Oil & Gas
… deteriorated road major threat to NCDMB’s oil and gas industrial park
THE sorry state of Calabar-Itu Road in Cross River State is a blight to the major development of the Nigeria Oil and Gas Industrial Park which is to serve as a hub for manufacturing and a catalyst to industrialisation in the country.
Realnews reports that the road needs to be fixed urgently for Nigeria to reap the benefits of the multi-billion naira industrial park being built by Nigerian Content Development and Monitoring Board (NCDMB) in Odukpami, Cross River State.
The bad state of road, which causes motorists anguish was experienced by a team of online publishers drawn from the Guild of Corporate Online Publishers (GOCOP) that visited industrial park project on Thursday, May 11.
Realnews reports that the over 100 kilometres of road that stretches from Calabar in Cross River State to Itu in Akwa-Ibom State, has been neglected by successive governments for over 20 years, according to a motorist, interviewed on the state of the road.
The motorist, who pleaded anonymity, expressed regret that the road, which has attracted budgetary approvals for repairs by four successive administrations, has remained unattended to. He said the first budget to fix the road was passed during the former President Olusegun Obasanjo regime. “But it was unattended to in spite of the budget”, he revealed.
He added that: “When nothing came out of the Obasanjo regime’s budget proposal, the former President Goodluck Jonathan administration came and also captured it in one of their annual budgets. This also did not achieve anything. “This ritual moved to the President Muhammadu Buhari administration. President Buhari included the road in two annual budgets during his first term in office between 2015 1nd 2019; but no work was done.
“The same administration captured the road in the budgets of 2020, 2021, and 2023. This is 2023, you can see that the road is still a nightmare for motorists,” he said.
He expressed pain that
the road, which he said, serves the economic needs of the people of both Akwa-Ibom and Cross River States, could pose a major obviate the lofty objectives of the NCDMB’s industrial park under construction as investors may be discouraged from taking up any space there because of the very bad road.
The Nigeria Oil and Gas Industrial Park is a masterpiece that was designed by the NCDMB to ramp up the manufacturing of equipment for oil and gas operation for Nigeria and Africa and also serve as a catalyst to industrialisation.
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Tags: NCDMB
