The Rivers State Government has appealed to the Minister of Transportation, Rt. Hon. Chibuike Rotimi Amaechi, to take urgent steps to upgrade facilities at the Port Harcourt International Airport, to ease business operations.
This is as the All Progressives Congress (APC) has applauded the appointment of Amaechi as a member of the Board of Trustees, United Nations Institute for Training and Research (UNITAR), and as the choice of pan-Igbo group, Ohaneze Ndigbo as the 2015 Igbo Man of the Year.
Rivers State Commissioner for Information and Communications, Dr Austin Tam-George, in a statement issued in Port Harcourt yesterday, decried the deplorable state of facilities at the airport.
Tam-George, who stated that immediate attention should be given to the airport to ease flight operations and standardize business activities in the state, said Rivers people expect Amaechi to accord priority attention to the completion of the ongoing work at the airport.
He also appealed to the minister of Transportation to start a railway system from Edo State to connect all the states in the South-South geopolitical zone in other to foster regional and economic integration.
Meanwhile, chairman of the APC in Rivers State, Dr. Davies Ibiamu Ikanya, in a statement issued in Port Harcourt yesterday by his senior special assistant on Media and Publicity, Eze Chukwuemeka Eze, described Amaechi, who is the immediate past governor of the state, as God’s gift to the people of Nigeria.
Ikanya said, “The appointment of Rt. Hon. Amaechi as a member of the Board of Trustees of UNITAR for an initial three-year term from January 1, 2016 to December 31, 2018 did not come to us as a surprise knowing the antecedents of Amaechi as a great achiever.
“It is well deserved by the man during whose tenure as governor, the Rivers State capital, Port Harcourt, became the first African city to be declared the UNESCO World Book Capital in 2014, out-bidding other great cities such as Oxford in England and Moscow in Russia, among others.
