….saves N5bn via due process administration
As Cross River State Governor Ben Ayade’s administration clocks three years of being in charge of state’s affairs, the director general, Due Process and Price Intelligence Bureau, Alphonsus Eba, said the state has been transformed into an industrial one.
Eva also disclosed that the agency has saved the state and Ayade’s administration N5 billion since after he was appointed.
Eba stated this in an interview with retrospect to 2017 and what the people expects in 2018 before the 2019 general elections. He said the state was virtually running as a civil service state with dearth of employing economic activities, but with the emergence of Ayade as Governor of the state since 2015, the narrative has changed.
According to him with the ongoing critical infrastructural development in the state, the Governor has kicked off the Deep Seaport and the Super Highway projects, which all bottlenecks were cleared in 2017, including Environment Impact Assessment, EIA, and the transaction adviser has been appointed by the Federal Ministry of Transportation called Feedback for the projects.
He said: “Last year, we had a budget of infinite transposition and to that we were looking strongly at coming up with very ambitious projects which we hope to change the face of service in Cross River state; particularly amongst some of those projects was our Calapharm Project.
“You will also recall that this garment factory which we conceived of assumption of office was also commissioned last year by the Acting President; he also did a ground breaking of our Ayade Industrial Park, AIP, which today is the industrial hub where the garment factory, the Calabar Pharmaceutical and the Rice City is located.
“Until recently Cross River State was known as a civil servant state but with the coming into being of His Excellency, Sen. Prof. Ben Ayade, this whole narrative changed.
“Today you can hear of very impactful projects like the government factory and the Calabar Pharmaceutical called Calapharm, the Rice City which would be a hub for seedlings incubation and what have you and most importantly too the cocoa processing mill going on in Ikom and the rice mill projects going on in Ogoja and Yala and the banana farm and processing plant going on in Odokpani all at the same time at various stages of completion.
“Not only the Acting President in that his visit commissioned the government factory and did a ground breaking of the Ayade industrial park, he also went on and commissioned the mono rail and the Calabar International Conference Centre which were our legacy projects of the former government under His Excellency Liyel Imoke.
“The governor Sen. Prof. Ben Ayade being a man who is very passionate in completing the projects of his predecessor before kicks starting his ensured that several billions of Naira were used in completing those two projects which have now been commissioned.
“The actual preliminary work of the deep sea port has commenced with the best company in the world called the China Harbour. Only last year again, in retrospect, the major problem we have in accessing the Obudu cattle ranch which has always been road and power issues has been drastically addressed.
“By that I mean the ongoing dualisation of the 147 kilometres road stretching across the five local governments of Nfom in Ogoja, through Obakpoma, Imaje, Okukuyala in Yala down to Oboichiche in Bekwara through Obudu to Bekwara and the ranch, is what holds the whole access to accessing the most natural and temperate climate in the world which is Obudu Ranch.”
He also stated that the government has been able to reposition and place it as Nigeria’s most vibrant state finances management agency, which came second after Republic of Ghana in recent ranking.
“And that is why today, you will see that while I was giving my appraisal of my performance in office, I said we have saved over 5billion naira for the state through our price intelligence for there is nothing that the governor has granted approval that came to us that we will not do market survey in about three or four places.
“And today as you may see if you log into our web sitewww.dppib.cr.gov.net which is the website and the database that I have opened, if you open it you will see all our activities and today we are the only state in the whole of this country even ahead of the federal government that has a functional website and a database that is doing price intelligence in this country. We are the only state after only Ghana in the whole of West Africa”, he stated.
