By Bobson Gbinije

“When a leaf stays too long in a bowl of soap,it becomes soap and a goat tied to a stake for a long time cannot appreciate it’s release”.(AFRICAN PROVERBS).

Concrete development is the fundamental fulcrum on which the transformational potency of any individual, state, town and nation must rotate on to produce better life for the people. This is achieved through phenomenal socio-economic, political and educational programmes and developmental projects executed sincerely within responsible and definite time frames. But the way and manner projects in Sapele and nay Nigeria are abandoned and haphazardly executed smacks of Mesozoic regression.

Sapele is a globally ubiquitous name because of it’s past glory(AFRICAN TIMBER & PLYWOODS COMPANY LIMITED, SAPELE PORTS, SAPELE PONTOON, RUBBER FACTORIES AND MANY INDUSTRIES ETC).It was one of the Ordinanced Towns alongside Calabar, Kano and Abeokuta statutorily recognised by the colonial masters in 1946. But today, Sapele is like a deserted village and a crepuscular landlocked dungeon forgotten by the march of civilisation.

Ever since the creation of Delta State (The Big Heart) on August 27, 1991, very few development projects have come to Sapele. The very few ones that came are either abandoned halfway or are not started at all. The Sapele Township stadium project has become an embodiment of official gobbledegook as all kinds of explanations has been given on why a project awarded and re-awarded several times cannot be completed. This is wicked and ungodly.

The Sapele Main Market got burnt many years ago and up till the year 2024, the market is yet to be rock solidly completed. The socio-economic consequences on the traders and people of Sapele town are too gruesomely cadaverous to be recounted here. The traders have resolved to pitching their shops on the Main Market Road, Hausa Road and McPherson Road, blocking half the road. The result is a terrible traffic situation. It is a pity that one of the largest towns in Delta State remains without a standard and functionally viable market for so many years.

The so-called Urban Area and Uguanja have become a concrete jungle, a quintessential ghetto and a shanty town with no links/ motorable roads, no light(SAPELE HOUSES TWO GIGANTIC POWER PLANTS/STATIONS),no water, rebarbative terra firma,dilapidated hovels and rickety school structures. It is frightening to see new colleges of education, new polytechnics and new universities springing up in Sapele’s neighbourhoods, but nothing in Sapele. They even refused to upgrade the Sapele Technical College to a POLYTECHNIC or UNIVERSITY OF TECHNOLOGY. The roads are unspeakably bad and breathtakingly dilapidated structures adorn all the parts of the town.

We call on the Delta State Governor HIS EXCELLENCY SHERIFF OBOREVWORI and PRESIDENT TINUBU to please rise to deliver Sapele from the asphyxiating hold of these Methuselah projects.

After all, the prime purpose of any sincere government is the pursuit of the greatest good for the largest number.

*OKAKURO BOBSON GBINIJE WRITES FROM SAPELE