ENUGU – The Managing Director and Editor-in-Chief of Sun Newspapers, Mr Femi Adesina, has described the infrastructure at the Enugu trade fair complex as ‘pitiable and worrisome’.
Speaking during the newspaper’s special day at the ongoing Enugu International Trade Fair, Adesina said that the site of the fair was an aberration.
Represented by the Executive Director of Corporate Services, Mr Steve Nwosu, the managing director said that time had come for the private sector to rally round the organisers of the fair to get the best for them.
He said that it was necessary for the Federal Government to develop the site to the standards of its counterparts in Kaduna and Lagos to give the people a sense of belonging.
The MD wondered why the only fair complex in the South East was lying desolate without structures built by the government, adding that the Sun Newspaper would not rest until such precarious situation was ameliorated.
“The fair complex needs to be the mother of all trade fair sites and that means it must not continue at the level it is.
“We must struggle to get the right things done here and The Sun has to be at the fore front of such struggle due to the partnership we have formed with the organisers.
“We are here to show how important and special this trade fair is because the South East, and Enugu in particular, is special to us.
“Our organisation will ensure that we fight your battle because whatever bothers you also bothers us,” he said.
Adesina said the establishment had concluded plans to commission its corporate headquarters in the coal city.
Newsmen recall that the organisers of the fair, the Enugu Chamber of Commerce, Industries, Mines and Agriculture (ECCIMA), have variously called on the Federal Government to develop the site as it did to its counterparts in Lagos and Kaduna.
The Minister of Commerce, Trade and Industries, Dr Olusegun Aganga, had at the opening ceremony reiterated the government’s resolve to develop the site through public-private partnership arrangement.
In their reactions, ECCIMA and other stakeholders in the South East see such arrangement as unfair as the same arraignment was not used to develop the fair sites in Lagos and Kaduna.