By ogenyi ogenyi,uyo
Former governor of akwa ibom, obong victor attah has expressed concern over the continued absence of landing lights at the victor attah international airport in uyo, resulting in only daylight flights at the airport and oftentimes diversion of flights to nearby airports.
It would be recalled that during last month’s fifa world cup qualifier between nigeria and south africa, the south african squad could not fly directly to uyo but were diverted to the airport in port harcourt, rivers state.
Many other business travellers have experienced similar inconveniences following the absence of landing lights at the ibom airport in uyo.
Attah said he suffered tremendously when his flight from lagos to uyo scheduled for 5:30 pm was cancelled because the runway lights were not working, forcing uyo airport to operate daylight flights only.
The former governor who spoke in an interview he granted an online newspaper, the southern examiner said he could not understand why an airport should operate without night flights adding that most airports depended on night flights to generate revenue.
“I really cannot understand, this is your main gateway, how can you not make sure it serves its purpose and night flights are really what most airports depend on.” he said.
He also decried the inability of successive administrations in the state to complete the maintenance, repair and overhaul facility at the ibom airport saying that it was a necessary facility for the west african region.
“we started an mro project supported by all the world leading authorities on mro that it is a necessary facility for the west african sub region, till date,it is not operational so I do not want to feel that I am criticising anybody, I am just wondering, these things are we saying they are not necessary or that the concept were wrong or they shouldn’t have been prioritised.
“because I believe they were and I would have thought that one should have continued with them because those were big things and there are even small things as well but my worry is why haven’t these things been done or what have we done instead that is better?”
“it reminds me of those days when we didn’t have mobile telephone in the country, we used to drive to calabar to make overseas calls and you can only communicate with countries that have the same daylight time with yourself and it was a serious setback.’’ attah querried.
The former governor who also expressed displeasure over the inability of the state government to complete the ibom deep sea port sixteen years after it was initiated said he was greatly pained by such failures.
“I do not see how after these number of years, we have not been able to do the ibom deep sea port because I know for sure and this is without any debate or argument, the lekki thing or badagry thing that you see is copied from the concept we had from the ibaka deep seaport and an industrial city and they have come alive and working but we have not even built the port yet, those type of things bother me and I feel pained about it.” he stated.
He also expressed displeasure that the university of science and technology he established in the state was converted to a conventional institution adding that the concept behind the university should not have been abandoned.
“the science and technonology university that I started and I had a very good reason for startng a university of science and technology was converted into a conventional university and I really don’t see how that has benefitted us more than a university of technology particularly the concept of a university of technology that we had which was a research-based university and that was why we chose the waterside as its location.” attah concluded.
