From day one, I have maintained the stand that the gra-gra by Governor Ayade that he wants to build a third airport in Cross River is deceitful and fraudulent. He is just creating needless confusion. He won’t build any airport.
Apart from the grandiose promises of building everything super and mega, none of which we have seen, the Obudu cargo airport is a land grab scheme that will fail woefully and create intractable communal wars when Ayade leaves power from 2023.
A 1000 hectares international cargo airport in Obudu is not only another wishful thinking, it will be one of the biggest airports in the whole world, the size of Murtala Mohammed Airport Lagos (400hectares), Nnamdi Azikiwe Airport, Abuja (360hectares), Margaret Ekpo Airport, Calabar (300hectares), combined together. It will only compare to the biggest airport in the world, Heathrow in London which sits on 1,200 hectares of land.
Even Asaba Airport (360 hectares) and Uyo Airport (360 hectares), took 7 years each to construct at a time those two States were flowing in real oil money not audio intellectual money that we hear in Cross River. Governor Ayade doesn’t only lack money to do an airport, he also doesn’t have the time. Now he is scooping a whopping 250million each, from 18 LGAs capital votes for God knows what.
You are planning to build a multi billion Naira airport about the size of Heathrow and you carry “one boy”, Agbebia Paul Obi, who himself may not even have entered an aircraft before nor handled a project of even 5million Naira before, as Project Manager, and unleash him to create untold confusion and break down peoples’ homes and scraping livelihoods?
A project that was supposed to occupy three villages is now encroaching into five villages and even more with two deaths and several persons in detention. Lagos with 20million people and N33billion monthly IGR has only one airport. Cross River with 4 million people with a paltry N800million monthly IGR wants to have a third airport. I am still laughing.
My own one storey building which is still under construction at Indi-Abeb has also been evaluated and considered to be within the perimeter of the proposed airport runway and I hear they want to demolish it. I won’t lift a finger or waste money to go to Court.
If after locking me up in Afokang prison for 6 months, Governor Ayade still wants to scrap my house, I will leave him to God. When he leaves power by 2023, I will recover all I have lost under him. I am no better than all other persons who have lost properties and even lives in this sham project.
Three things I am very sure about are:
1. Ayade won’t be Governor forever.
2. Ayade won’t construct any airport.
3. When he leaves power by 2023, we will recover our losses.
And this deceit which has been taken thus far, will be redressed.
Yours sincerely,
Citizen Agba Jalingo.
#1121DaysToGo
#FollowOurMoney
#NothingLastsForever
Citizen Agba Jalingo is the publisher of CrossRiverWatch and writes from Lagos State.
NOTE: Opinions expressed in this article are strictly attributable to the author, Agba Jalingo and do not represent the opinion of CrossRiverWatch or any other organization the author works for/with.
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