There was pandemonium on Friday when members of the Onne Transport Union comprising Okada and Keke riders with support from members of the community disrupted the launch ceremony of a new taxi scheme funded by the Nigeria Port Authority (NPA) and the Oil and Gas Free Zone Authority (OGFZA) to replace Okada and Keke operation in the industrial zone.


Holygist findings revealed trouble had started when the local transport operators had resumed daily operations but were served memos from the authorities informing them of the new taxi scheme and prohibition of there services from February 1, 2020. The action, our correspondent irked both the operators and their leaders who presumably had no prior knowledge and were seeing their only source of livelihood being taken away with no consultation or palliatives to full back on.

In a rather interesting twist of event, Former Acting Youth President of Onne Community, Hon. Samuel Onwinkpe is now accusing the NPA/OGFZA of colluding to shortchange him and his people by executing key items in his proposal on the same project without as much as notifying him or any member of the community.


An aggrieved Onwinke while displaying copies of the proposal originally submitted in 2015 to Holygist said yesterday's ceremony came to him as a shock as the authority had in it's last correspondence on the proposal in 2017 promised to revert to him once it was ready to execute it. The Former Onne Youth President said a staff confided in him only yesterday that management had opted to contract the purchase of the vehicles to a Yoruba instead at the last minute, continuing in its tradition of "neglect and disregard for Onne people".


"I did not even know about the launch. I was simply going to FOT (in Onne) when I saw a crowd gathered. I stepped down to enquire about the issue only to be told that the NPA and OGFZA released a memo directing that Keke and taxis will be banned with effect from February and that they were launching a new taxi scheme to replace them. I was taken aback. The idea was never even to leave my people stranded. They were supposed to be incorporated in it. More so it was a security measure to be able to regulate vehicular movement and human traffic so we can have a database of the operators and if there is any incident we know who to apprehend.


"I sent the proposal since 2015 to the NPA when Hassan was still there. He liked it. In 2016, they suspended work on it on the ground that they wanted to make it global.

continue reading>>> https://www.holygist.com/article?t=npa-onne-transport-union-and-community-on-war-path