We deeply fault the South-East Governors’ decision to name the newly completed Second Niger Bridge after the recently out-gone President Muhammadu Buhari. The Governors purportedly named the Bridge after Buhari in appreciation of his commitment to its completion.

We do not question Buhari’s contribution to the completion of the Bridge, given its chequered history. Former President Olusegun Obasanjo “flagged off” its construction several times without planting a post there. The late President Umaru Yar’Adua kept promising but sadly died in office. Former President Goodluck Jonathan secured the funding framework and started the preliminary works.

Buhari’s commitment to the completion of that Bridge made the Second Niger Bridge a major achievement of his government. No one can deny him of that. However, the manner in which the Governors named the Bridge after him was highly irregular, self-serving and unacceptable.

For instance, since when did state governors christened federal facilities? The Second Niger Bridge, like many others around the country, is a federal facility sited between Anambra and Delta banks of the River Niger. The Bridge does not belong to the South-East alone any less than it does the South-South. What criterion was used in getting the South-East Governors to “name” the Bridge which excluded their South-South counterparts?

We understand the euphoria surrounding the completion of the project. Three Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, presidents failed to deliver it despite the unflinching support of the zone for the party from 1999 to 2019. That an All Progressives Congress, APC, president completed it within eight years was bound to elicit gratitude because the traffic nightmares that routinely grounded Asaba and Onitsha and occasioned untold suffering for commuters is gone.

We expected the South-East Governors whose people suffered the most at the old Niger Bridge to send a delegation to Buhari at Aso Villa and thank him. They can still do so now he is back in his village, Daura. Purporting to name the Bridge, the only one of its kind which is being tolled, smacks of cheap display of eye service by politicians seeking to bolster their selfish interests.

Two federal bridges over the River Benue, the Loko-Oweto Bridges, were completed and put to use without any fanfare or politicisation. The longest bridge in Nigeria – the Third Mainland Bridge in Lagos, was completed by General Ibrahim Babangida. Lagosians resisted the naming of it as Babangida Bridge.

For some South-Easterners, the naming of the Second Niger Bridge by insensitive political jobbers ignored the other unsavoury memories that Buhari’s tenure inflicted on the people. Buhari denied them of their right to federal appointments, committed hate speeches against them, failed to protect them from herdsmen militias, while the military massacred thousands of unarmed Biafra agitators, thus pushing the zone into insecurity.

It is strictly Second Niger Bridge!