Roads Rehabilitation Excites Agip Estate Residents

Motorists and residents
of Federal Housing Estate (Agip Estate) are happy over the massive road construction project going on in the area.
The roads are being constructed by the Niger Delta Development Commission (NDDC).
The roads, according to investigations by our correspondent, include Roads 3, 6, 7, 22 and 24 all in the estate.
Some of the motorists and residents who spoke with The Tide recounted how they stopped using those roads due to their bad nature.
For Chukuma Uche, “I feel the government, through the NDDC, is doing a great job”.
According to him, residents and other road users practically abandoned the use of those parts of the road for a long period of time.
He expressed happiness on the development even as he prayed God to bless those responsible for reconstructing the road.
Others who spoke in the same vein promised to maintain the road by keeping them clean at all times.
“Infact, road 24 is now a new road and I bet you, we are enjoying it and we will do our best to see that the road is tidy always”, one resident told The Tide.
Also, traders around the estate are excited over the ongoing work on those roads as they recalled how the poor state of the roads negatively affected their businesses.
“As of now, I thank God for the latest development and I hope the customers we lost due to the bad state of the roads will come back to us”, a female hair dresser told The Tide.
She further expressed delight that the ongoing work was of a high quality and standard, a situation that has put smiles on residents and visitors to the affected areas.
However, according to The Tide findings, landlords in the estate have taken undue advantage of the development to increase rents for tenants.
A cross section of traders who confirmed this to The Tide appealed to the landlords to have a rethink.
While expressed regret over the attitude of the landlords, they said “the only problem we are facing now is that landlords plan to increase rentage on their shops”.
According to one of the traders, the action of the landlords makes one to think that they were the ones constructing the road.
They disclosed that the landlords are now contemplating increasing rent to between N12,000 and N15,000 as against N7,000 and N8,000 per shop.
They appealed to the landlords to take the economic recession into consideration in their bid to increase rents on their shops to enable them break even.