The Vice President of Sierra Leone, Victor Bockarie Foh did not receive an heroic welcome a Vice President should have gotten when he visited Kenema on Tuesday. Instead, he was faced with hundreds of residents who lamented the bad state of road and development in the city.

Awoko reports that Hundreds of residents in Kenema city were on Tuesday 27th October 2015 evening waiting along Blama Road and Maxwell Khobe Street to watch the convoy of over twenty vehicles including security forces as huddled through the numerous knee deep potholes into the city center.

It was a smooth ride from the city of Freetown to Kenema city up to Dama Road junction through Wahman Abu Road. But it is hell for whosoever dare enter the city of Kenema by going through the main Blama Road from Nasir Ahmadiyya Muslim Secondary School junction to the Clock Tower at the city center which was a three minutes ride before now, but today it takes more than 20 minutes to go through.

At the moment no low car or taxi can make use of the road, if one forces its way through one will end up in the garage by changing parts of the under carrier.

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The Vice President Victor Bockarie Foh and his entourage danced for over 15-minutes while in their vehicles as they headed for the regional office of NASSIT along Maxwell Khobe Street where hundreds of residents in Kenema city including the Mayor of Kenema City Council, Joseph Samba Keifala paid him and his entourage A visit.

Some of the residents who stood waiting on the road side were shouting “potor potor” road, meaning mud road, ‘we want good road, we want good road,’ they chanted as the convoy passed by.

At it has been in the past, when the president or any other state authority is visiting Kenema city, council workers will quickly fill the pot holes, giving the impression that things are Ok, but this time round nothing was done to the road and streets as it used to be in the past.

Maxwell Khobe Street is the most important street in the city of Kenema as it hosts the offices of regional Criminal Investigation Department (CID) at the Regional Police headquarters, the main food market (fisheries market), SLBC office, Gola Agriculture radio, IFAD, NASSIT, Ministry of Mines and Mineral resources, District Forest Office (DFO), Treasury office, Ministry of Education Science and Technology (MEST), the regional correctional centre, magistrate and high court buildings, DERC and the office of the Resident Minister, east, Hon. Maya Moiwo Kaikai, among others, yet there is no good thing to write home about the street.

Every day authorities of these offices make use of this street and it remains as one of the worst streets in the city.

A motor bike rider who moved with Awoko reporter alongside the convoy remarked that APC knows politics and they know how to practice it. He said the roads in Kenema will soon be fixed as we draw near the electioneering period which he said will be appreciated by all.

He hoped that it would have been the president H.E Dr. Ernest Bai Koroma to have paid a visit to Kenema to get the reality on the ground. Now the priority of all in Kenema city and its environs is good roads and whosoever visits Kenema city at the moment has his/her own way of commenting to make about the road conditions in the regional headquarter.

The vice president is on his way to Jojoima town in Malema chiefdom and then to Koindu town on the border with Liberia and Guinea in Kailahun district. He passed the night in the dilapidated Kenema city.