Intergenerational road network in Anambra State

SIR:

How the Anambrarians are delighted to witness the dynamics and rapid game change in terms of infrastructure is better gauged from street to college conversations and at newspaper vendor stands. They are stories and conversations about network of tardy and Dubai- London type of roads that will outlive this generation. The indigenes in the streets and market places have kept comparing the Governor Charles Soludo’s road tech as equal to Ngige’s if not better.

The people are now voicing out their hearty appreciation of the Soludo’s envisioned livable and prosperous homeland, which among many indices is captured by the state’s current regenerative high tech road networks. They also, in comparism, see the ‘ product’ in governance as the result of resilience, excellence and critical thinking in deployment of the Public, Private Community Partnership ( PPCP).

The sprouting of roads in every nooks and corners of the state is attributable but not limited to the initiative of the governor to involve individuals and communities in development projects. This has yielded fruits in many sectors including the massive road multiplication and replication in urban and rural areas. He himself was in the lead of these individual efforts before he became governor. Before he became governor, he had built a 4.5- kilometre road in his community, Isuofia in Aguata Local Government Area. That philanthropic spirit has galvanised and rekindled him to involve wealthy individual collaborators in governance in this period of global economic dawn turn. The fruit of this initiative is multiplying with the commissioning of 11km of newly constructed roads in Abatete, courtesy of the community's private sector initiative. The roads built by "illustrious sons" of Abatete, demonstrated the potential of Public Private Community Partnerships in infrastructural development.

PPCP is working and adding democratic and governance dividends, hence, the partnership is spreading in many communities. Apart from the governor’s initiative and Abatete model, there are cases of such initiatives in Neni, Awgbu, Umueri and so on.

Added to the motley of high tech roads built by the government, the governor has entered into an era of commissioning rendition and paparazzi from one local government area to another.

This includes commissioning of a 500- meter road built in Umueri, Anambra East Local Government Area by Chief Josephat Onwualor, which is another evidence of the efficacy of private- public partnership in driving community development. This is replicated in Awgbu, Orumba North Local Government where Chief Alloysus Okoyenta built about 400 meters road in his community, thus, emphasising that fixing the state requires the people and communities in consonance with the vision of making the state a livable and prosperous homeland. This is because even the “entire 2024 budget will not be enough to fix all the roads within a single local government when about 98 per cent of the state's resources are in private hands, while the government controls only two per cent.”