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From Uchenna Inya, Abakaliki
The Federal Road Maintenance Agency (FERMA) in Ebonyi State, has commenced maintenance of Abakaliki/Enugu/Cross River border highway under its Routine and Preventive Maintenance Work Programme (RPMWP).
The agency commenced the routine maintenance yesterday.
The Federal Road Maintenance Engineer, Ebonyi Field Office of the agency, Akinyemi Ojo, said the programme was in line with the renewed hope agenda of the federal government in providing food for all, security, and safety for travelers.
He further said that the move was to preserve roads from deteriorating and enhance overall safety and motorability.
Ojo maintained that the programme will eliminate overgrown vegetation on the road, improve visibility and deter security threats encountered by motorists.
“This routine maintenance is a maintenance-based initiative to attend to federal roads for continuous assessment, with the primary aim of preserving the roads from deterioration and equally enhancing overall safety and motorability.
“The core objective is to preserve the structural life of federal road assets and motorability, which is to maintain the roads and critical corridors in a safe motorable condition, which allows us to patch the potholes. Three major things we are actually doing is vegetation control, desilting of hydraulic structures which is the culvers drains and the rest.
“And, thirdly, to patch potholes, not large potholes because it is a routine maintenance. We assume that the road is in a motorable condition, but, in order to preserve the life of that road. This will enhance and improve the travel time and reduce road traffic.
“It will eliminate overgrown vegetation and improve visibility and deter security threats encountered by motorists.
“After clearing the grass, motorists can see physically. Then hoodlums will not have an area to hide to attack the motorists. So, this is one of the primary aims of the programme”, he said.
Ojo added that the programme will generate direct employment and empower households within the host communities of the border road.
He also said that it will mitigate flooding through Sustainable Drainage Systems (SUDs) and desilting.
Some residents of Onuebonyi and Igbeagu communities on the border road lamented loss of lives on the road and commended the agency for the maintenance work. One of them, Sylvester Odom, said over 30 lives have been lost on the road within two years.
“We have lost many lives on this Onuebonyi axis of this border road. And, you can see, there are many potholes here and motorists have been having accidents on the road, especially those of them that are not familiar with the road.
“We have lost over 30 lives on this particular axis of the road and it is a very busy road. It is a trans-saharan road. It connects the Northern part of the country, Cameroon, Benin Republic, and other African countries. We are happy that the federal government has started working on the road”, he said.
