative road work, but were advised to withdraw for the sake of peace”.

The Ekid People’s Union recounted that; “in a memo dated November 26, 2014, the director of infrastructure, Ministry of Niger delta affairs had conveyed the intention of government to do a bypass from Ikot Usoekong village where the East-West road had ceased to progress into Eket”.

They maintained that the so-called by-pass appears to be an open cheat since the memo did not specify the direction of the by-pass.

The Ekid People’s Union wanted the federal government to without delay, re-commence the immediate “appropriate and undiluted construction of Eket segment of the designed East-West road”, maintaining that the road provided a classic example of how the federal government has been unfair to the people of Eket.