South-East leaders on Saturday pleaded with President Bola Tinubu, to order for the dismantling of checkpoints and roadblocks in the area, saying that the roadblocks make goods expensive.

The leaders also appealed to the President to use his good offices to ensure that the moribund Anambra Basin with abundant oil and gas reserves is revived in the interest of the nation’s economy.

The demands were made at the town hall meeting during President Bola Tinubu’s official visit to Enugu State where many projects executed by Governor Peter Mbah’s administration were commissioned.

Presenting his appeal, Onyemuche Nnamani noted that checkpoints and roadblocks have a lot of drawbacks which have negatively affected the economy of the people in the zone and even constitute a security risk.

He contended that with the modern command and control centre established by the Enugu State government and other strategies put in place, there was no need for the traditional checkpoints and roadblocks.

He said that the security measures put in place by Governor Mbah were critical for the encouragement of investment and economic growth.

He further said it was also critical that the right security strategies are put in place to avoid giving visitors and brothers in diaspora the wrong impression that things are worse than they seem.

“These were some of the driving factors which motivated Enugu state to institute its ultra-modern statewide CCTV, modern cameras mounted on patrol cars, some of which we have commissioned today, including our modern command and control centre, it was quite easy to convince our governor to invest billions of Naira on security,” he said.

Continuing, the said, “Your Excellency with the launch of these facilities, we are confident that there’s less need for the traditional practice of mounting roadblocks at checkpoints. Checkpoints, in my view, have many drawbacks, checkpoints and roadblocks, they make the movement of goods and persons very expensive, very inefficient increase the low cost of logistics, leading to high inflation.

“They tie down valuable security manpower, they needlessly expose the brave men and women of our security agencies to attacks by criminals of all guises, of various guises, as well as to other users of the highways.

“Given this Your Excellency, we appeal to you to support Enugu state and security agencies, to de-emphasize the traditional practice of roadblocks, stop and search and all that. Our people are complaining about those things.

“It will be a great honour. When we say de-emphasize, what it means is that we are providing alternatives. You have seen the patrol vans, you have seen the cameras mounted all over the state. So we have alternatives to all this. So we just want to de-emphasize this issue of stop and search and roadblocks.”

On his part, Chris Ngu, called for the development of the moribund Anambra Basin Authority to unlock the oil and gas reserves lying waste in the area.

He said, “The need to develop Anambra Basin as an oil-bearing reserve that will impact on the entire Southeast different from the well-known Niger Delta. We are saying that this reserve called Anambra Basin holds not less than one billion barrels of oil and about thirty billion cubic feet of gas.

“And like all of us know the future is gas and we know the emphasis the present government is placing on gas for so many reasons, power generation .. for industries in the plastic, and petrochemicals. There are plenty that we can achieve by doing that.

“We have plenty of presentations, but I understand there has been no time to go through that. So we’re appealing to Your Excellency, please to help call attention to this dormant energy reserve in the so-called Anambra Basin.

“For explanation purposes, Anambra Basin borders on the south and the Niger Delta, and the Benue trough. Among the whole Basins as a frontier exploration for oil and gas, Anambra Basin stands number one in terms of performance, in terms of reserves and. In terms of attraction.

“So we’re appealing to you, sir, to please use your good offices to energize this thing for the benefit of entire Southeast and even the Middle Belt. We know Benue state is just here. And after being Benue, the entire North Central energy is just lying waste there.”

The people through the former Minister of Power, Prof. Chinedu Nebo called for the revival of the rail system in Enugu State and some other states in the zone.