It has been revealed to calitown.com that N38. 07billion is what the Liyel Imoke-led Cross River State Government is sinking into four projects situated in the Calabar Municipality and this is authoritative.
The four projects, part of what Imoke has tagged his “Legacy Projects” are, the Calabar International Conference Centre, CICC, access roads to the CICC, the Calabar Airport bypass project and a specialist hospital under construction. A breakdown of that figure shows that the access road to the CICC will cost N2. 90 billion while N6. 48 billion is the cost of the Airport by-pass project. The specialist hospital is to be built with N7. 23billion while a hefty N21. 46billion is what the CICC is costing the state. “I think the building of a bigger Tinapa and christening it the Calabar International Conference Centre, is a disservice to CRS because if Tinapa is now under the ‘safe custody’ of the Assets Management Company of Nigeria, AMCON, for not working optimally and paying her debts, what is the guarantee that this big elephant will not fare worse?”, one source asked calitown.com while reacting to this story.
But government sources were quick to point out that, “the CICC has been painstakingly put in place and effectively addresses the shortcomings of Tinapa and do not forget too that the CICC is located very close to Tinapa and in the long run, both facilities will complement each other thoroughly and the skeptics in our midst will still turn around and commend Imoke’s foresight”. It is a submission that another source punches holes in. Hear him, “they can talk like that because what they constantly do in Imoke’s government is to self-preserve even when it is obvious that the greater Cross River benefits nothing from projects with contracts shared among themselves”.
On the building of the specialist hospital, government has consistently said that it plans at the end of the day to put in place a thorough bred medical referral centre that will attract a steady stream of medical tourists to CRS, but another source who spoke with calitown.com is of the opinion that, “Imoke is building a referral hospital when our general hospitals have no doctors. Why has he not concentrated on improving healthcare in the state instead of going to build a hospital that will be out of the reach of the common man?”
As government pursue the short projects completion time on its hands, it seems committed to the CICC as our investigations revealed that work on the project is at advanced stage.
