Before I will go ahead to answer this question, let me make an analysis to reveal why the the Federal Government and our neighbouring countries have decided to support Cross River State in the Deep Seaport Project and the inputs of the Federal Government, as a major stake holder, towards what is achieved on the project and the stage reached, so far.
There are growing concern and interests from neighbouring countries and the Federal Government because of the perceived rossy future the Bakassi Maritime asset assures. Firstly, the the Central African Republic, Chad and Niger Republic see Bakassi Seaport as a channel of radical accomplishment of revolutionizing commerce into a modern phase in African Region. This is because of the unique proximity advantage of Bakassi Port to other seaport, aside other salient considerations of geography, and as the only Deep Seaport in Africa with evacuation channel. I have stated earlier on how Chadians often travel for days to get to Cotonou and travell another 3 to 4 days to the nearest seaport for their shipments of merchandise which was why the Chadian Government wrote to Cross River State expressing its interest on Trade and Business Development through the Calabar Seaport.
Secondly, the Federal Government, having considered the plight of its neighbouring countries passing through the stress of travelling for 6 to 7 days to get to the nearby Seaport in Benin Republic, have decided to play the principle of good neighbourliness by ensuring that the Bakassi Seaport that is prefered by its neighbours is rather put to function, which will shorten the journies from those neighbouring countries fro to 1 or 2 days with less stress. This principle of Good Neighbourliness in Nigeria is expressed through her Concentric foreign policy, designed by Professor Ibrahim Gambari in 1985. The policy is designed with the layer approach which emphasizes that Nigeria’s interest in global affairs should be located in the physical Nigeria and her immediate neighbours before the rest of the world.
The essence of this is to ensure that certain projects are in pursuant to fulfilling domestic and concentric responsibilities. Good neighbours feel pains for each other and make moves to solve any perceived problem.
It is based on this and other promising opportunities the Deep Seaport holds that the Federal Ministry of Transport had to take up greater responsibility at ensuring that the project is a huge success. In my first post about this subject matter, I wrote on how the Federal Government constituted a steering Committee for the Bakassi Deep Seaport with spelt-out terms of reference.
However, it should be known that a huge project like the Deep Seaport involves rigorous and deliberate paper work. Once the paper work and other preliminary arrrangents are completed, every other thing is easy.The Steering Committee set by the Minister of Transport has been meeting regularly at Abuja. So far, the Committee has finished its paper work of Expression of Interest (EOI) for the procurement of Transaction Adviser; finished working on the budget for the proposed project; finished EIA and awaiting its certification and approval of NPA and the Federal Government.
According to Arch Eric Akpo who is the Special Adviser to the Governor on Technical Matters, the Deep Seaport project is not like any other project. The good thing is that once equipments are moved to site, Customs and Immigration are equally deployed alongside and the Seaport, automatically, will start functioning, which in the shortest possible time, while the reclaimation and shore protection activities are on-going, flat and mother vessells will start berthing.
The Chief Economic Adviser to the State Government/Vice Chairman of the State Planing Commission, Dr Francis Ntamo says that the Bakassi Deep Seaport is the only Federal Project with the highest level of Compliance, after the deliberate readiness assessment which was done by the Steering Committee set up by the Federal Government in collaboration with the Local Implementing Team headed by Senator Florence Itagiwa as the Director, as the site is approved and ready.
Eval Asikong is the S.A. to the Governor on Social Media
