TRACKING____Cross River State Governor, Ben Ayade, has appealed to President Muhammadu Buhari to intervene without delay in the actualisation of the Super-Highway and Bakassi Deep Seaport projects.
The governor said the two projects, which are signature projects of his administration, when completed, would create a new economy for the country, particularly the Northern part of the country.
Ayade, who spoke on Wednesday during an inspection tour of the Odukpani axis of the 274-kilometre superhighway and the ongoing dualisation of Calabar-Odukpani highway, promised that by the end of the year, a substantial part of the super highway would have been completed.
His administration, he said, was determined to change the economy of Cross River State, adding that there was no better way to do so than making sure that the two projects were actualised.
The governor said: “Directly behind me is the superhighway where it is feeding into Calabar city, so for us as a state, the construction work on the superhighway has begun in earnest and is being broken into three segments. There is a team in Ikom, one in Bekwarra, which is the beginning of Northern Nigeria, and here we have a team from Calabar. So, these three teams are working to meet each other.
“At the beginning we have a very big construction company that already had done about 90km of earth works. I just want to tell the people of Cross River State and indeed Nigerians that the six lane digital Superhighway, the first in this part of the world, is getting ready and I give my assurances that by the close of this year, a substantial part of this project will be completed and fully ready for use.”
He, however, bemoaned the lack of support from the Federal Government especially in the area of refunds for federal roads constructed by his administration, saying that the road when completed will be tolled in order to generate revenue for the state.
“The Superhighway narrows from six lanes to four lanes as it gets to Calabar axis so we will put a flyover to allow the four lanes to go top and then terminate back in the single lane because the Federal Government has refused to reimburse the state for all dualisation works on existing federal roads on the basis that the Calabar metropolitan is catching up with Odukpani. Therefore, they now see it as a domestic road which we will have no option than to toll to generate revenue,” the governor said.
He, therefore, called on President Buhari to issue a special intervention to Cross River to assist in the completion of the projects, even as the governor insisted that the projects were too huge and beyond the carrying capacity of the state.
Projects of this magnitude, Ayade reiterated, ought to be Federal Government projects, saying: “A six-lane superhighway connecting the Bakassi Deep Seaport with the Northern states ought to have been a Federal Government project even if the vision was from me as Governor of Cross River State. I make bold to say that Northern Nigeria needs the Superhighway and the Deep Seaport more than any other region due to the huge solid mineral deposits they have. These solid mineral deposits mean nothing if they cannot be exported and that is where Cross River Superhighway and Deep Seaport come in as we are bringing the Atlantic Ocean closer to Northern Nigeria.”
