While nothing tangible other than noise seems to be taking place at the site of the Ibaka Deep Seaport the Godswill Akpabio administration (2007-2015) initiated in Akwa Ibom State, the Cross River State Government under the watch of the industrial-ambitious Governor Ben Ayade has already signed a construction agreement for preliminary works at the Bakassi Deep Seaport with China Harbour Company.
The deal was sealed on Thursday.
Godswill Akpabio, currently the Minority Leader of the Senate had while still a governor announced that the Akwa Ibom State Government had a licence for the construction of their deep seaport situated at Ibaka in Mbo Local Government Area, of the state.
Apart from the terminal for containers and cargoes, the Ibaka Deep Seaport was supposed to comprise a Free Trade Zone (FTZ) and an industrial city.
Mariners have always maintained that the proposed deep seaport has a natural depth of some 13 meters. If Governor Udom Emmanuel who inherited it had vigorously pursued it as his administration’s star project, the Ibaka deep seaport was expected to attract ocean going vessels.
Insiders say the continuous dredging of the Lagos and Bonny channels which has been gulping billions of United States of America (USA) dollars to keep them navigable would not be the case with Ibaka deep seaport.
Before now, the Akpabio administration had acquired 14, 900 hectares of land to ensure the successful take-off of the multi-billion naira project which is still gathering dust on the drawing board.
While the Udom administration appears to be gassy as far as the rapid economic development of Akwa Ibom is concerned, the Bakassi Deep Seaport project which is one of the signature projects of Governor Ayade is expected to serve the North-Eastern axis of Nigeria as well as Chad Republic and Niger.
Read also: Group protests maltreatment of Bakassi people by Cameroon
China Harbour, a state owned company in China has a strong expertise in construction and drainage. While formally sealing the deal with the company, Governor Ayade said the zeal to broaden the economic base of Cross River motivated the deep seaport, and accordingly decried the ”unfair treatment” which he said his state had been suffering in the hands of the federal authorities in the wake of the loss of Bakassi to Cameroon.
According to him, the state had been treated unfairly in the Nigerian project through several ways of marginalisation and unjust treatments.
He also regretted the ceding of Bakassi Peninsula, loss of 76 oil wells as well as the delisting of Cross River from the 13 per cent derivation.
He said “the situation has reduced the state to lack and want in body and soul and a weeping child of the nation.”
From its inception on May 29, 2015 the Ayade administration has been clear in its desperate need of creating an alternative source of income for Cross River in spite of the set back.
”The Bakassi Deep Seaport is strategic for security and economic reasons,” the governor said.
The seaport is expected to create a new narrative in merchandise and international trade in efficient port management system.
And as the governor rightly said when the Bakassi deep seaport, the superhighway and the power generation projects are completed, Cross River will be one of the investment hubs of Africa.
He is at the moment wooing the North-Central and North-Eastern parts of the country to key into these star projects and take them as their own because of the short distance it will take to access the port than going to Lagos.
Meanwhile, the Managing Director of China Harbour Engineering Company, Mr Zhang Wenteng, has assured the governor that the company will deliver high quality of work, pointing out that they would not disappoint the state and the country.
