₦airaland Forum

Abufo:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=67KabChFYjM



Just watch !!!! It is hard to feel optimistic about Soludo's performance after visiting Anambra! I visited Anambra last summer and my visit to Awka and Onitsha were the lowest points of my summer vacation! I got some encouragement before the election in March but for some reason the soludo admin seem to have gone back to sleep! He seems to be micro managing his admin to the detriment of the whole state....who is his sanitation czar? who is his points man for works and housing? He should know that Ndi anambra are very emotional and perceptive lot, people feel that soludo considers his Anambra role as just a stepping stone for his badly hidden presidential ambition! He should set up a strong Public works department and a strong environmental sanitation agency.........all these 2 km road contracts awarded for 1 billion naira will not lead us anywhere o!

Abufo:
We Anambrarians continue to underestimate the earning power of the hospitality and tourism industry................see how years of dedicated investment in Tourism and travel has transformed Kenya's capital city Nairobi! yet we have miles of Rivers Niger and Omambala that we can build a resort city for travel and living!



https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yJM92Pgwj_E

pandax:
Having the sports facilities and academies as you stated is good (Soludo will develop park B of Awka Stadium to have the facilities you mentioned), but we also need to make sure that Anambra is livable by investing more in other leisure activities, aside from sports facilities. The idea of Anambra being a transit state have to stop, we need to attract our populations east, north and southwards of Onitsha and not west wards.

The only issue i have with the project is that a similar project(Agulu Leisure Park) is less than 10km away from the site of current project. I expect the state to plan similar or even better Leisure Park on the bank of River Niger or a point between Onitsha and Nnewi.

pandax:
Nice idea. In fact, i would love to see a similar thing around Onitsha and Nnewi axis.

Folks, i am yet to see pictures of completed Road Projects by Soludo here, and we are nearing 2 years into his administration

Dotherightthing:
Even 50,000 is HIGHLY UNLIKELY!!!

5,000 is more like it

PROUDIGBO:
Two clips showing Port Harcourt city and Bonny Island NLNG camp. I upload them in the hope someone that matters in gov't views this thread and gets inspired to help improve on our own cities and estates...even if it means knocking a few stubborn Igbo heads together!

First clip shows Bonny NLNG estate. This estate, more than any other, shows why i keep banging on about greenery, sweeping of streets, underground electricity/communications cabling and planning! It would be near impossible to replicate this in any open city in Nigeria, but it's possible to take some pointers from this when constructing exclusive estates....like the upcoming Awka millenium estate for instance. Notice how there's enough space between buildings, and all open spaces are covered in well manicured lawns; there's effort made to plant and nuture well-spaced out ornamental trees; the roads are marked and well swept; there's road signage where necessary; there are even open gutters (my pet hate), but you'd hardly notice due to the cleanliness and organisation of the estate that over-compensates for this; and finally, there's no high perimeter walls (that gives you that enclosed/claustrophobic feeling) built almost on top of the main road! The individual houses in this estate are basic....even austere, but i bet you all watching the clip would much rather have your family living here than in those estates of multi-million dollar mansions with high perimeter walls built almost on top of the roads and which suffer from all the ills we normally complain about!

Clip courtesy Travel And See: https://www.youtube.com/@travelandsee1960

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=duXmOTb4Ztc

Second clip shows a part of Port Harcourt City, and there are takeaways we could replicate in our own cities too. Unlike with the NLNG estate, this one shows the open city and hence is better for comparison.

As much as there are quite a number of things i don't like about Wike, one thing we can all agree is that his no-nonsense approach to governance and development of Port Harcourt has helped transform the city into the organised, clean and green one we see today! Notice how there's a near absence of build-up of sand/sediment/rubbish by the sides of the roads as it's apparent they're swept regularly; the roads have the appropriate road markings and signages; notice how, where space permits, the roads are widened to four lanes or more; there's little or no commercial roadside clutter and rubbish....even in the busy/commercial areas, and this gives the city the appearance of sanity and order; for the most part, there's neat sidewalks over underground drainage and adjoining to the sidewalks are usually carpet grass right up to he walls of individual properties....this can help reduce the level of dust in the air and sand/sediment on roadsides; and finally, there's effort made to plant ornamental trees in some areas...esp' highbrow areas.

Individual effort...nobody surpasses us at this! Where we need to pull our socks up is in the area of governance and being firm with those who flout the law!

Clip courtesy Jummy Maduka: https://www.youtube.com/@jummymaduka

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XbHSQiKcBUM

Valto:
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babtoundey:
Were said the respect he had for him is akin to the one he had for his father.. How respectable is a father that birthed and raised a fool like him.


Achebe was great. In fact, very great. But he couldn't achieve half of what Soyinka achieves in their line of business. Only an idiot would compare both of them. You find a match for WS when you see a prolific, successful and well know author who excels in writing drama, prose, Poetry, essays and theories. Achebe wrote only prose, the moment he dabbled into poetry, he flopped.

NigerianAngelo:
Appoint LG Chairmen

Mandate them to clean up Anambra and present report card in two months.


It will be done.


Not all these Camera stints. This should be the second Gutter-operation stint since March last year.

abuzz33:
Amendments Passed by Buhari devolving power from Federal to States and my opinion on what Anambra/SE should do:

AIRPORTS
Constitution (Fifth Alteration) Bill No. 29 (Devolution of Powers (Airports)
This bill seeks to move the item “airports” from the exclusive legislative list to the concurrent legislative list.

Anambra has an airport and the question is whether moving it to the concurrent legislative list allows Anambra to set taxes such as the Passenger Service Charge which is an abysmal N2,000 per passenger meaning that with 200,000 avg passengers a year the passenger tax revenue of the airport will be just 400 million naira barely enough to sustain the airport. To enable the airport to be financially self-sustaining the PSC must rise by at least 500% . Other fees like aircraft landing fees, car park fees, concession fees contribute less than 10% to domestic airport revenue.

CORRECTIONAL SERVICES
Constitution (Fifth Alteration) Bill No. 31 (Devolution of Powers (Correctional Services)
This bill seeks to delete the item “prisons” from the exclusive legislative list and redesignate it as “correctional services” in the concurrent legislative list.

This is a good measure because Nigerian prisons are overcrowded and often the innocent are jailed along with the guilty. The state should endeavour to build correctional facilities particularly in remote towns. The state should use prisoners as cheap labour for things like farming, clearing of gutters..

RAILWAYS
Constitution (Fifth Alteration) Bill No. 32 (Devolution of Powers (Railways)
The bill seeks to move the item “railways” from the exclusive legislative list to the concurrent legislative list.

Anambra along with Enugu, Imo, Abia and Rivers should aim to build a rail line connecting Enugu, Awka, Onitsha, Owerri, Aba and Port Harcourt along the axis. Passengers, Containers, Fuel and Vehicles can be moved between the states easily. For passengers, rail will open up safer travel between Enugu, Anambra, Imo, Abia and Rivers

POWER
Constitution (Fifth Alteration) Bill No. 33 (Devolution of Powers) (National Grid System)
This bill seeks to delete after the word, “areas”, the words, “not covered by a national grid system” in the concurrent legislative list. This will allow states to generate, transmit and distribute electricity in areas covered by the national grid within their respective domains.

Anambra can use this law to generate constant power for industrial layouts and government facilities without the need for EEDC and the limitations of grid allocation.

IDENNAA:
A Special Task Force set up by the Operation Clean And Healthy Anambra, OCHA Brigade has arrested 28 suspected persons connected to a notorious illegal revenue collector popularly known as 'coded', IGBERETV reports.

The arrest was conducted in different parts of Onitsha and Oba where the suspects operate.

Speaking to newsmen, the Public Relations Officer of OCHA Brigade, Mr. Anthony Agbaefune, said the arrests followed tons of petitions received by OCHA Brigade written by residents of the state who were extorted by the gang.

Mr. Agbaefune while emphasizing that each of the suspects were caught red handed in the illegal activity, said with the arrest of the suspects, the state government has once again clearly indicated the commitment of the Soludo-led administration to ensure that the lives and properties of residents across the state are secured and protected under the law.

Affirming the state government's zero tolerance against all kinds of touting activities very clear, he assured that every resident in the state would be protected by government.

The suspects are Osita Dike from Imo state arrested at Minaj, Nnamdi Chukwudi from Enugu arrested at Idemili junction, Francis Chukwuebuka from Oba Anambra State arrested at Ezeokpoko Park, Antony Samsom from Oba, Anambra State arrested at Oba old road, Ogbonna Sunday from Oba, Anambra State arrested at Igwe Park Oba, Nnabuike Umeoke from Ebonyi State arrested at Igwe Park Oba, Obienu Echezona from Oba, Anambra State arrested at Igwe Park Oba, David Okpara from Enugu arrested at Tarzan , Arinze Nwakaibie from Obosi, Anambra State arrested at Goodness and Mercy Park Owerri road, Edeh Obinna from Obosi, Anambra State arrested at Minaj, among others.

AmericanQuarter:
All the things you wrote are lies. I can beat my chest to say that Awka is a beautiful well planned city at least in Nigerian standard. There are several dual carriage ways in the city, Zik Avenue is one of them, Esther Obiakor, Ekwueme Road, Secretariate Road, etc, I won't forget numerous of such roads at Awka Millennium city.

There are less slum in Awka if there any compare to Owerri. I have done a project for UNDP in Owerri, go to worldbank in Owerri, you will be wondering if you are actually in a state capital. I think someone already posted a video of Owerri here.

You people should desist with this dangerous lies. These are pictures posted by . Awka in most part is a well planned city. Just like every other city, it has its own fair share of bad roads too. Owerri is even worse off in this regard

Awka

globemoney01:
All these criticisms of Awka flyovers are just desperate attempts to tarnish it because it was built by Obiano and not Obi, traffic also concentrates at peak times at underbridge at Wike flyovers in Port Harcourt and Lagos so look for something else.

globemoney01:
Show us Obi projects in Awka Ezi. Show us investments that opened in Awka during Obi tenure. The same Obi trader that said how will he develop Awka, how much do they generate in IGR. You are coming here to tell us nonsense

IGBOSON1:
Wouldn’t go as far as to term it a slum, but i looked at the pic effusive comments were being made about and i shook my head in exasperation! Our standards as a people and what we consider acceptable in governance have drastically diminished from colonial times! I remember reading excerpts from books and journals of colonial travellers into Igboland, and the fact they took time to document how neat, clean and organised our villages of the time were! Now look where we find ourselves today!

Fact of the matter is it wouldn’t take that much to improve on that scene: just reconstruct the road with underground drainage and sidewalks on top (the road looks wide enough for it), properly mark the road and include the necessary signages, plant trees on either side, add street lights, then include one or two open/green spaces where you can add seats, shrubs/flowers and a fountain or two! Not forgetting that we also need to imbibe the habit of sweeping our major roads at least once every fortnight!

Ofodirinwa:
Barcelona and Paris are among the only 'planned' cities in Europe. Again, the rest grew organically. Both were planned about 200 years ago. Most cities in Europe are over 800-1000 years old. PAris was planned after a massive fire cleared the old city. London, Amsterdam, Berlin are not planned.

Some cities are planned and some are not, but it doesn't determine what the city will be quality-wise. Especially if you have bad taste, you will plan things that are bad and tasteless. We were celebrating Keke when it came, now we think it's a problem. Plastics, 'fly over', etc

Even look at IGR. Nigerians are celebrating that as a metric of government success. IF you tell them this will be a problem in 15 years, they will argue. To rate your governments success by how much money they take from you lol. When it's time to make the decision we make bad ones because we have no taste.


At the same time, we exaggerate 'how bad' the average Nigerian city is. True be told they're not that bad and are improving.

OreMI22:
@bolded. That is the crux of the matter!

The type of houses in Nigerian cities such as Onitsha are way better than houses in many European capitals. However, because the whole place is unplanned, with lots of bad roads and overflowing trash everywhere, no sane person would like to live in a Nigerian city.

Thus, a total lack of town planning code and appalling bad roads with overflowing trash everywhere is what turned Nigerian cities into slums. If you look at the quality of buildings, you will agree that Nigerian cities have better buildings than many European cities. Only that the European cities have paved streets, without trash all over the place and of course the buildings are better organized.

ebufa:
Anambra state has an annual budget struggling to reach 200 billion naira , unless Anambra significantly increases its IGR, i do not see how the state can afford the urban renewal projects we so desire! Yet without changing the vibes of our cities we will not be able to attract local home investment talk less of foreign investment! A 100 billion naira urban renewal budget is not basic o! The basics is maintaining the infrastructure on ground, getting a handle on refuse collection and disposal, adequate traffic management , enforcement of basic city and zoning laws......and of course security.

In my humble opinion the first step to any urban renewal is to decongest our major towns..........we tend to over build our so called downtowns! The core of the inter state transport hub,should be relocated from headbridge,upper iweka ,tarzan to the second Niger bridage / obosi interchange axis........there is sufficient land to build a world class, luxury bus,commuter bus,trailer and container park there....but witout sensitizing the stakeholders the plan will be sabotaged!

ebufa:
Anambra state has an annual budget struggling to reach 200 billion naira , unless Anambra significantly increases its IGR, i do not see how the state can afford the urban renewal projects we so desire! Yet without changing the vibes of our cities we will not be able to attract local home investment talk less of foreign investment! A 100 billion naira urban renewal budget is not basic o! The basics is maintaining the infrastructure on ground, getting a handle on refuse collection and disposal, adequate traffic management , enforcement of basic city and zoning laws......and of course security.

In my humble opinion the first step to any urban renewal is to decongest our major towns..........we tend to over build our so called downtowns! The core of the inter state transport hub,should be relocated from headbridge,upper iweka ,tarzan to the second Niger bridage / obosi interchange axis........there is sufficient land to build a world class, luxury bus,commuter bus,trailer and container park there....but witout sensitizing the stakeholders the plan will be sabotaged!

ebufa:
I feel you may have unknowingly touched on one critical factor that dogs all Anambra state governments.......... Revenue Generation! It is all well to criticise administrations endlessly but how does Anambra state generate enuff revenue to finance all the urban renewal projects we dream about! let me apologise ahead of time but once again I am forced to berate soludo for nearly squandering all his political goodwill by dipping his feet into the unnecessary IPOB/sit at home melodrama ! He has begin to retrace his footsteps.............................Rule #1 always stand with your people PUBLICALLY !!! Soludo must learn to flatter their dreams and aspirations like your life depends on it!

Now this brings me to the topic of revenue generation, i am always amazed that a corterie of little educated Igbo traders are able to navigate stringent,corrupt and biased town planning laws in other states like Lagos,come together,concieve,TAX,construct and commission massive trading complexes yet so called egg heads and intellectuals and elite with trappings of political and administrative powers are unable to finance project that are impactful on the general population!

As a child and an adult growing up in Lagos island within a trading family, I witnessed first hand the conception and construction of Alaba in the 1970s and Aspamda in the late 1990s...................If Soludo is desirous of making any progress with stiff necked republicans like Ndigbo he has to cultivate their TRUST and learn the 3 Cs..........COMMUNICATE, CONSULT and COLLABORATE! If he wants to generate money from ndi anambra he had better get off his high horse and start to visit every autonomous community..HOME and ABROAD...........Peter Obi was quite good at this kind of strategy............can you imagine the kind of revenue he can generate from property tax from mansions in our various villages but We go Discuss am! That one is a must!

Cjrane2:
I don't want to post any of the videos here to illustrate the point, so as not to be misunderstood. However, if you watch all the clips posted on that Youtube Channel (Travel and See), you will observe the clear DIFFERENCE between the chaotic and overcrowded issues we need Soludo to address in Anambra cities.

Yes, these issues are hard to raise due to trolls that will immediately attack you for suggesting any improvement to the quality of life and ambiance of Anambra cities. But, the truth is that only ABA fares worse than the Anambra cities in his city-to-city videos. Yet, Aba did have a huge improvement in most parts of the Asa road - Port Harcourt road shown in the Aba video. You could also see that they were building gutters to address the perennial flooding issues on Aba roads.

We MUST continue to advocate for the enforcement of BAN on street trading, encroachment of traders unto the roads, and parking of disused broken-down vehicles along Anambra city roads, thus blocking off half of the already narrow roads. That archaic behavior of traders MUST stop!

IGBOSON1:
I posted this on the Ebonyi thread and felt it would be good to repost it on other south-east state threads as well so we can have a constructive discussion on how to improve on our cities and make them world-class.

XerXerz:
Mktinsight aka abuzz33 the jobless frustrated tout,, you are older than Soludo and Obiano but they have become governors while you are on nairaland crying everyday. You condemned Obiano when he moved to build airport, ICC, etc, today Anambra has the best and busiest airport in Nigeria aside Abuja, Lagos and PH..No amount of frustration from you can stop the transformation going on in Anambra. You have shifted your frustration to Soludo because he is on the right track. Soludo will continue to pepper you just like Obiano did.

Grgton:
Traffic lights are not even working

Roads are not marked

What exactly are you celebrating?? Painted work of art?? Really?

Ofodirinwa:
Green white and green as very ugly colors. Nothing sensible can be done with them. But how unimaginative are our leaders? is the statue of liberty red white and blue? Is there a union jack on london bridge? Is the great wall of China red?

Why is it everytime they want to apply their useless, unimaginative, money siphoning projects they will now take paint and cover the thing in green white and green just to let you know it's zoological in nature. What other country does this? To have such a depressing uninspiring flag is one thing.


Nigeria is a sick place. People with talent will never be hired to use their talent. The person will go abroad, successed and the Nigerian government will be using that person to flex. Instead of to hiring the world. IGBO artists are making waves all over the world. Some of them are even from Awka. If you don't know anything about art, why commission are projects? Nwanne look at those stupid pictures in that painting. 100% of them are from the first page of Google.

Cjrane2:
Oga Chima,

I'm glad to see some of you are finally bringing up this serious issue. I didn't want to raise this issue because I knew Anambra people themselves should use their tongue to count their teeth.

Truth be told, when I was growing up in Onitsha in the 1980s and 1990s, Abakaliki was the DUST CAPITAL of the world!
Cities like Onitsha, Awka, and Nnewi had decent roads and minimal dust. Today, the reverse is the case!

Rebuilding the internal roads in Anambra's key urban centers must be a key priority. You are right that Soludo won't even scratch the surface of the problem if he hopes to use the easy method of awarding contracts. Direct labor is the solution to reasonably solving this shameful issue. How Abakaliki managed to transform itself from the dust capital of the world to the shining modern city of today must be studied by anyone that wants to develop despite having lean resources.

Yes, Soludo could award contracts to local contractors to hire local labor to do the roads under the supervision of the governor's office.