FG commissions N32b Enugu – Cameroun highway

CONTRACTORS have drawn curtains on a section of the Lagos –Mombassa trans-African highway whose construction and rehabilitation was flagged off in 2012 at the cost of N32 billion has been commissioned last week.

  The 240km road project linking Enugu, Abakaliki, Ogoja, Ikom and Cameroun, was an outcome of the International Court of Justice judgment that seeded ownership of the Bakassi Peninsula to the Cameroun after its Geneva in 2002 where the governments of Cameroun and Nigeria reached an agreement to set up the Nigeria/Cameroun Mixed Commission, formed the decision to embark on the construction of the multi-national highway and transport facilitation programme to

effectively link the two countries.

  Nigerian government was said to have explored funding options with the World Bank and African Development Bank to finance the project at a comfortable ratio.

 President Goodluck Jonathan, at the commissioning said the federal government was poised to give new lease of life to all roads linking the geo political zones of the country.

   Represented by the Minister of Works, Mike Onolememen, he said the composition of the project included the 80 km Enugu –Abakaliki section rehabilitation at the contract sum of N10billion with funding

assistance from World Bank.

   The 85 km Abakaliki –Mbok/Ogoja junction section was rehabilitated at a sum of N12.03B with funding from the African Development Bank, while the Mbok/Ogoja junction –Ikom section rehabilitation cost N6.6billion.

  Onolememen, who c commended various contractors who handled sections of the road said government would continue to live to its expectation to the people of Nigeria, stressing that the

southeast roads will soon wear a new look.

   He listed the main features of the road to include a new bridge built at the sum of N600m at KM7 from Enugu to replace the old one and seven other that were rehabilitated along Abakaliki-Mfum corridor to cater for the anticipated heavy trucks that would use the corridor.

Others include the over 80 social infrastructure projects that traversed in 50 communities along the road, 36 boreholes and hand pumps, three agricultural produce drying platforms, four cassava processing mills, one rice processing mill and five palm oil processing mills.