ExpdonaLoaded.blogspot.com (+2348097205188): Expdonaloaded News; Businesses pack up as dilapidated Aba-Ikot Ekpene road worsens

Wednesday, 22 July 2015

Expdonaloaded News; Businesses pack up as dilapidated Aba-Ikot Ekpene road worsens

It is no longer news that Aba, the commercial nerve centre of Abia State, has the worst network of roads, perhaps in the country. It is also no news that the dilapidated road network has negatively affected businesses in the city over the years. what is rather disturbing is the extent to which the bad nature of the road which leads to Akwa Ibom and Cross River states, Cameroon and Equatorial Guinea, has forced businesses along its way to close.
Some of the businesses which dot the ever-busy Aba-Ikot Ekpene highway and which their owners are now counting their losses include hotels, filling stations, restaurants, auto mechanic workshops, farms, palm oil beaches and the Nigerian Christian Hospital. Communities along the highway are not left out in the bad road lock-down as they have been cut off from the rest of the state. Motorists now have to meander through difficult bush parts with its attendant increased cost of transportation to get to Aba. It is a dangerous adventure for any person to fall sick in the area because it is an uphill task accessing the Nigerian Christian Hospital, Nlagu, which serves the health needs of the area and its environs. The worst sections of the highway, which have been abandoned, are the Alaoji – Ukpakiri, Umuokpo-Umuwaoma and Onicha Ngwa-Nlagu areas on the 20km stretch from Opobo Junction in Ogbor Hill to Nlagu which is the last border community in Abia to Akwa Ibom. The owner of one of the 32 palm beaches on the road, Hon. Chinyere Matthew said he was forced to close down because his customers could no longer access his company due to the bad nature of the road. Matthew, who said he had 52 workers in his company, stated that the union of Palm Beach Dealers had written many petitions about their plight to the immediate past administration in the state, but nothing positive was done. Also Mr Isreal Ejindu who owns a filling station along the road lamented that he has continued to suffer losses on his investments in the area because motorists no longer ply the road due to its bad state, making him to appeal to relevant authorities to urgently repair the road. In a chat with Oriental News, a native of one the communities in the area, Chigozie Onyeukwu Ubani decried the state of the road and called on the federal and state governments to urgent rehabilitate the neglected and abandoned highway. “It is a shame that the Abia State government and the Federal Government allowed this all-important road to degenerate to this level where it is now totally impassable. You can imagine the number of business enterprises on this road and the number of families they feed. With a conservative estimate, these businesses created nearly 3,000 jobs in direct employment and 9,000 in multiplier effects. There is no doubt that many people these companies employed have been thrown back into the labour market because of the situation,” Ubani lamented. Hon. Solomon Akpulonu , member representing Obingwa East State Constituency in the Abia State House of Assembly, in a chat appealed to the state and federal governments to rehabilitate the road to end the suffering of the people of the area. Akpulonu who is returning to the House for the second time said he was not going to rest on his oars until the Aba-Ikot Ekpene highway was rehabilitated.