…Says, Ungwan Sunday, Sabon Tasha areas worse hit.
by Achadu Gabriel, Kaduna
Residents of Ungwan Sunday, Sabon Tasha and the larger parts of Television/Ungwan Yelwa areas are going through hell, groaning in pain as a result of hardship being encountered, following poor roads infrastructure in the three populated communities and towns in those areas of Kaduna South and its environs.
Both Kachia Expressway and the Sabon Tasha-by-Garage roads directly linking the three major communities in Kaduna South are in terrible conditions and serious state of disrepair, almost becoming impassible by motorists and other road users.
Zangon Kataf, Southern Kaduna leaders had, in a recent statement lamented that the immediate past governor of the state, Mal. Nasir’s urban roads infrastructural developments were concentrated mostly in but Muslims-dominated areas in Kaduna North.
In the case of Sabon Tasha-by-Garage Road, which was under construction and later abandoned by Governor Nasir el-Rufai-led administration, is also an eyesore and in the worst state of disrepair.
Business activities and vehicular movement are in near paralysis due to the deteriorating condition of the road so much so that most Town Service Buses have also stopped plying it completely. Streets inside these communities in Kaduna South are also not left out, as some even have turned death traps.
In fact, car owners, buses and bus drivers currently plying the Sabo-by-Garage Road most times do it at the risk of their vehicles or at very expensive transport cost, difficult for the downtrodden resident passengers to bear.
Some of the residents interviewed expressed serious disappointment on the immediate past governor for opening up such commercially-strategic township road in largely populated communities and abandon it for over a year.
Others lamented the current poor, valley and gully state of the road project initiated by El-Rufia, knowing that the road, as important to inhabitants as it, would be abandoned, to the residents of the areas during raining period.
“Transportation of goods and services to the area has become more expensive, with also heavy dust during harmattan and flood during raining season because of the abandonment,” they lamented.
“We have gone round, we have not seen within the metropolis much, where such roads were abandoned except our area here, because we are all predominantly southern Kaduna indigenes,” Maria Danjuma (Ungwan Sunday) and others also lamented.
Findings revealed that potholes and the gully nature of the bypass road are also unbearable in Kaduna South, making it almost a serious nightmare for all sets of vehicles, including even Keke-NAPEP Ridders, who daily struggle to make it.
The area, beginning from Mummy’s Villa Hotel and Romi Junction, through to the end, have also gone too bad with potholes with ridges all over it, causing holdups most times and damaging vehicles.
Some also recalled that, “Even the Ahmadu Bello Way expansion road project contract approved by previous administration, from Kawo to Command Junction only started and completed in Kaduna North in Kawo by El-Rufai.
According to aggrieved indigenes, the former governor, el-Rufai, refused to extend it to Command Junction – in Kaduna South Christian areas – as earlier programmed,” Simon David (a resident of Ungwan Sunday), Kakas and others revealed.
Victims of the abandoned road, including those doing business at Halima Junction, bearing Christy, her senior sister, Mamas and Fadas, among others operating restaurants, fish and beer business, bitterly complained of unbearable nature of the Sabo-by-Garage Road, and how it has affected their only means of livelihood tremendously.
All efforts to get government officials to speak proved abortive, due to bottlenecks. An insider, however, said the areas were captured in the agenda of the current Governor Uba Sani’s rural infrastructure development projects.
While residents in communities such as Romi, Gonin Gora, and Television Garage are also crying over worsened environment and infrastructural development, areas such as Kakuri and Barnawa are also crying but are fairly OK due to presence of the el-Rufai road projects completion in them.
