Dr Charles Chinekezi, on Monday, said that Abia urgently needed to establish a shoe and leather cluster in Aba, to retain a good number of Anambra entrepreneurs in the sector.
Chinekezi, a business analyst, who stated this in an interview with the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) in Aba, added that the inability of Gov. Okezie Ikpeazu’s to show the results of his visit to China would cause a depletion of operators in the leather/shoe sector in Aba following the inauguration of Anambra’s classic shoe cluster.
He lamented that bad roads and other failed infrastructures, including limited market spaces in Aba, had forced citizens of neighbouring Akwa Ibom and Ebonyi to relocate from Abia.
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Chinekezi said unless urgent action was taken, the Anambra people doing shoe business in Aba would also return to their state’s shoe cluster where they can produce at a lower cost and make better profits.
The business analyst said that because businessmen were always seeking out opportunities that would result in better businesses and income, many in Aba, with its failed infrastructures, would move to the Anambra cluster.
He described it as unfortunate that even after several years, the Abia government was yet to actualise the building of a shoe cluster at Umukalika in Obingwa LGA.
“Fact remains that the economic cluster of footwear and allied industries that have taken off in Anambra state was a dream that has attracted even the World Bank from Washington to Aba, the heart of footwear production in the South East.
‘The World Bank’s one-time sitting President, Mr James Wolfensohn visited the Ariaria Aba shoe/leather manufacturing zone and tried to enact a public-private partnership.
“These efforts in the last 20 years were aimed at getting the sector set up in a proper way that would make it more productive, but such efforts have always been stifled.
“If Abia continues in its folktale, it will erase the base of the shoe, leather and allied sector from Aba which had been building up the town in the last 45 years and that is when the pain and the cry starts”, he said.
Chinekezi, therefore, urged Ikpeazu to visit these states, to establish what worked for them and return, think and act as fast as possible to save Aba from collapsing as an Eastern economic hub.
He regretted that Aba was getting depopulated because the Abia government would not improve infrastructure, which is at the heart of sustaining businesses and the town. (NAN)
