On the map of Delta, there lives a sick ghost.
A patient perpetually on life support,
kept breathing not to heal,
but for politicians to boast,
“See? He still lives.”
Its name is AYAKOROMO BRIDGE., the stepchild of Delta politics.
Conceived with fanfare,
baptised in lies,
left dangling over the Forcados River
like an unfinished sentence…
in the distracted mouth of careless rulers.
From birth,
it was bathed in speeches
and wrapped in promises.
Phantom budget allocations crowned it
Numbers glittering on paper,
but dissolving long before touching the water’s edge.
Twelve years have passed.
Still, the bridge has no legs to walk upon the river,
no spine to bear the footsteps of traders,
students,
dreamers.
Every election season,
its rusted skeleton is dusted and perfumed for the cameras.
Paraded like a bride
who will never see her wedding night.
And when the cameras leave,
it’s shoved back into the shadows of deliberate neglect.
Governors come,
Governors go,
but Ayakoromo Bridge remains half-born —
its ribs showing like a starving beast abandoned at the river’s edge.
Delta State is no poor man’s pantry.
Here, money flows like our rivers,
swollen from oil beneath our creeks,
from taxes,
from allocations,
from the sweat of women selling smoked fish
in markets with leaking zinc roofs.
Yet at the great Ukodo Pot of governance,
the ladle dips deep,
but only to feed select bowls —
until the broth runs over.
Delta Central and Delta North feast on steaming meat,
while the Delta Ijaw inhale pepper and scent leaves,
tasting only the memory of the broth.
Ayakoromo Bridge is the mirror of this inequality —
a stepchild patted on the head in public,
but starved in the kitchen
where the real meals are served.
Elsewhere in Delta,
bridges spring up overnight.
Flyovers bloom at PTI Junction, Enerhen Junction,
Uromi Junction —
steel and concrete rising like mushrooms in rainy season.
But here, across our waters,
The bridge to promise is built at the speed of a snail
dragging a wounded hippo.
A tortoise carrying a dead elephant.
This is not inability.
This is not lack of money.
This is selective development politics
Regions weighed not by need,
but by electoral convenience.
Ayakoromo Bridge is not just concrete and iron.
It is a necklace that could join Delta Ijaw necks
to the wider heartbeat of the state.
It could carry goods, children, women, and hope
across waters that have drowned too many dreams.
But in Asaba’s chambers,
our hope is traded for campaign jingles.
Our dignity filed under "Pending" - KIV (Keep In View).
Twelve years,
and the bridge’s spine is still unborn.
Meanwhile, Julius Berger’s name is sung like a psalm
in places where projects bloom at record speed.
Delta’s treasury drips with oil wealth.
But perhaps Delta Ijaw oil,
votes, and rivers
are not golden enough
in the arithmetic of political power.
So Ayakoromo Bridge rots under the sun,
Its rust bleeding into the Forcados
like the blood of betrayal.
Its steel ribs jutting from the water like bones
In the chest of a starving giant.
The river keeps count.
The tides have recorded every year of this shame.
The ancestors are watching.
Ozubou is watching.
Odele is watching.
Olorogun is watching.
Egbesu has also worn medicated glasses
Watching
Ukodo —
remember, they are watching your ladle.
At the banquet of development,
give every community its share.
Let the Delta Ijaw taste the wealth their oil and loyalty have purchased.
For slow fire will turn even the sweetest pepper soup bitter.
Our patience is thinner than a canoe in storm tide.
If your calloused hands keep choking the handle of progress,
if Ayakoromo Bridge remains a masquerade that dances only in campaign season,
Abd disappeares when the drums are silent.
Then hear this:
The river will rise.
Not with water,
but with the voices of the betrayed.
A flood that will not wait for drums.
A flood that will shake the pillars of Government House.
Bridges are not mere steel and concrete.
They are arteries of trust.
Block an artery long enough,
and the body revolts.
Starve Ayakoromo Bridge,
and you rust not just its iron,
but the patience of its people ...
until one day, the river will carry not boats,
but a people ready to finish the bridge themselves,
with or without you.
Because the tide will not wait forever.
EBIKABOWEI KEDIKUMO - writes from Ayakoromo Town, Delta State.
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