Leaders from the South-East have pleaded with President Bola Tinubu to order the dismantling of checkpoints and roadblocks in the region, arguing that they contribute to the high cost of goods.
The leaders also appealed to the President to use his good offices to ensure that the moribund Anambra Basin with abundant oil and gas reserves is revived in the interest of the nation’s economy.
The demands were made at the town hall meeting during President Bola Tinubu’s official visit to Enugu State where he unveiled many projects executed by Governor Peter Mbah’s administration
Presenting the appeal, the leaders noted that checkpoints and roadblocks have a lot of drawbacks, which they say have negatively affected the economy of the people in the region and even constitute a security risk.
contended that with the modern command and control centre established by the Enugu State government and other strategies put in place, there was no need for the traditional checkpoints and roadblocks.
They said that the security measures put in place by Governor Mbah are critical for the encouragement of investment and economic growth.
They further said it is also critical that the right security strategies are put in place to avoid giving visitors and brothers in Diaspora the wrong impression that things are worse than they seem.
“These were some of the driving factors which motivated Enugu State to institute its ultra-modern statewide CCTV, modern cameras mounted on patrol cars, some of which we have commissioned today, including our modern command and control centre, it was quite easy to convince our governor to invest billions of Naira on security,” they said.
They continued: “Your Excellency with the launch of these facilities, we are confident that there’s less need for the traditional practice of mounting roadblocks at checkpoints. Checkpoints, in my view, have many drawbacks, checkpoints and roadblocks, they make the movement of goods and persons very expensive, very inefficient increase the low cost of logistics, leading to high inflation.
“They tie down valuable security manpower, they needlessly expose the brave men and women of our security agencies to attacks by criminals of all guises, of various guises, as well as to other users of the highways.
“Given this Your Excellency, we appeal to you to support Enugu state and security agencies, to de-emphasize the traditional practice of roadblocks, stop and search and all that. Our people are complaining about those things.
“It will be a great honour. When we say de-emphasize, what it means is that we are providing alternatives. You have seen the patrol vans, you have seen the cameras mounted all over the state. So we have alternatives to all this. So we just want to de-emphasize this issue of stop and search and roadblocks.”
