Please people should criticize with sense not foolishness.
I don’t like Obiano’s leadership and I don’t think he’s the sharpest tool in the box but you sound stupid when you critisize aimlessly with wrong information.
The Anambra International Airport sited in Umueri (Obiano’s Town) cost just 6bn naira or 16m USD to build. I don’t know where people manufactured 2.2bn USD (10% of Nigeria’s yearly budget) cost as it’s not even plausible for a state.
For me, I think that was the best way to do it – to build a lower budget airport that can be upgraded with many more facilities in the future. There’s no money to build gigantic infrastructure that cost billions of dollars which will be abandoned anyway (like the Moshood Abiola Airport in Osun) so Obiano used the little funds available to build what he can do.
Remember that safety and effectiveness are the main ingredients of an airport not beautiful buildings and fancy lights.
And listen. An airport is technically where you land your planes and helicopters. The bigger the runway and the better the weather, the safer. Fine fine buildings and supermarkets and shopping malls do not add anything to airport safety or effectiveness although those can be added later to any airport without disruption of activities (if the airport ownership deems it necessary in the future). But for now, you have a working airport close to Main Market Onitsha, Nnewi spare parts market and Awka capital city.
Anambra needed this airport badly for economic and convenience reasons.
OK digging deeper on the project, I found out that regardless of its appearance, the Anambra airport is far more standard than majority of airports in this part of the world.
Anambra Airport has a better Runway Safety Area (400m) than Lagos & Abuja airports (the biggest airports in Nigeria).
At 3.7km, it has a longer runway than Abuja Airport (3.6km) and will land bigger planes. Its runway is only 200m shorter than Lagos Airport which has 3.9km. It is longer than Enugu Airport 3km.
Apart from Lagos, Anambra Airport runway is longer than 100% of all the other airports in Nigeria and will land bigger and heavier planes than all of them (apart from Lagos).
Call him a clown or make fun of his project, I’m a realist & I deal on numbers not emotions – Obiano has delivered in terms of this airport. I thought it would be abandoned halfway through but here it is. The governor may have scored close to zero in some other places though but he scored well on this one.
Engr. Somtoo Okoye is an Anambra-born media executive.