First pillars of the prospective Niger Bridge 1962

Below, looking directly downriver, in July 1962 one can see standing in mid-river the first pillars of the prospective Niger Bridge.

To their left, jutting out into the river is the beach of Ogbe-Ukwu (Big Village), the former location of prominent settlers (dating from the nineteenth century) coming from downriver (called Ndi-Olu, riverine people from Aboh and also from the Itsekiri area, who were early powers in the twentieth-century Onitsha marketplace).

This village still existed in 1960, but by 1962 it had become a casualty of bridge construction. (See Ogbwe-Ukwu for a fuller account.)

The substantial buildings behind them mark the location of the UAC's S.V.OC. storage warehouses [for "Semi-volatile Organic Compounds", i.e petrol etc] , and also that of the Odutola Tyre Factory (a company owned by the Ijebu Yoruba Chief T.A. Odutola).