Owing to incessant robbery attacks and kidnapping on the Emohua/Kalabari Route and the attendant loss of lives and property, the National Union of Road Transport Workers has threatened to withdraw its services on the route, unless urgent measures are fashioned out to check the menace.
The Chairman of the Abonnema branch of the Union, Mr. Ibimina Benaiah Akamaka dropped the hint, while addressing members of the union on the issue in Abonema headqaruters of Akuku-Toru Local Government Area.
He bemoaned the spate of attacks by the dare devil armed robbers which have become daily occurrences on the route and recounted the ordeals of the drivers and passengers who have either been robbed of valuable property, shot and killed, wounded, harassed, stripped naked and flogged or out-rightly taken into the nearby forests and made to pay huge sums of money as ransom.
He said within last month a driver and a passenger were killed and several others wounded in attacks even as the robbers intercepted yet another Kalabari bound car last Saturday and took the occupants into captivity.
A man who drove in a jeep and was abducted by the bandits in the presence of his wife and children within the period is also yet to be released. These he said are just few accounts of the atrocities committed by the robbers on the route in recent months.
Based on the above recitals, the chairman wondered how a responsible union would fold its arms and watches this ugly scenario continue unabated even as he lampooned council authorities, security agencies, chiefs and elders of communities for their seeming unserious stance towards the explosive issue.
He listed demands of the union in this regard as erection of more check points outside the one established by the patriotic and hard working Ojukaye Flagg Amachree, the rehabilitation of the road and regular patrols on the route by security agencies.
He warned that the union will in the first instance embark on a three day warning strike after which he will mobilize members of the other branches for the mother of all strikes, if the ugly scenario is not reversed.
In a similar development concerned Kalabaris have appealed to Ikwerre brothers in Emohua Local Government Area to flush out these hoodlums from their territory who have dug the road and created network of bush paths traversing farmlands to their various hide outs to have advantage to launch deadly attacks on Kalabari bound drivers and passengers. ###
