How Can Nigeria Have an Igbo Minister of Works While the Major Gateways to the Southeast Remain an Annual Nightmare?
An Oblong Media Global Intelligence Commentary.
There is an absurdity unfolding on Nigeria’s highways that deserves far more national outrage than it receives.
For millions of Nigerians travelling from Lagos and other parts of the West towards the Southeast, going home has become an endurance test.
The journey through the Benin–Asaba axis can deteriorate into hours of crawling traffic and complete standstill. Travellers are exhausted before reaching their destinations. Commercial drivers lose productive hours. Families with children find themselves stranded without adequate food, water or sanitation. At its worst, people contemplate spending the night inside their vehicles on a federal highway.
For three years, Southeast politicians aligned with the APC have preached the benefits of “integration with the centre.” But that cannot simply mean appointments, contracts, presidential handshakes and access to Abuja for a privileged political class. It must produce tangible benefits for ordinary people.
As Nigerians once again this year confront the nightmare of the Benin–Asaba–Onitsha corridor, every Southeast politician voter preparing to campaign for the APC in 2027 should be ready to answer a simple question:
Is this evidence of integration, or does it reinforce the perception of marginalisation?
If an Igbo engineer has been Federal Minister of Works for more than three years, yet one of the major gateways into Alaigbo remains an annual ordeal, what exactly has this celebrated closeness to the centre delivered?
Sometimes one wonders whether some of our politicians have confused their personal access to the corridors of power with the progress of Ndigbo within the Nigerian federation. Once aboard the gravy train, the suffering of ordinary people appears increasingly easy to ignore.
Meaningful inclusion must translate into infrastructure, security, electricity, investment and functioning roads, not merely political appointments.
When political alignment improves the fortunes and access of politicians while leaving their people stranded on broken roads, it is difficult to call that progress.
It is self service.
And this is happening in August.
What happens when December comes?
That question should be occupying the attention of the Federal Ministry of Works right now.
It also raises an unavoidable political irony.
Nigeria’s Minister of Works, Senator David Umahi, is not merely a politician from the Southeast. He is an engineer, a former governor of Ebonyi State and one of the most senior Igbo officials in the Federal Government.
Yet, more than three years into this administration, travelling by road into the Southeast from western Nigeria can still feel like attempting to penetrate a country whose transportation arteries have been severed.
Something is fundamentally wrong.
UMAHI IS A NIGERIAN MINISTER, BUT ALAIGBO IS ALSO PART OF NIGERIA
Nobody should demand that David Umahi abandon infrastructure projects elsewhere simply because he comes from the Southeast.
That would be parochial.
A Federal Minister of Works has responsibility for the entire federation, and major roads in Lagos, Abuja, Kano, Calabar or Sokoto deserve his attention just as much as roads in Imo, Enugu or Abia.
But here lies the contradiction.
If the argument is that Umahi must serve every part of Nigeria, then surely the Southeast is included in that Nigeria.
The people asking questions are not demanding preferential treatment.
They are demanding functionality.
An Igbo Minister of Works cannot spend years celebrating federal road projects, sycophantically defending the administration and advertising his alleged achievements while one of the most important transportation corridors carrying enormous numbers of people towards his own geopolitical zone repeatedly degenerates into chaos.
Performance must eventually become more important than political praise singing.
Engineering must speak louder than politics.
And the Minister must look at the roads ordinary Nigerians are actually travelling and ask himself:
Would I consider this acceptable if I were sitting in that traffic for eight hours with my family?
CHRISTMAS IS COMING
The Federal Government cannot claim that the December movement towards the Southeast takes it by surprise.
It happens every year.
Christmas in Alaigbo produces one of Nigeria’s most remarkable annual internal migrations. Igbo families living in Lagos, Abuja and virtually every corner of the federation travel back to their ancestral communities.
That movement is entirely predictable.
Government therefore has months, not days, to prepare.
Emergency repairs can be undertaken.
Failed portions can be stabilised.
Construction diversions can be redesigned.
Broken down vehicles can be removed rapidly.
FRSC personnel can be deployed strategically.
Tow trucks and emergency response teams can be stationed at known choke points.
Contractors can be compelled to maintain passable lanes while permanent construction continues.
None of this requires revolutionary technology.
It requires planning.
GOVERNMENT SHOULD NOT ALLOW NEGLECT TO CREATE POLITICAL SUSPICION
There is another dimension that cannot simply be wished away.
Nigeria enters a general election year in 2027.
Whenever infrastructure serving a politically sensitive region remains dysfunctional for prolonged periods, people inevitably begin asking whether incompetence alone explains it.
Some will even wonder whether making the journey home increasingly unbearable could discourage people from travelling, organising or participating politically as another election approaches.
There is presently no concrete evidence available to Oblong Media establishing that the road situation is deliberately engineered for electoral purposes.
We therefore will not present suspicion as fact.
But government should understand why such suspicions arise and are rife.
When citizens repeatedly encounter the same avoidable suffering and receive no convincing explanation for why it persists, they begin supplying their own explanations.
The Federal Government has the easiest possible answer:
Fix the roads.
Nothing destroys a conspiracy theory faster than visible competence.
THE MINISTER SHOULD BE JUDGED BY RESULTS, NOT LOYALTY DISPLAYS
Senator Umahi has become one of the administration’s most energetic defenders.
That is his political choice.
But history will not measure his tenure by how enthusiastically he praised President Bola Ahmed Tinubu.
It will measure him by infrastructure.
How many kilometres became genuinely motorable?
How many abandoned projects were completed?
How much was travel time reduced?
How many dangerous bottlenecks disappeared?
How durable were the roads after commissioning?
How efficiently were public resources converted into infrastructure?
Those are the measurements that matter.
Sycophancy cannot fill a pothole.
Political loyalty cannot reconstruct a failed carriageway.
Press conferences cannot move thousands of stranded vehicles.
And chest beating cannot substitute for engineering.
ALAIGBO CANNOT BECOME AN ISLAND
This issue extends far beyond ethnic sentiment.
The Southeast is one of Nigeria’s most commercially active regions. Goods, people and capital move constantly between it and Lagos, the South-South, North-Central and the rest of the federation.
When the roads connecting these economic centres collapse, Nigeria itself loses productivity.
A truck trapped for ten hours loses valuable operating time.
A businessman who misses an appointment loses an opportunity.
Fuel is wasted while vehicles remain stationary.
Agricultural produce deteriorates inside stranded trucks.
And ultimately, these inefficiencies are transferred to ordinary Nigerians through higher transport fares, commodity prices and the overall cost of doing business.
Fixing the roads into Alaigbo is therefore not a favour to the Igbo. It is an investment in the Nigerian economy.
AUGUST IS THE WARNING. DECEMBER MUST NOT BECOME THE DISASTER.
There is still time.
The Ministry of Works should urgently assess the Benin–Asaba corridor and every major federal gateway carrying traffic towards the Southeast.
The public should be told what interventions are being undertaken and when.
Contractors responsible for active sections should be held accountable for maintaining safe and usable passage.
The FRSC and other relevant agencies should begin planning for the Christmas traffic surge long before December.
And Senator David Umahi should personally treat the recurring nightmare of travelling into the Southeast as a test of his tenure.
Not because he is Igbo.
Not because the Southeast deserves special treatment.
But because Alaigbo is part of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, and Nigerians travelling there deserve roads worthy of their country.
Three years of explanations are enough.
December 2026 is approaching.
This time, let Nigerians travel home on roads, not through an obstacle course.
By Duruebube Chimazuru “Oblong” Nnadi-Oforgu
For OBLONG MEDIA GLOBAL INTELLIGENCE
Independent. Uncompromising.
Issues Above Individuals.
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