The Illah community in Delta has urged the state government to save its people from persisting hardship by constructing the road leading to a major market in the town before the rains.

The community said that the road, which also leads to St. John’s Monastery, the only one in the state, had been dilapidated and neglected by the government for several decades.

Speaking through the Traditional Council Secretary, Mr Ben Nwaokocha, the traditional ruler of the town, Obi Nwabuenu Mebu, said the poor state of the road had constituted a setback to economic growth of the community.

He said the “Eke” market, located by the bank of River Niger, had remained an undisputed major source of food for a greater part of the state and environs and decried the poor condition of its access road.

Mebu said that because of the viability of the market, the road often recorded high volume of traffic but regretted that lives and goods were being regularly lost on it due to its poor state.

The monarch said the neglect of the road by the government had made it difficult for vehicles to get to the market and the farmers “except for trucks and high vehicles”.

Mebu accused the Oshimili North Local Government Council of selfishness and insensitivity, saying that the council’s officials were always at the market to collect taxes and rates but had failed to maintain the road.

The monarch lamented that the bad road was hampering evacuation of agricultural produce and other goods from the area and therefore appealed to the state government to come to the aid of the community.

In his reaction, the state Commissioner for Works, Chief Funkekeme Solomon, said that the road had been approved for construction, this year, adding that contract for the project would be awarded soon.

He said that the Illah market road and similar ones in the state were on the government’s priority list on its “rural integration” road programme.

“Contract for the construction of the road, with a spur to the Holy Cross, will be awarded soon and the project will commence before the middle of the year”.

Solomon acknowledged that the five-kilometre road, when completed, would provide access to “one of the biggest agricultural markets in the state, which also services other markets across the country”.

He urged the people of the area to maintain peace and co-operate with the state government for the speedy completion of the project.

The commissio-ner advised them to embrace mechanised farming and increase their yield so that they could contribute meaningfully to food security in the state.