FG DRAGS ITS FEET OVER CROSS RIVER STATE SUPERHIGHWAY PROJECT.

Development should have no boundaries. A question posed by an earlier comnentator regarding where the said superhighway was going to terminate and the answers that it elicits are completely irrelevant.

We are not talking here about the Ore-Ofusu(Ohosu) segment of the Benin/Shagamu Expressway, or indeed the Onitsha to Enugu and the Enugu to Port Harcourt Expressways which the last three Nigerian administrations for inexplicable reasons left in abject disrepair. What we have here is a situation where, in a bid to spur local development, the government and people of Cross River State decided to open up that hitherto forgotten corner of this nation(?). This is exactly the type of projects that the Chinese have been funding in several parts of the world, the Amazon basin, Nicaragua, Myanmar(Burma), the Asian Silk Road, even war-torn Afghanistan and Pakistan etc. Almost no adverse set of circumstances could seem capable of deterring them. How we love to drag our feet!

After taking care of the environmental impact concerns over putting such a road through the Oban Forest Reserve, this Cross River State government initiative is expected to boost the economic activities in the State including forest products , the Calabar Ports, and of course the Benue, Tarawa and Adamawa cluster that will then have a closer access to the sea. I can visualize major deliveries to the Mambilla Hydroelectric Project being most efficiently executed via this new corridor. For those who claim to be unaware of these plans and potential developments, they should look no further than the Lagos State government initiated development of the multi-modal transportation infrastructure expansion on the Lagos - Badagry axis. In Trumpian terminology, these projects are huge, requiring FG sovereign guarantees. That was the dilemma of the Tinubu/Fashola Lagos State administration. Then President Obasanjo, for political reasons, was playing the spoiler. The same obstructionism is what the Cross River State people are right mow experiencing. Even if the expressway was designed to end somewhere around Ugep or Ogoja, it is viewed as a worthwhile venture by its major beneficiaries. That the people of Cross River State have to justify themselves to some masters in Abuja, Kaduna, Sokoto, Lagos or perhaps Enugu is patently obcene. I felt very much diminished watching Cross River State elected functionaries pleading on television. It is against such knee-jerk overreach that the agitators for the political restructuring of this nominal federation are kicking. The strange thing is that the sun will freeze over before the other beneficiaries I mentioned above, in Benue, Adamawa etc, will understand on which side their bread is buttered and hence join the Criss River people in this unprecedented public spat with Abuja. We need such synergy and more.

Now that we are still on this topic, I invite readers to search for my earlier article querying the stated commitment of The Federal Republic of Nigeria to the very idea of THE TRANS-WEST AFRICA HIGHWAY. My answer was that it is definitely not. Let someone prove me wrong. This opinion is also available on my blog.