If revelations from calitown.com’s investigations are ignored, chances are that in the next couple of days, beef will become intensely scarce or unaffordable within Calabar and its environs and the reason is not far-fetched.
While it is the intention of government to guarantee the peace and security of inhabitants of the city by providing security check points into and out of Calabar, most of the security men and women posted on the check points are making it extremely difficult for those transporting cattle from the Northern parts of the country, to discharge that function seamlessly.
One source bitterly revealed that, “after travelling all the way from the North to Cross River, we end up spending close to N100, 000 (one hundred thousand naira) on the check points from just Odukpani to Calabar”. On that stretch of road, calitown.com investigations show that soldiers, the state Department of Public Transportation, DOPT, the Police, National Drug Law Enforcement Agency, NDLEA, as well as local council revenue staff, combine to extort those transporting cattle into Calabar of huge sums of money. It is a situation that “we are going to tackle as a union soon as these people cannot just abandon their duties and focus more on collecting money from us with impunity”, one transporter told calitown.com.
Another source was quick to also say that, “we have resolved to hand over the function of bringing in cattle from the North to these security agents so that we can rest and face other businesses”. The implication of this statement is that those who have all this while undertaken to convey cattle to Calabar as beef are poised to take the back seat unless the inimical activities of these security personnel is brought under control.
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