By Ayo Akinfe
One annual hallmark of Christmas in Nigeria is that almost every person of Igbo extraction travels back to the southeast. There are approximately 35million Igbos in Nigeria, of which 20m of them live in other parts of Nigeria.
More Igbos live outside Igboland than within it, which is one thing that makes Ndigbo unique. No other of Nigeria’s 300 odd ethnic groups has this characteristic.
Consequently, you get about 20m Igbos all scrambling to go back to the southeast at this time of the year. Can you just imagine what this entails logistically? Those of us that are Wazobians see this as a Nigerian problem. Can you imagine how many road accidents we suffer due to this?
For starters, transport fares skyrocket. A bus ride- in most of the rickety coaches- from Lagos to Enugu is about N15,000 right now and rising.
More worrying for me is the lack of infrastructure, facilities of amenities to deal with this huge influx. At Christmas, the southeast looks like some huge refugee camp as there is nothing on the ground to deal with such a large number of people.
There are inadequate roads, hospitals, power stations, water plants and urban recreation facilities to accommodate 35m in southeast Nigeria today.
Do you know that the southeast geo-political zone only accounts for 3.1% of Nigeria’s landmass despite accounting for about 20% If its population? The entire geo-political zone is only 29,385sq km compared with say the 36,000 sq km that makes up Kwara State or the 76,000 sq km that makes up Niger State.
To make matters worse, the southeast is made up of soft and sandy soil which erodes very easily. It is thus no surprise that erosion has devastated the area terribly and at Christmas, you get a lot of mudslides and roads collapsing.
Has anyone ever provided figures for the number of needless deaths we suffer over Xmas due to this mass exodus?
We thus need to think up a solution and I would suggest that the South East Governor’s Forum look to kill two birds with one stone by building three or four dedicated new towns specifically designed to be Christmas holiday cities with all the necessary facilities.
They would be like a kind of Las Vegas with the usual infrastructure including hotels, restaurants, fair playgrounds, tourist attractions, cinemas, shopping malls, urban metros, etc. These new towns should also have direct rail links to cities like Lagos and Abuja.
For instance, somewhere like Aronziduogu, which is bang in the middle of Igboland would be the ideal location for the first such new town.
This historic town that is made up of 20 villages and was the birthplace of Kingsley Mbadiwe, would be ideal for luxury holiday apartments that accommodate millions within a small confined area.
It should have its own power plant, water treatment plant, train station and possibly airport too. Anyone who has been to say Faro in southern Portugal, Mallorca, Menorca or Ibiza will know what I am talking about.
If you have say one such holiday city in each state in Igboland, families can come there to meet rather than this unnecessary rush to the villages which lack the facilities to deal with the influx.
Apart from being an environmental matter, such new towns also make good economic sense as they would generate huge sums that would boost their state’s internally generated revenue.
I would suggest that Governor of IMO state, sets the ball rolling by converting Aronziduogu into a new town by building 50,000 housing units, a statue park, a five star hotel, a marketplace, automobile spare parts shops (We know some Nnewi traders will never be able to stop working) and a set of road links to the town.
Brand and sell it as a Christmas holiday resort and this could be the beginning of something dramatic and revolutionary in that geopolitical area.
See the kind of Xmas holiday resorts the Norwegians are building in the mountains.
Now, just ask yourself why we cannot build similar ones in Igboland. They can be made of one, two, three or four cabins, so people have a choice of whether to go with their nuclear or extended families.
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