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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