By Samuel OYADONGHA

Road, which is taken for granted in some parts of the country is a luxury to the people of the pre-dominantly riverine Bayelsa State.

Though rich in oil and gas, the state has the least (less than 100km) kilometres of federal roads in the federation, a development blamed on the several failed federal road projects in the state.

The resumption of work on the long abandoned Yenagoa-Oporoma road project passing through the vast mangrove stretch of southern Ijaw, has ignited fresh hopes for communities far flung in the central senatorial district of the state.

For the first time in over five decades, the people are convinced of accessing their council headquarters, Oporoma and other far flung communities by road in no distant time given the speed of work on the road.

Though the project had been on federal government drawing board since the sixties, nothing tangible was done, until the first civilian governor of old Rivers State, Late Melford Okilo, an indigene of Bayelsa, mustered the political will and began the sand filling of the road before the Second Republic was terminated by military coup in 1983.

Former Governor Timipre Sylva tried to revive the project in 2008, when he awarded contract for the road to construction giant, Julius Berger. It however suffered a setback few months after, as the construction company was forced to pull out of the Niger Delta and by extension the state at the height of youth militancy.

Governor Seriake Dickson has again ignited the people’s hope, following the award of contract for the construction of the road to a Chinese firm, China Civil Engineering Construction Corporation (CCECC), at the cost of N31billion.

The project on completion is expected to transform the fortunes of the neglected oil and gas communities in the central senatorial district of the state, regarded as one of the biggest council areas in the federation which can only be accessed by water.

The area has some of the biggest crude oil clusters in the Niger Delta and is also home to the oil majors, Shell Petroleum Development Company (SPDC), Nigerian Agip Oil Company (NAOC) and Chevron Nigeria Limited (CNL) and other oil servicing companies.

When Sweetcrude visited the Ogbogoro starting point of the road in the outskirts of Yenagoa, the once deserted zone was a beehive of activities, as heavy duty equipment and personnel were seen going about the task of overcoming the difficult terrain.

It was also observed that the construction company had covered over five kilometres of the road project with asphalt less than two months after it commenced operation.