The conduct of soldiers and policemen on the Asaba, Delta State side of the Asaba-Onitsha expressway now constitutes a grave danger to the Niger Bridge. The soldiers and the police have turned the Onitsha-Asaba express road into a living nightmare for motorists.

Even more importantly, they are daily contributing to damaging the only bridge that connects Delta and Anambra states, and by extension all other parts of the South East, Edo State and beyond.

As you would see in the two pictures, on this page, every evening soldiers and policemen line up to extort money from motorists and neglect the sole aim of their being posted to the all-important location: security of commuters. The gravity of the situation is made more obvious when you consider that there will be deluge of people pouring into the South East in the remaining days preceding Christmas and New Year.

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We all know that allowing heavy trucks and other vehicles to ply up on the bridge for a long time contributes to the cumulative damage to the bridge as their combined weigh reduces the strength of the bridge.

Given this background, one is tempted to wonder whether the policemen and soldiers assigned to the place lack common sense.  Please I want to call on every considered citizen, especially those that ply that route every day to keep sharing this information until it gets to the knowledge of the Chief of Army Staff and the Inspector General of Police, who respectively have the authority to direct the Commander of the Army formation from which the soldiers were deployed to the place and the Delta State Police Commissioner, to call their personnel to order.

► John Coco wrote via [email protected]