Abia State Governor, Dr Alex Otti has said that his administration has taken a bold step in fulfilling one of his major campaign promises, which was to permanently break the jinx of Port Harcourt road in Aba ,and reviving the long-abandoned economic activities along the road.
Otti stated this on Thursday, in Aba, while flagging off the construction of the 6.7km road, which is to be handled by Julius Berger Nigeria PLC.m Otti who praised the residents of Aba for enduring over twenty years of pain, caused by dilapidated conditions of the Port Harcourt road, said that the contract would be delivered in the next eighteen months.
He said that the road project and the contractor, were not chosen just to score a cheap political point, but to do a holistic job of fixing the road and addressing the age-long flooding problems tormenting the residents and business community.
He urged the Aba residents to endure every inconvenience that they may face during the period of the road construction works, assuring that them that they will enjoy afterwards. He urged them to cooperate with the construction workers throughout the period of the project.
Otti advised encouraged the residents on the need to regularly pay their taxes, to enable the government serve them better, even as he assured that his government would maintain steady environmental neatness. “I am glad that the Contractor understands the strategic importance of this road and why it had been chosen.
“As agreed by all parties, this project has a delivery timeline not exceeding 18 months. My expectation is that whatever needs to be done to meet the target would be done, including working round the clock.
On our own part, we have set up a robust financing structure to see that we complete the payment on schedule to eliminate any setbacks arising from payment delays” Otti further promised to update Abia residents regularly, on the progress of works on the Port Harcourt road.
He said that a committee has been set up to create a database of all strategic private and public businesses that are moribund, saying that appropriate steps would be taken by his administration to revive them. Some residents of Aba, who spoke during the event, praised Governor Alex Otti for taking a bold step to fix the terrible erosion menace and bad roads that caused them pain.
They lamented before the coming of the Otti government, that previous administrations in the State always played politics with the Port Harcourt road and other critical road infrastructure in Aba.
