Yemisi Izuora
As the Federal Government sets aside about $50 million to attract manufacturers to the multi-billion Naira Industrial Park built by Nigerian Content Development and Monitoring Board (NCDMB) in Odukpami, Cross River State, bad road network is making the facility almost inaccessible.
Findings shows that the facility is significantly threatened as motorists see the axis as a dead trap except urgent steps are taken to fix the road.
Oriental News Nigeria, which is part of a team of online publishers drawn from the Guild of Corporate Online Publishers (GOCOP) that was on a guided tour of the project on Thursday, May 11, 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.
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”, he revealed, “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 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 threat to the NCDMD’s industrial park under construction as “it’s not likely that serious investors would take up any space there with the road as presently is”.
The Park is a masterpiece that was well-thought out by the NCDMB to ramp up the manufacturing capacity of indigenous hands with the aim of kick-starting manufacturing of inputs for real industrialisation of Nigeria.