Fireworks As Cross River Superhighway Draft EIA Is Presented To The Public

By Jonathan Ugbal

Representative of the Federal Minister of Environment, Aisha Mohammed, the State Commissioner for Environment and other members of the delegation from the Ministry of Environment at the public presentation of the EIA report on the Super highway in Calabar

The end is not in sight for the issues surrounding the Superhighway, one of the signature projects of the Governor Ben Ayade led administration of Cross River State as opponents have picked holes in draft Environmental Impact Assessment, EIA report.

This is even as the state government has accused the opponents arguing against the construction of the road as deliberately attempting to frustrate government efforts due to “sentiments”, claiming they “do not in any way represent the Ekuri community”.

The federal government panel instituted to look into the EIA led by Professor Abubakar Sambo who represented the Minister of Environment on Friday, June 2, 2016 at the Channel View hotel in Calabar, held a public presentation of the draft EIA report with relevant bodies and the general public participating in the debate over issues surrounding the road which construction work, which began before the ground breaking ceremony on October 20, 2015 by the President, has since stopped following a directive from the Federal Ministry of Environment after protests and petitions from some “concerned” groups and individuals claimed several bureaucratic processes had not been followed.

NGO’s and several others critiqued the over 400 page document for lacking information on the following;
1. Sources of financing
2. Type of vehicles to ply the road
3. The system of management of the road
4. The non availability of information concerning the 20km buffer zone among others.

The Panel Secretariat in their comments enumerated the following as concerns raised by several organizations, chiefs, communities and concerned individuals and bodies following the publication of calls for inputs into the EIA.

These included;
1. The call for the rerouting of the road from the Ekuri forest which is over 6 million years old to preserve its 33.6 thousand hectares forest.

2. The negative impact on the national park

3. The non availability of information on the two (6.3km and 10km) access roads to be constructed

4. No information on the location and filling of burrow pits

5. The type and source of filling materials.

Dr. Ako Amadi, one of the panellists in his presentation on behalf of the NGOs said the draft EIA report did not include the time frame for the construction phases and slammed the report for lacking the ecosystem concepts and urged the state government representatives as proponents to desist from using words such as ‘sentiments’ and replace them with words like ‘passion’ as the Cross River rainforest provided most of the information used by the multinational corporations on forest management and the ecosystem.

However, the state government in its comments promised to work more closely with relevant bodies and organizations and elaborated on several issues raised by the other proponents.

Eric Akpo, the Special Adviser Technical to the Cross River State governor said that 250,000 trees were going to be affected with the state already rolling out plans to replace them with the planting of 5 million trees of which a minimum of two to three of each of the affected specie will be replanted.

He dismissed as “sentiments” those agitating against the road, claiming that “those people do not in any way represent the Ekuri community” and described the state government as “environmentally friendly.” He said it was evident in the recent inauguration of 1,500 green police recruits to properly nurture and replant these trees as well as aid in the effective management of the forest reserves in the state.

On the issue of land grabbing, the Lands Commissioner said “our coordinates talk about the 200 metres which the road is going to take and do not talk about the 10km. The 10km to be very emphatic is for administrative purposes to control the aesthetic value as our intention is to do what we call development control.

“We are not going to tell the settlers to move away” he said, adding that, “we can’t pay compensation” and “we have gone to the various communities and informed them of our plans”.

The information Commissioner, Rosemary Archibong who spoke on the management system of the road said “The new superhighway is tolled by design and this will help boost our Internally Generated Revenue” while Tony Undiandeye who is the Special Adviser Public Affairs submitted that “Even those agitating are not against the road”.