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Femi Adesina, Special Adviser to President Muhammadu Buhari has criticised former Presidents, Olusegun Obasanjo and Goodluck Jonathan over their failure to build the Second Niger Bridge.
Adesina said the ex-presidents who were elected on the platform of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) paid lip service to the project, adding that they spent their tenures building the bridge with mouth for 16 years.
The presidential spokesperson said this in an article titled, ‘NDABOSKI! If Only For 2nd Niger Bridge, This Country Won’t Ever Forget Buhari’.
He said despite the trauma and travails of the users of the bridge, the past PDP administrations used words of mouth to sway the people for votes during election time.
Adesina claimed that when elections approach, politicians would take construction implements to the site to get the votes of south-easterners.
He said after elections, they would remove ‘their miserable implements’ and bid them goodbye.
Adesina wrote: “Built-in 1965, the artery between the South East, South-South, and the rest of the country has become grossly inadequate, and torture to navigate at peak seasons. There was a year travelers even spent the night on the bridge.
“There is a long history to the building of a second bridge over the River Niger, and it had over the years become a tool of false promises, lies, and propaganda.
“When politicians want the votes of South Easterners as elections approach, they go and offload shovels, pickaxes, wheelbarrows, cutlasses, and others at the site, as if that is what is required to build a bridge of that magnitude.
“After they’ve got the votes, they come to remove their miserable implements. Goodbye basket, I’ve carried all my apples. The People’s Democratic Party (PDP) did it for 16 years, building the bridge with their mouths.”
Adesina further tackled Obasanjo, who inaugurated the construction of the bridge five days to the end of his eight-year tenure.
He said, “Then came Olusegun Obasanjo, a former military head of state, as civilian President. He promised to build the bridge. It didn’t happen in eight years.
“About five days before he left office, Obasanjo flagged off the project, to cost N58.6 billion, and handed it to his successor, Umaru Yar’Adua. No action in the three years that the administration lasted. Understandably so, for Yar’Adua was infirm.
He also criticised Jonathan, who according promised to build the bridge after taking a southeastern name, Azikiwe but failed to touch the project.
“Then came Goodluck Ebele Jonathan, who even at a point added Azikiwe to his name. He promised Heaven on earth, saying he was a South easterner, and he would build the bridge. During a Town Hall meeting on August 30, 2012, in the region, he said what would he claim he had done for his Igbo brethren, if he didn’t build the bridge.
“Later, Azikiwe disappeared from Jonathan’s name, and the Second Niger bridge disappeared with it. All that happened in the about six years that the administration lasted was a Federal Executive Council approval for final planning and design of the bridge. All motion, no movement,” he said.
After criticising Obasanjo and Jonathan, Adesina said that President Muhammadu Buhari’s administration has been working on the project since September 2018.
He said after years of fake promises, it was Buhari who did not share any affinity with the South-east that went to work quietly and started working on the project.