Petitions, bureaucracy stalling Bakassi deep sea port, superhighway – Ayade

Governor Benedict Ayade of Cross River State has disclosed that hundreds of petitions and unnecessary federal bureaucracy stalled the commencement of his signature projects, the superhighway and Bakassi deep seaport.

The two projects were the first he inaugurated in 2015 when he assumed office.

President Muhammadu Buhari personally did the ground breaking of the superhighway which was to stretch from Bakassi to the boundary of Benue State in a community in Akamkpa Local Government Area in September 2015.

Speaking in Calabar, the governor said the Federal Government had given its nod for the cost-intensive projects to take off.

“But I could not take off with the two important projects due to too much officialdom and bureaucratic bottlenecks by Federal Government officials over Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA).

“There were also too many petitions by Cross River people and others as well as legal cases as a result.

“I was in and out of courts several times on the projects even when I had obtained presidential approvals for them eight times,” he said.

He said he conceived the two projects as a way of enabling the northern states to be linked to the Atlantic Ocean with the Superhighway as the evacuation corridor for their goods in the Bakassi deep sea port.

“Lagos ports have been over congested over time. And Bakassi port would have come in handy to solve the problem where container traffic would have been redirected but politics and bureaucracy stalled it,” he said.