Sunday 12 June 2016

Dead yet alive:

AgborTabi patches up Babadjou-B’da stretch
Presidency contemplated airlifting the former minister’s corpse through the Besongabang airstrip before dropping the “unsafe” plan to instead rehabilitate two roads; the Babadjou-Bamenda and Kumba-Mamfe stretches.
By Franklin S. Bayen
The semblance of road maintenance on the grossly degraded stretch of road between Babadjou in the West Region and Bamenda in the North West Region was meant to ease traffic for mourners travelling to Mamfe in the South West Region for the funeral of the late Professor Peter AgborTabi, a source has told us.
                The presidency footed the bill of the patchwork for an undisclosed amount to alleviate the travel nightmares of dignitaries attending the funeral of the deceased Assistant Secretary General at the Presidency of The Republic, the usually reliable source said.
                “The Presidency knows there will be heavy traffic on that road and big men will be travelling for AgborTabi’s funeral, so a special disbursement was made for the hasty maintenance,” the source said. “The government even contemplated airlifting AgborTabi’s body to the Besongabang airstrip, but an inspection mission found it unfit for safe landing.”
                Ongoing patchwork has nothing to do with the rehabilitation of Babadjou-Bamenda, part of the larger Yaounde-Bafoussam-Bamenda overhaul announced last year, we learned.
                Hundreds of people were expected to travel to Mamfe for Tabi’s funeral. Mourners were advised on his funeral programme to preferably use the Yaounde-Bamenda-Mamfe itinerary.

                The Kumba-Mamfe road, Tabi’s dream project since he first entered the government in 1994, was finally used to ferry the ASG’s corpse. Portions of the road were tarred, and some bad spots rehabilitated.
                Manyu indigenes had pressed on the authorities in Yaounde to consider using the stretch even if it is too far-flung through Douala, while Yaounde-Bafoussam-Bamenda-Mamfe is shorter and more realistic. They argued that AgborTabi was minister from the South West and his funeral hearse had to be seen by the populations of major towns in the region.
                For a couple of weeks, roadmen and engineers of the Ministry of Public Works labored on degraded portions of the road and potholes from Babadjou, just outside Mbouda, past Kombou in the West Region and into Santa in the North West, a distance of about two dozen kilometres.
That stretch has made road transport a nightmare for travellers to and from Bamenda.
                Seeing laterite, not tar was being used in the road maintenance, some residents of Bamenda sensed foul play and cried foul, thinking it was a false start of the announced tarring.
                “Brown soil used to rehabilitate tar,” a social media activist screamed on Facebook, with a picture of a heap of seawall on the road. Some degraded portions are receiving a coat of gravel, though without tar to compact it.
                Angered by the poor state of the road, considered as acute government neglect, opposition SDF Chairman, Ni John FruNdi stormed the tollgate run by the Ministry of Public Works at Santa at the entrance to Bamenda several months ago and chased away tollgate agents there. Tollgate gadgets were also knocked off. Collections at the station have never resumed.
                In an August 2015 story, government-owned Cameroon Tribune reported the ministries of Public Works and Economy agreed to rehabilitate the Yaounde-Bafoussam-Bamenda road and received the backing of the World Bank and African Development Bank to the cost of nearly 120 billion FCFA.
But pending the complete funding for the project, the government resorted to take what it called “emergency rehabilitation” of the Ebebda-Bafoussam and Babadjou-Bamenda stretches at the cost of nearly two billion FCFA and expected to last 10 months.
                Mag Company Ltd was allotted the Babadjou-Bamenda lot, but the present maintenance is neither the said emergency rehabilitation nor the earmarked overhaul with World Bank and AfDB funding.



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