Abia residents are visibly expectant that in a matter of weeks, bulldozers and all the other heavy duty machines will roll into the long abandoned Port Harcourt Road in Aba, to herald a new way of infrastructural delivery in Abia State.

Barely a week after its Managing Director, Dr. Lars Richter paid a courtesy visit on the Abia State Governor-Elect, Dr. Alex Otti at his Umuehim, Nvosi country home in Isialangwa, engineers from Julius Berger took a tour of what has become one of Abians’ worst nightmares in road infrastructure, the Port Harcourt Road.

The engineers were there on inspection and to get a first-hand assessment of the state of the road. It is believed that the Wednesday visit may have been a fallout of the meeting between Dr. Otti and Richter.

There was palpable excitement and renewed hope among the residents, traders, commuters and passers-by at the sight of the white engineers and their Nigerian colleagues, who walked a good part of the road that has become one huge dump site and stinking puddles.

A release from Otti’s Media Team, signed by Kazie Uko, said the engineers met briefly with the Abia Governor-Elect at the Osisioma end of the Enugu-Aba-Port Harcourt Expressway before proceeding to Port Harcourt Road in the heart of the commercial nerve centre of Abia to inspect the 5.9kms road.