Akufo-Addo recounts bumpy experience on Eastern corridor road
President Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo has recounted his bumpy experience on the Eastern corridor road which former President John Mahama praised one of the contractors, Djibril Kanazoe for doing a good job.
During his three-day tour of the Volta Region this week, President Akufo-Addo used the road and recounted the response President Mahama offered during Election 2016 campaign when he [Akufo-Addo] complained about bad roads in the country.
President Akufo-Addo, however during an interaction with some chiefs and the people of Volta Region promised to fix the Eastern Corridor road.
In his campaign message in 2016, President Mahama maintained that his government had embarked on many unprecedented socio-economic infrastructure projects in his first term, which had provided a solid foundation for massive development and therefore urged voters to re-elect him.
Among the roads he mentioned as part of the unprecedented roads was the Eastern Corridor road.
When he commissioned the portion which was constructed by Djibril Kanazoe, President Mahama praised the Burkinabe based contractor for doing a good job but after some months, the road started deteriorating.
The then opposition leader Akufo-Addo in soliciting for votes said he was not seeing the much talked about unprecedented projects President Mahama was talking about.
Responding directly to Akufo-Addo on the good road projects he claimed he was not seeing, Mr Mahama said: “Probably he was sleeping,” when he visited the Western region.
This week whilst on his tour of the Volta Region and after experiencing how portions of the road had deteriorated which has culminated in the people in the area asking government to hurriedly fix it, President Akufo-Addo said: “In 2016, when we were on the campaign, I [Akufo-Addo] came here, I also went to the Western Region, this famous Eastern corridor, and President Mahama was saying that in the period of his office, we have seen infrastructure development that we have never seen in Ghana before, “unprecedented infrastructure development, I hope you remember, this expression, unprecedented.”
“And I said, I don’t see this unprecedented infrastructure development. Everywhere I go, are the untarred roads and he [Mahama] said I was asleep on the road and that is why I didn’t see the good development that had taken place.”
“Today I have come on the Eastern corridor road and I didn’t sleep one inch, [the good road Mahama talked about, because all I experienced was], bungbum, bungbum, bungbum, bungbum, [bumpy] how can I sleep on this road [bumpy].
And that is why I want to go out to see for myself what is going on, we are going to fix it, Amoako Attah [Roads Minister] has told you, we are going to fix it, and it would not be for anybody to say whether somebody is asleep or not asleep, they will see that the road has been fixed.
Meanwhile, the Roads Minister, Mr Kwasi Amoako Atta has assured that, by the end of the first term of the Akufo-Addo regime the entire stretch of the Eastern Corridor Road would have been completed.
Mr Amoako Atta described the Eastern Corridor Road as being of great importance since it is the shortest route between the Southern sector and the Northern sector of the country.
Eastern Corridor Road is the linkage between five regions, – Greater Accra, Eastern, Ashanti, Volta, and Upper East.
Source: Graphic.com.gh
