It’s a 46km drive from Port-Harcourt to Bori. And a mere 40mins trip. But the road is in two major languages.
One, a Federal language called East/West Road, and Two, a state owned language spoken as “Sakpenwa-Bori-Kono road”
That stretch to my village, Kono, isn’t new. It is a road that our grand parents had travelled on many times, and had wished that it was dualised in their times.
Oral history relate to me how a man, nicknamed BIRABEKE, was one of the first Ogonimen to own a vehicle and Transport line, called Emmah & Sons Motors, plied that narrow road conveying Ogonis and their goods daily to Aba.
But that was History, and how I wished that my Grandfather, Pa Wikina, the Birabeke, was here to drive on the newly completed and commissioned section of that road today.
I hear the road would eventually get to Kono, its final dedtination, but driving to Bori from Sakpenwa now, its like a trip in unending sweetness.
Truely, Sweet smooth roads are no longer fantasies or fairy tale…with our two eyes open, and closed, we have seen it, touched it, felt it, heard about it, and also smelt it. Our Governor is building them.
Governor Nyesom Wike deserves our thanks, and commendation. For showing that dreams, can be converted to reality.
It reminds me of the wordings of a celebrated Poet, John Keats, in the poem, On first looking into Chapman’s Homer…….
“Much have I travell’d in the realms of gold,
And many goodly states and kingdom seen;
Round many western islands have I been…… Yet did I never breathe its pure serene,
Till I heard Chapman speak out loud and bold,
When a new planet swims into his ken”
Sakpenwa-Bori-Kono road, would not just be a road. It would be a route to Opobo, Andoni, Bonny.
It is our “new planet”
Who knows, Governor Wike may be spurred on to take it to other Island communities in the state.
Blessing Wikina
Kono, Ogoni
