By our reporter
Road users in Calabar metropolis are seeking the State Government’s intervention in the current gridlock bedeviling the Habour-NNPC section of the Murtala Muhammed Highway.
For several weeks now, lorries conveying petroleum products from the Calabar depot have made the Murtala Muhammed Highway very impassable, with lengthy queues of auto biles an innocuous and ever-present spectacle of the road.
Narrating his ordeal, a commuter, Mr. Lazarus Ubong, said the current impasse has caused grave economic problems for his business, with attendant effect on his entire family.
The commuter called on governor Ben Ayade to wade into the situation which is already being aggravated by the astronomical hike in petroleum products in the State and country.
Another speaker, a taxi driver, Mr Ekuri Obi, blamed the authorities for their inability to checkmate the excesses of truck drivers and petroleum marketers, which have turned the Depot-Murtala Muhammed Highway to a nightmare of impassable gridlock and a dead trap.
Counting her loses, Madam Ekanem Enebong, said the present traffic predicament has caused a downward trajectory for her small scale enterprise. She made a plea to the government to act fast before the situation plunged into a catastrophe.
On a telephone interview with the Federal Road Safety Corps (FRSC), Cross River Sector Command’s Sector Public Education Officer, Superintendent Route Commander Mark Ajuka, informed that the FRSC’s Sector Commander,
Corps Commander Abdullahi Hassan had commenced interface with stakeholders of the petroleum marketers and lorry drivers in a bid to provide a lasting response to the logjam. He notified that the Commander’s intervention was halted by an official engagement to Abuja, which on return to Calabar, will continue with the interface.
As at press time, repeated calls to the Commissioner for Transportation were unsuccessful.
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