BeijinDossier:
Went to shop at the expansive Roban Stores Awka

MelesZenawi:
Seriously anambra need a website strictly monitored and free from these parasites around.

BeijinDossier:


I totally agree with you. Owerri is as ugly filthy and dilapidated as Aba. Spits

okpalaAnambra:

See this poor barrow pusher..u Sabi wetin be Roban? Cursed Igala boy

BeijinDossier:
Pay point

okpalaAnambra:

Owerri and Nnewi my place are 1m years ahead of your rural agrarian Aguleri..cursed Igala man from Aguleri

BeijinDossier:
[s][/s]

Mbadinuju era in Anambra around 1999, I was in a bad mood till Ngige came with good governance, then Obi and now Obiano.

But in the case of your Abia state it has been one bad government after another but you are never perturbed. I guess this non chalant attitude is very common with Abia, and you wonder why your state is the worst in Nigeria. I spit on you.

BeijinDossier:
Had this meal at Stanelworld Awka with a prominent member of this forum. Stanel restaurant is giving 5 star restaurant a run for nice local delicacies.

okpalaAnambra:

I'm an Nnewi supremacist and I don't hide it..that's whom we are..the rest of omambala na trash without us

okpalaAnambra:

Shut up...who dash monkey banana :.poor man like u

mktinsight:
https://www.awkatimes.com/policy-failure-and-the-slumification-of-awka/Policy Failure and the Slumification of AwkBy
Chudi Okoye
November 19, 2019
https://www.awkatimes.comAwka looks very much today how a capital city should not: an unprepossessing and slowly decaying municipality, trashed by its inhabitants, lacking effective local leadership, and neglected by the resident state government which makes fabulous plans for infrastructure development but has done very little, across administrations, to stanch the sprawling slumification of the capital city.t is truly a tale of two consequences. The soaring dream of urban growth that was ignited when Awka was made a state capital is slowly materializing, but it comes with a searing nightmare of sprawling slumification in Awka inner city. No one can dispute the strain towards eutopia in Awka; but the sprain of dystopia is equally undeniable. Awka, simply put, is urbanizing without much evidence of modernizing.Such a prismatic apposition as we see in Awka today is fairly common in the early phases of urbanization: the result of tensions between the forces of modernization and resistant tradition. However, in the case of Awka it might be more a manifestation of policy failure than anything else – a lack of policy imagination and a slack, otherwise, in policy implementation.
From Jubilation to TribulationThere had been jubilation throughout Awka land when the military regime of General Ibrahim Babangida, on August 27, 1991, created nine new states in Nigeria and Awka was designated as the capital of the new Anambra State.It had all looked very promising from the vantage of that vintage year. The new state meant a localization of power, a government with the policy machinery and the resources to bring development closer to the people. There were wild dreams of rapid transformation in Anambra state in general, but particularly in its new capital. Ndi Anambra had a reputation as development-conscious, hard-charging achievers with prodigious intellect, enterprise and industry. It was thought that a combination of such traits with the birth of a new state government was the trigger needed for a take-off, with modernization achieved in the new state perhaps faster than anywhere else in Nigeria. Governments of the day issued patriotic summons to Anambra indigenes around the world soliciting homeward investment (akuluo uno). There were even allusive references to the “can-do” spirit of post-war reconstruction which powered Igbo resurgence a mere generation after a devastating civil war. Anambra was the core Igbo state, and with the localization of power would come rapid social transformation, symbolized by the creation of a befitting capital city.

That had been the hope; the heady expectation at creation. But, alas, the reality has fallen far short of the hope. Today, the dream of a rapid modernization of the state capital is fast flickering out, even though the state itself is on the move. There is little ‘capital feeling’ anymore, residents told Awka Times in street interviews, what with decades of neglect and poor infrastructure development by successive governments. Twenty-eight years after the creation of the new state, parts of its capital city look for all the world like patches of urban squalor. It is such that Awka is considered the least developed amongst its peers in the South East, perhaps the most backward in Nigeria.b]“Let us look at Awka as a state capital,” senator Andy Uba had told reporters in 2017; “Awka till today remains the worst capital in the whole of Nigeria. Its present infrastructural state does not justify its status as a capital city,” he said.[/b]
“Awka is like a glorified local government,” says Mr Godwin Eneemo, a former gubernatorial candidate under the Progressives Peoples Alliance (PPA) now with the People’s Democratic Party (PDP). According to newspaper reports, Mr Ezeemo has said that “a state normally has a befitting capital. But the reverse is the case in Anambra. You can easily drive past the capital [Awka] without knowing you’ve passed. No infrastructure, roads are bad everywhere. Same is seen in Onitsha, Nnewi and other major towns. Nothing is working.” [/b]The Awka Times Person of the Year 2019, [b]Dr Okey Anueyiagu, chairman of an eponymous foundation rebuilding Awka schools, offered an even more devastating assessment of the city. “I do not think of Awka as a town that has reached, let alone sustained, the level of development expected for a state capital,” he told Awka Times in an interview published in this edition. “Nor do I think,” he said, “that it can attain that level of development in this century! If one may venture to be blunt, the town is a glorified slum in terms of its infrastructural development.”
General State of Infrastructure in Awkab]The irony of the infrastructure decay in contemporary Awka is that Awka people actually did a great job of maintaining their town when they had full responsibility for it in the precolonial and postcolonial periods. Awka was then largely inhabited by an indigenous people who took pride in their lived environment. An 1899 colonial source quoted in Prof Elizabeth Isichei’s book, Igbo Worlds, noted that when colonial forces first came into Awka they encountered a settlement that was well-ordered, the best in the Igbo country. They were amazed to notice how clean and functional Awka people kept their roads and homestead.[/b]Fast forward several decades to the early postcolonial era. Notable diarists in Awka have reported that prior to the Nigerian Civil War and in the immediate aftermath, Awka people had well-ingrained habits of social and domestic hygiene. Market traders instinctively cleaned their stalls and surrounding areas; streets and pathways and compounds were swept; street gutters and storm drains were frequently cleared by organized community effort.Today, all that has changed, thanks to the rapid influx of immigrants, the growing alienation caused by densification and urbanization, the sense that Awka has become a no-man’s land, and above all the incidence of policy failure on the part of state and local government administrations.b]Nearly three decades after it attained capital status, through a succession of twelve administrators, most critical infrastructures remain poorly developed in Awka. From roads to water and electricity supply to other elements of the built environment, the state of Awka infrastructural facilities leaves much to be desired. In part the pressure on Awka infrastructure is a result of rapid population growth driven by the inward migration that came with the attainment of capital status. This had been expected. But political instability in the early years and subsequent policy fluctuation meant that there was inadequate planning for infrastructural provision, environmental sanitation, erosion control and other social services. As a result, Awka is suffering an urban blight characterized by extremely poor sanitation, mountains of garbage all over, unregulated building patterns, uncontrolled street trading, noise pollution, overcrowding, undeveloped walkways, as well as inadequate and deteriorated road networks creating traffic chaos and congestion.[/b]There are so many dimensions to the infrastructure crisis in Awka:m
- The most obvious is the deplorable condition of transport infrastructure, particularly Awka roads. As of today, there are two major routes leading into Awka capital city, namely: Enugu-Onitsha Expressway and Awka-Agulu-Ekwulobia road. These roads have remained more or less in the condition that they were at the inception of the state, with little improvement. Inner city roads are a complete shambles, built in some cases in a manner defying all planning or engineering logic. As we report in this edition of Awka Times, the capital city as a whole is a squalid habitation with a perplexing mesh of messy roads.
frastructure in Awka is probably the most appalling. Public water taps in the capital continue to run spottily despite repeated promises of amelioration by successive administrations. There was once talk of a ‘Greater Imoka Water Scheme’ and a ‘World Bank-Assisted Water Scheme’, but none was executed. Same too with the promise of a Federal Government-assisted water supply for Awka drawn from the adjacent Ezu River. One can imagine the sanitary and health condition of a capital without viable systems for potable water supply, water treatment, flood management and other wet infrastructure, especially in a tropical rainforest city that experiences six to eight months of rainfall in the year.
Energy infrastructure is another area of stupefying insufficiency. There is constant power failure, with electricity supply even more erratic in the inner city. One administration after another has expressed its intent to improve power supply. Most recently the state government set a goal of achieving a minimum of 15 hours of electricity supply daily, but this modest target remains a mirage. The Ministry of Public Utilities is working with the energy supplier, Enugu Electricity Distribution Company (EEDC), to expand capacity. The firm recently upgraded its distribution facility at Agu-Awka to a 15 Mega Voltage Amp (MVA) injection substation, and started the installation of another 7.5 MVA by the Anambra Broadcasting Service (ABS) area in Awka. EEDC claims that it has invested billions of naira to improve its infrastructures. Still, Awka remains severely undersupplied, particularly in the inner-city core of the capital. In spite of the erratic supply, EEDC still sends outrageous bill estimates to its Awka customers, because it is yet to fully roll out its Distribution Transformer Metering (DTM) programme which will rationalize the billing system. Customers are thus underserved and overcharged.

- Government (institutional) infrastructure is another surprising area of official neglect. To this day, the Anambra State Government House is situated on a road construction facility left behind by Lodigiani Nigeria Limited, the firm that built the busy Onitsha-Awka-Enugu expressway in the 1980s. There is no State House! The ultramodern Three Arms Zone complex envisioned by Gov. Chinwoke Mbadinuju (1999 to 2003) to host the three arms of government is yet to be built, after a well-advertised flag-off by Governor Obiano in 2014.


- The long-planned purpose-built conference and events centre in Agu-Awka area is only beginning to be developed – fitfully at that – and the hope is that it will be completed before Obiano leaves office in two years, to avoid being abandoned by a future administration. The risk is real if Obiano’s party, All Progressives Grand Alliance (APGA), which has ruled Anambra State for 13 years with mixed results, fails to retain governorship of the state. Anambra is the only state where the party is in power.

- Housing issues are also an aspect of the urban infrastructure crisis in Awka, resulting from the rapid densification that came with the capital status. Many parts of Awka, including the hoary Agu-Awka area, are being converted into residential estates to address the growing housing demand, some through public-private initiatives. But planning and affordability remain critical issues.

- There are even now no recreational and sporting facilities of international or even national standard in Awka. A recent Awka Times video documentation, posted on our website, shows that the Awka mini stadium has yet to upgraded, and is not even maintained, with its few provisions vandalized. The whole site is turning into a crime scene!

The grim examples multiply. So many problems to rectify. But the question is: why is Awka still not getting the attention befitting a state capital?

More at: https://www.awkatimes.com/policy-failure-and-the-slumification-of-awka/

somalianprince:
Repost: beautiful city of Awka. Someone should continue to cry and die today.

somalianprince:
Best ICC in the SE under construction in Awka. Mktinsight cry and die