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BY RICHARD DRASIMAKU
ARUA: SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 9, 2025
Surrounded by swamps, cell in Tankanyika ward in Ayivu division bears the hallmarks of an island the is deprived of essential social and economic infrastructure.
Lacking access roads, education institutions and health facilities, it is one of the most densely populated cells in about 11,000 households of Tankanyika ward.
On Saturday, the area residents under the stewardship of Sabir Hassan Cucu, the LI chairman of Ondoruku Cells, Goffin Ezati, LC2 chairman and the Division Councilor Farid Asiku took matters into their own hands to begin a self-help initiative of road opening.
Armed with hoes, ropes and pegs, they began marking edges of a three-meter-wide pathway for a road to link their cell to Erawa primary school via Oje valley on which they earlier constructed a temporary bridge to allow the people and especially the school children to cross over.
“What we are doing today is the end part of a long process that involved community mobilization and negotiations with land owners to allow us open the road through their plots,” said Cucu, the LC1 chairman.
The land on the other side of the valley in Yapi ward belongs to Erawa primary school which has readily allowed the community to dig a road through it.
The residents said opening the road will attract economic growth to the area by allowing the people to not only easily access the education n and religious institutions but also the Kigo and other markets like Ociba and Dadamu where they can trade their merchandise.
The community mobilization follows three consecutive years of fronting the proposal of the road opening to the City council and receiving no positive feedback.
According to Asiku who is also the secretary for works in Ayivu Division, they have asked the Arua City council to upgrade the bridge to a permanent structure and also tarmac the road once the opening is done.
The residents have mobilized some funds to fuel a grader and other machinery to open the road and grade it with murram to be excavated from the plot of one of the residents.
Some equipment will reportedly be borrowed from Arua district since the Arua City has few roads equipment.
Kaps Hassan Fungaroo, the former Member of Parliament of Obongi constituency who is also a resident of in Tankanyika lauded the community for waking up to push for transformation of their area.
“If you want development, you must take the first step, then other people including government will come to your aid,” he said.
Fungaroo noted that most of Tankanyika lacks piped water, and electricity yet it is just opposite the Arua airfield and within the City center.
“This is an example of unequal growth and uneven development. The people must unite and work together to take Arua City to another level because this city is for the whole of West Nile,” he asserted.
According to the Arua City road inventory, the City has a total of 551.53 km of road network of which on 46.6 km is paved, 212.45 km is unpaved and a staggering 292.48 km is ungraded.
