Bamenda - Mamfe Road - Real Transformation

Cameroon Tribune:
Godlove Bainkong
22 June 2010

Chinese engineers in charge of the project are working tooth and nail to make the once muddy and winding road a thing of the past.

Never in the history of the people of Batibo and Widikum (North West), Bachuo Akagbe and Mamfe (South West) Regions, has there been serious construction works, with high-level state-of-the-art equipment, like what is going on now. Passers-by and the local population alike do describe the area now as a vast construction site, with efforts to modernise the once muddy and bumpy road taking centre stage. This is within the framework of a joint Cameroon-Nigeria project, code-named, "Bamenda - Enugu Multinational Highway and Transport Facilitation Programme" which seeks to tar the 443 km road from Cameroon to Nigeria and boost relations and socio-economic ties between the two countries.

From the 42km Bamenda-Batibo stretch to the 62km Mamfe-Ekok section, the 203 km distance of the multinational project to be executed in Cameroon is increasingly gaining steam. Bulldozers are digging, engineers surveying and the road and its vicinities taking a facelift. Deviations are all over as engineers of the Chinese consortium charged with the execution of the much-heralded project are altering the hitherto winding nature of the road to give the new one better visibility. Bridges are being constructed as machines are working round the clock around the Widikum forest to extract and grind hard gravel being used on the road. A Yaounde-based indigene of Mamfe who travelled with this reporter to and from Ekok rejoiced that work is rapidly progressing on the road. "I passed on this road two weeks ago and so much has changed. Tarring this road is synonymous with giving life a boost in these localities", she rejoiced.

In course of the Minister of Public Works' visit to Mfum and Ekok last week to officially flag off the Bamenda-Mamfe-Ekok-Enugu Trans-African highway, the populations of these localities came out like one person to appreciate the life-changing venture. In all of the sites where Mr Messengue Avom and his delegation made stopovers, the joy was total. The villagers wore t-shirts and erected banners with inscriptions like, "Road for Development", "We thank the governments of Nigeria and Cameroon for this move to improve on our living". Their joy was understandable as in three years when the entire project is expected to round off, people cultivating cassava, plantains and other food crops as well as cash crops will make a choice of either staying home and attracting buyers or taking their produce to a market of their choice. Analysts say upon completion, the once nightmare users of the road had when travelling on the road will be history, the hitherto days or weeks they took from Cameroon to Nigeria will be reduced to hours and the volume of trade between the two countries will greatly increase