By IJENDU IHEAKA

President Bola Tinubu is to visit Abia Oct. 3 to inaugurate some projects including the reconstructed Port Harcourt Road, Aba among several others, Gov. Alex Otti said on Friday in Umuahia.

The governor who spoke during the September edition of his monthly Media Chat entitled, “Gov. Alex Otti speaks to Abia people”, encouraged Abia people to come out enmass to receive the president.

The governor said that his administration would soon flag-off the reconstruction of Umuahia- Ikot Ekpene Road, adding that he decided to embark on infrastructural projects because of its importance to the development of the state.

Otti said that work has progressed on Abia Airport’s runways, because the state government decided to handle it.

He, however, regretted that some landowners had not been paid either due to the mistake by the contractor or the landowners’ inability to complete their documentations, leading to protests by some.

The governor said that the encroachment of the contractor on Nsulu indigenes’ land outside the marked land space had been corrected and promised that the other challenges would soon be rectified.

He said that his government would in few weeks start engaging and deploying security personnel to protect state schools from vandalisation being alleged to be perpetrated by suspected hoodlums.

On the issue of Mazi Nnamdi Kanu, Otti said that the state government has being engaging with the federal authorities to ensure his release.

He said that some of the discussions on his incarceration which all the South-East governors are part of were not at the public domain to ensure the process get the desired result.

Otti explained that the state government ceased to invest in markets, because the constitution has handed market management to the local governments and the state cannot interfere.

He said that though, the state government was reconstructing Ekeoha and Ariaria markets, noting that in spite of those investments, the market is primarily owned by the local governments.

On agriculture, Otti said that Abia would invest more in growing rice, with the aim of becoming one of the highest producers in Nigeria having recorded a high yield of 5 tons per hectare in the Owerrinta Rice pilot project.

He further said that the state was massively rehabilitating Abia State College of Education, Technical, Arochukwu (ASCETA), with the employment of a new rector and board chairman.

He said that ASCETA was central to his reforms in the education subsector, being the only surviving state owned college of education in Abia.

Otti noted that he was renovating and expanding Aba prisons to reduce congestion and ensure it is transformed into a reformation centre, rather than a punishment centre. (NAN)