• Obigbo/Aba end of Enugu-P/H expressway as nightmare
From Ogbonnaya Ndukwe, Aba
The organised business society in Aba, Abia State, last Friday, took time to lament their loses, following incessant fall of containers carrying shipped goods on transit from Onne seaport in Port Harcourt, Rivers State to the Southeast.
They said that their goods imported through Port Harcourt, fall recklessly on the expressway, while being trailered to destination, due to the dilapidated state of the road especially between Obigbo/Imo River to Aba.
According to the importers, the deplorable state of the road abandoned for so long by the Federal Government, had left them with unquantifiable losses counting in billions of naira.
They expressed their displeasure at a one-day sensitization summit and launching of Operational Manual for Inland Dry Ports in Nigeria, organised by southeast zonal office of the Nigerian Shippers Council.
They also berated the government for abandoning the pilot Container Inland Dry Port project, planned for Ntigha, Isiala Ngwa, in Abia State. The project was to have taken off some 30 years ago.
President of Aba Chamber of Commerce, Industry, Mines and Agriculture (ACCIMA), Chief Jerry Kalu, said the business community was at a loss on reasons behind the huge sufferings of the people of the region.
He was sad that while other Inland Dry Ports named with that in the zone such as Kano, had taken off and were doing well to provide warehousing and good storage facilities for businesses in landlocked areas of the country, the one in the Southeast was subject of politics, with no infrastructures in the site: “It is now very difficult bringing in containers from the Port Harcourt seaport of One, through the Enugu/Port Harcourt Expressway, as the trailers fall headlong, flying container goods along the road especially within the Obigbo to Aba axis, where the road is very bad and inaccessible.
“We have suffered for so long. It seems the federal government has forgotten about us. We cannot continue to suffer like this so we have come together to identify what it will take for the container Inland Dry Port in Isiala Ngwa to formally take off.”
The ACCIMA President promised to lead other business colleagues to have audience with the Abia State Government, on the way forward for urgent realization of the project, without further delay.
Other stakeholders that spoke including freight forwarders, handlers, traditional rulers and officials of Nigerian Shippers Council, all agreed that when fully established, the dry Port will provide direct and indirect jobs for thousands of indigenes of the area, local and foreign partners, as well as help boost internal revenue of Abia State.