The Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) has a fixation with 60 years. At the height of its heady days in power, it challenged its Chi (personal god) to a wrestling contest, vowing that it would rule Nigeria for minimum of 60 years. We know how the story ended. The Chi gave the boastful party a thunderous pin-fall. So great was the fall that not all the king’s horses nor all the king’s men could put Humpty Dumpty together again.
The Sugar Candy Mountain of 60 years ended in 16 years, with the bloody nose Nigerians gave PDP at the polls through the All Progressives Congress (APC) in 2015.
Since that time, however, PDP has not stopped fantasizing about 60 years. Addressing the media recently on the 5th year anniversary of its nemesis, President Muhammadu Buhari, in power, the party, through Kola Ologbondiyan, its National Publicity Secretary, said the President and his team “have taken our country 60 years backward.” Lol. What a neurosis with 60 years.
When the PDP lies, it speaks its mother tongue, its natural language, “for he is a liar and father of all lies.” The party has become willfully blind and deaf to all progress going on in the country.
Back to English Literature class in secondary school, we were taught what an oxymoron was: figure of speech in which apparently contradictory terms appear in conjunction. That is why we want to examine the ‘good setback’ the Buhari government has given Nigeria, taking her back 60 years, according to the PDP.
There are minimum of 600 road projects going on in different parts of the country today. What a good setback. The Buhari government is doing what Napoleon couldn’t do, and so, it is taking the country ‘backward.’
Hear the story of the Bodo-Bonny Road. It had been on the drawing board for 48 years. It is supposed to be the first link road between Bonny, where the country’s cash cow, the Nigerian Liquefied Natural Gas (NLNG) project is sited, and the rest of Rivers State. But no access, except by boats and helicopters.
For almost five decades, the Bodo-Bonny Road was only in the realm of imagination. Till Muhammadu Buhari came. Work commenced on the $333 million project in 2017, and estimated time of completion is 2022.
The 38 kilometers long road runs through low lying marshland swampy terrain, with many culverts, two creek bridges of about 500 meters in length, and a major river bridge of about 713 meters length. Yet, Buhari is building it, in conjunction with NLNG. What a backward movement!
We have said a lot about the Second Niger Bridge. And we shall never stop talking about it. The project makes our heart to beat Du du ke, du du ke, each time we remember it.
The first bridge was built in 1965, and is the major gateway to the land of the wise men-the East. But the sole bridge has become grossly inadequate, and people virtually see hell on it at major festive times.
Government after government had built a new bridge-with their mouths- particularly since we returned to democratic rule in 1999. Whenever elections approached, and they needed the votes of the people, they would take cutlasses, hoes and shovels, go to the site of the bridge, and pretend to be digging the ground. Once elections were over, and they had got the votes they wanted, it’s goodbye basket, I’ve carried all my apples.
