The standard criteria for decisions on infrastructural deployment
include need, available resources, competing demands for finite
resources, alignment with related infrastructure, incubatory foundation
for progressive deployment, social benefits, political patronage,
economic benefits, minimization of stress and hardship for the citizens,
potentials for stimulating overall economic development, balancing
considerations, replacement of obsolete infrastructure, need to embrace
emerging and efficient technology, etc, etc. When viewed from an
objective prism and against the backdrop of the itemized criteria above,
it is long overdue to replace the Niger Bridge at Onitsha, which has
verifiably and universally been identified as a deathtrap. This bridge
was constructed in 1963, and is the ONLY link between the South-East of
Nigeria and the rest of the country (towards the West). This bridge
serves as the ONLY access point to Anambra, Imo, Abia, Ebonyi, Enugu,
Akwa Ibom, Cross River, Benue, and Plateau States, when you approach
from Lagos, and, indeed, all the states that formerly constituted the
Western and mid-Western Regions, as well as from Abuja and segments of
the North.
Continue reading after the cut...
