By PAMELA EBOH, Awka

The Anambra Stakeholders Forum (ASF) over the weekend called on Governor Chukwuma Soludo to sack the Chairman of Anambra Road Traffic Management Agency (ARTMA), Engineer Emeka Okonkwo, widely known as Konti, for allegedly abusing the objectives of the agency.

It also urged him to relieve the Onitsha zonal leader of the Agency, Nnamdi Emmanuel Aghadinunor (alias Ochudo), of his appointment as Onitsha zonal leader for the same reason of abusing ARTMA objectives.

Making the call in Awka in a statement over the weekend, the leader of ASF, Nze Uzoma Anunihu, said the call for immediate sack of the duo of Konti and Ochudo was necessary because of fact that they have consistently abused the privileges given to them to decongest the roads of traffic jam.

Citing an example, he said: "ARTMA capitalized on the existence of an erosion site at Onitsha/Owerri road to extort as much as N100,000; N200,000 or N300,000 as the case may be from the unsuspecting motorists under false accusation of obstructing road traffic law

“ARTMA, under the leadership of Konti and Ochudo, impound an average of 5 vehicles per day and extort huge amount of money from them without paying same into the state government coffers.

"They are using POS as a means of payment and putting such money to a private account instead of government treasury. They normally collect cash from purported offenders.

“Rather than focusing on traffic decongestion which is their primary duties, they go for extortion with full concentration on private vehicles, leaving commercial vehicles because of kick-backs they receive from the commercial vehicle operators”.

Anunihu further alleged that "Konti and Ochudo lack the vision to lead ARTMA to a success. They have become dictators to the core and at the same time creating bad names for Soludo and his administration. The due has become a revenue generation agency."

While insisting that the duo should be shown the way out, he explained that rather than decongest traffic on the roads at strategic places like Owerri road, Upper Iweka, Ochanja Roundabout and some other places, ASF said they have become money collectors.