*Asks Nigerians to vote out greedy, wicked politicians
By Eze Chidozie
Good governance pressure group, the Arewa Youth Movememt (AYM) has blamed government insensitivity, poor infrastructure and general I-dont-care attitude for the renewed fuel scarcity in the Federal Capital Territory (FCT).
Residents of the FCT woke up on Tuesday to a sudden fuel scarcity all over the Territory, with almost all the filling stations locked up for lack of fuel supply at the stations.
The scarcity was attributed to the inability of fuel tanker drivers to drive their vehicles past Lokoja, the Kogi State capital due to the submerging of Lokoja by the overflow of the River Niger, thus blocking off the Abuja-Lokoja-Okene expressway and the Abuja-Lokoja-Ajaokuta expressway, the only two arteries through which vehicles move from southern parts of the country to the FCT.
Due to the overflow of the River Niger in Lokoja, the only two roads to the FCT from the south which merged in Lokoja became submerged in water and therefore impassable.
The situation forced tanker, trailer and other commercial vehicle drivers to get stuck in Lokoja, even to the point of some tipping over due to the water-logged soils giving way and the vehicles tumbling over with their contents.
Consequently, no tanker could move southward to be loaded, while the ones already cut off in Lokoja remained at stationary.
However, the AYM blamed it all on the failure of the Federal government to do the needful over the years.
According to their spokesman, Alhaji Mohammad Dan’Alamin, speaking in Abuja, “we have had successive governments that paid no attention to infrastructure in Nigeria.
“Two things could have long been done by a more reasonable kindergarten in government at the center all these years: One is to pay adequate attention to infrastructural maintenance and expansion. The second is to repair existing refineries and pipelines and build new ones.
“Unfortunately, on either issues, unbridled corruption and lack of empathy to the plight of the ordinary citizens have made them not realise that infrastructural development is a sine qua none to governance.
“And so, we have had civilian administrations who did not care about these. In fact, while the previous Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) government did a little in the road infrastructure sector, the All Progressives Congress (APC) simply went to sleep and abandoned all the roads across the country to God Almighty to take care of.
“We had a previous experience of flooding in 2012 and we recall how Arch. Mike Onolomemen, then Minister of Works, tackled the problem, through both immediate remediation and long term construction of road networks across the country, particularly in Lokoja.
“But the APC government is not bothered, inspite of warnings by the Meteorological Agency and other institutions, that have for months been qarning of what has happened, yet, they did nothing and as we speak now, they are doing nothing; it is as if God should do what we should do by ourselves for us.
“We would like to use this opportunity to call on Nigerians to please and please, not to be persuaded by sentiments while voting in the next general elections. Nigerians should not be persuaded by ethnic or religious sentiments, or entitlement mentality.
“We have some candidates, especially vying for the presidency, who majority believe has the pedigree for not tolerating corruption, who has proved to have interest in infrastructural development while they served at the lower levels of government. Those are the candidates to vote at the upcoming general elections.
“If we make the mistake again, we cannot guarantee we shall be alive to tell stories of the negative consequences,” AYM stressed.
They wondered why a key global crude oil producing could have left crude production to thieves and also left criminals to take over our roads due to neglect and lack of interest in fixing them.
“At the moment, it is too expensive to fly by air to our destinations, the railways are no longer working from Abuja to just Kaduna due to our allowing bandits to take that from us; our roads have become death trap. We can’t allow this to continue.”
Asked if the body had identified any presidential candidate with the pedigree to reverse the ugly trend, AYM said they have but chose not to name the candidate so as not to be seen as being pushed to make these remarks by the candidate.
“Nigerians are not blind. They know the difference between an apple and an orange. They know the antecedents of all the key presidential candidates. They know the one who is determined to do what he is promising and the pretenders, who are just looking for the opportunity to steal more and leave the country in penury.
“We don’t have to mention any name here, but be rest assured that we are also enlightening our northern fathers, mothers, brothers and sisters as well as all those who live and do business in the North.
“They know when food is tasty; we will just do the little push. We can only pray these desperate politicians allowed our votes to count,” they stressed.
