Warri And The Street Wise Governor: The Story Of The Turn Around Maintenance

 

By Monday Uwagwu

At his inauguration into office as the fifth elected leader of the state, Delta State Governor, Rt. Hon Sheriff Oborevwori, vowed before an ensemble of dignitaries from the four major winds of the state, to prioritise the retrofitting of Warri and its environs.

Of course, he stressed that giving effect to his vow in this direction would be without prejudice to the development needs of the other parts of the state.

In making the vow, Oborevwori was obviously motivated by the fact that Warri, once the cynosure of all eyes, for strong economic, recreational and competitive sports activities, had walked into the valley, metaphorically speaking, and become, on that account, an ignoble shadow of itself.

At peak, the Warri Port, Warri Refining and Petrochemical Company, Delta Boatyard and legion crude oil mining and service companies formed part of the enviable landscape of the great city.

In terms of recreation, the city boasted such top-notch facilities as the Shell Club, Ogunu, and multiple hotels, motels and standard eateries. Night life boomed with many clubs staging live musical performances every weekend, and the ubiquitous oil firms lubricated the local economy, thanks to their petrol dollars.

Sports, especially football, also flourished at the various playgrounds in the city and the then Warri Township Stadium. Mcdermot, a prime local football club linked to the construction company by that name, flourished, challenging the title prospects of its giant rivals as Bendel Insurance Football Club, Benin; Post and Telegraph (P and T) Football Club, Enugu; Enugu Rangers International Football Club,  Enugu; Raccah Rovers Football Club of Kano, Alyufsalam  Rocks of Ilorin and the International Investment and Credit Corporation (IICC) Football Club, Ibadan, which was the first Nigerian club side to win an international trophy.

But all of these ebbed into insignificance following the onset of a horde of inclement factors, not least of which was grave insecurity. As a result, Warri went down south, so to speak, and remained in that state of socio-economic depression for long, thus eventually becoming an urban slum.

Well, to the relief of virtually every stakeholder, the situation appears to be headed in the right position of effective reversal, following plethora initiatives so far taken by the state government, especially under the watch of Rt. Hon. Sheriff Oborevwori ,subsisting Governor of the state. These initiatives have found eloquent expression in the following themes and subjects.

(A) REHABILITATION OF WARRI TSTADIUM

Warri, for quite long, has always been home to a variety of sports, especially football, which manifested its eminence in the comity of sports stakeholders, via the now defunct Mcdermot Football Club. In an attempt to encourage recreation and reverse the trend of  the great ebb in the tempo and quality of popular  sports engagement, successive administrations, particularly that of Dr. Emmanuel Uduaghan, made strenuous efforts to retrofit the existing Township Stadium in the city to a modern facility, worthy of its name.

However, even with the best of intentions and the missionary zeal with which the vision was put into effect, the stadium, though greatly improved on the existing standard, had issues which denied it the right to host events during the soccer junior World Cup held in the country; the emerging challenge of excess flooding of the neighbourhood which negatively impacted the stadium itself, had become an ulcerous challenge that needed urgent potent treatment.

And that was where the Oborevwori administration had to come in.

Realising the negative import of the flooding challenge to the tempo and quality of sports activities in the area, the Oborevwori administration went into an agreement for the complete overhaul and retrofitting of the entire facility. The dream of the government in this direction is to ultimately make the facility a world-standard one capable of hosting even the most extensive of sports meets.

Governor Oborevwori had consistently spoken of the desire of the administration to restore sports to its prime of place in the city via the total retrofitting of the facility on which active reconstruction work has already started Ultimately, it is expected the stadium would be  restored to an amazing facility and would augment the existing stadia in Asaba and Ozoro in hosting major local and even national and international  sports .

(B)RELEASE OF FUNDS TO WUEDA

IN order to retrofit the city of Warri and its environs, the Delta State Government, under the watch of then governor Ifeanyi  Okowa, established the Warri/ Uvwie/Effurun Development Agency (WUEDA). This was a Special Purpose Vehicle (SPV) devoted to the comprehensive development of the strategic impacted communities, especially their infrastructural rebirth and the restoration of the overall health of the local environment, especially the physical environment and its sanitation.

Latching on the initiative of the Okowa government with regard to WUEDA, which it inherited at inauguration on May 29, 2023, the Oborevwori administration consolidated the gains of its predecessor administration by releasing N7b to the agency for the purpose of executing the second phase of its strategic storm water drainage in the locality.

This move, which received state-wide acclaim from stakeholders, has now enabled the agency to rev the engine of its effective operations a notch higher, and the general expectation is that it would, running on its mandate, significantly check the incidence of excessive flooding of the area and raise the tempo of is environmental sanitation to an appreciable level to restore environmental dignity to the vicinity.

(B) THE WARRI FLYOVER BRIDGES

Realising this, the Oborevwor administration, moved promptly to initiate and sign a comprehensive agreement with  German construction giant, Julius Berger, for the building of three flyover bridges, a clover leaf bridge, access roads and two pedestrian bridges in Warri/ Effurun axis in Uvwie local government area.

Rolled into one, all of the projects cost the state government about N78billion, and are expected to be delivered in 27 months from the date of the contract agreement.

Following the agreement, the construction firm has since rolled onto site and, as it was assured at the historic ground breaking event held on October 27, 2023, real construction work has since began.  And this, quite expectedly, has earned public acclaim of Deltans from across all divides.

At the ground breaking event held in Warri, the governor said, inter alia, that the project  entails the “study, design and construction of Road Expansion and improvement works on the section of DSC/NPA Expressway from Effurun Roundabout to DSC Roundabout on the Effurun /Patani (East/West ) Highway, including construction of a ¾ Clover Leaf Interchange at the existing Effurun Flyover as well as two pedestrian bridges in Effurun, Uvwie Local Government Area; Design and construction of Flyover Bridge at PTI Junction along the Effurun/Patani (East/West) Highway, Effurun in Uvwie Local Government Area, and the design and construction of Flyover at DSC Roundabout, along the Effurun/Patani (East/West) Highway, Effurun in Uvwie Local Government Area.

The undertaking of the Oborevwori administration in this regard has great significance, not only on account of the promptness with which it was initiated and sealed-just four months after it was inaugurated into office- the choice of a world-grade contracting firm as well as the huge cost involved (it is by far the single most ambitious of all of the development initiatives of the government in terms of not just the scale of work but also the single most expensive in terms of funds).

The development also attests to the consistence of actions with regard to the project on the part of the administration, given that it took less than five months to conceive the giant undertaking and when actual construction, for which the contractor had been adequately mobilized, was started by Julius Berger. The projects also draw great importance with regard to their nature-roads and bridges being the established forerunner of all other development infrastructure ever known to man. In this sense, they are expected, over the long haul, to attract and retain other development projects across the infrastructure spectrum. On delivery, the projects are also expected to enhance access, upgrade the environment and significantly boost the local economy, to the relief of stakeholders, particularly residents.

In all, the flyover bridges, roads, ¾ clover leaf bridge and the pedestrian bridges represent a hypodermic effort by the administration with regard to its dream of an effective re-kit of the area, especially the twin cities of Warri and its twin, Effurun. They also represent, in far more ways than can readily be enumerated on the fingers of a single hand, the apogee of the development dream of an administration,   which, under the watch of a self-professed street wise governor, has publicly vowed to do more for Deltans.

And so, in due season, when all is said and done and the projects delivered, safe and sound, to the people, the Oborevwori administration would have etched its name firmly in the annals of the state as the one that courageously turned an urban slum into a modern, upbeat zone potentiated as the economic and social nucleus of the state, for the overall benefit of the people for whom it would represent the breast plate of their core development and their inviolable sacrament.

What an elating story that would be!