Anambra: Building The Hub Nigeria Needs

MAZI EJIMOFOR OPARA 

Anambra is a hub state by design, not by accident.

Look at the map. We sit at the center of the Southeast, South-South, and North-Central. We have the manufacturing base, the trading networks, and now, the logistics ambition. But if we do not build the structures to match this status, the future will be chaotic. A hub without rightly placed infrastructure collapses under its own weight.

In an earlier piece this morning, Alexander Nwuba explained why the CAICPA — the Chinua Achebe International Cargo and Passenger Airport — was wrongly sited. Let me not beg the question further.

This new airport corrects it.

By location alone, it is positioned to become the busiest airport east of the Niger. It is not a standalone project. It is the aviation anchor of the Aerotropolis, and it sits directly beside the Anambra Mixed-Use Industrial City, AMIC, already approved by the FG as an Economic Free Trade Zone. That is the difference between an airport built as a monument and one built as an economic node.

This is what it unlocks:
Businessmen in Orlu, Imo will have no reason to commute over 45 minutes from Owerri Airport to his base. Traders in Oji River and Udi, Enugu will bypass Akanu Ibiam. Communities in Isuochi, Umunneochi, and parts of Okigwe now have a closer, more efficient gateway. Three of the four new cities Anambra is developing will be directly served by this airport.

This is not guesswork. It is planning. Anambra’s Vision 2070 projects about 35 million people living here by 2070. With our natural land constraints, we cannot afford to wait until then to provide critical infrastructure. We have to lay it now.

The concerns raised are valid. But they were taken into account before this airport was conceived. This is not about prestige. It is about positioning.

The plan is clear. Soludo is intentional about laying the foundations for the Anambra of the future!