A group, Cultural Credibility Development Initiative has petitioned the Inspector General of Police, Usman Alkali Baba and the Chief of Defence staff, General Leo Irabor over what it described as strangulation of Igboland with checkpoints
In the latter dated December 16 and signed by Chief A. G. Uwazurike (president) and Pastor Steve Nwabuko(secretary), the group drew attention of the two service chiefs to the “suffocation caused by the humongous number of checkpoints in Igboland.”
The letter read: Sir, for the avoidance of doubts, a traveller from Lagos to Igboland sees checkpoints every one kilometer up to the outer ring road of Benin City. The traveller form Abuja sees checkpoints every two kilometers until he reaches Delta North fringes. The two sets of travellers then are subjected to the horror of a checkpoints every half a kilometer.
“The distance between checkpoints is reduced to 200 meters once a traveller crosses the Niger Bridge. This Niger bridge obstruction with checkpoints causes five-kilometer back log of cars in a traffic snarl.
“Sir, we are presenting the actual situation of things in Igboland. Today, it takes about four hours to travel from Lagos to the outskirts of Asaba, Delta. But it takes about six hours to travel the distance from the outskirts of Asaba to the Niger Bridge. The suffering is unbearable.
“We do by this letter seek your intervention to have mercy on travellers by reducing the strangulating number of checkpoints by 75%.”