Coal City: Development with Eye on History

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Recently, a team of journalists were in Enugu to see some of the mega projects that have brought acclaim to the state government. Most of the multi-billion naira projects were flagged off by President Olusegun Obasanjo during a presidential visit to the state in last year. Davidson Iriekpen, who was in the team, writes

The permanent site of Enugu State University of Science and Technology (ESUT), is no longer a promise but a reality. The sprawling new university complex, which sits on 600 hectares of virgin land parades a total of eight faculty buildings, each designed to suit the unique tastes of the faculties, with basic facilities such as a 1,000 seater auditorium, expansive large classrooms, and office suites for the teaching staff. Five of the faculties are already completed. There is also a road network which was already being tarred with asphalt as the team drove round the vast campus as well as two completed 1000 seater cafeteria, a students’ multi-purpose centre and a health centre. The living quarters are a spectacle to behold as over 50 units of duplexes for professors and principal officers of the university are ready for painting, while the 50 units of twin one-bedroom flats and over 35 units of three-bedroom flats had long been completed.
However, the real wonders of Ebeano City, as the campus is called, are the four massive octagon-shaped hostel blocks, each room with its own toilet and bathroom, the first of its kind in our clime. The hostels are to accommodate about 16,000 students. Work on all the structures in the university commenced in mid-2004 rapid progress is being recorded in all areas - electrification, borehole system, roads, drainage channels, and perimeter fencing. It is indeed a massive construction effort.
 But if a university sounds too distant for the mass of the people struggling to eke out a living, not so for the popular Parklane Specialist Hospital, Enugu, the site of the new State University Teaching Hospital and College of Medicine. The new hospital project boasts of many finished towering structures including the 350-bed ward with a women and children's section, as well as an intensive care unit, three hostel blocks, again with en suite facilities, estimated to accommodate about 1,000 medical students.
Other facilities include a library complex, pre-clinical laboratory, an administration block and lecture auditorium, a pharmacy block, two cafeteria blocks and two other administration blocks, one for the Teaching Hospital and the other for the Medical College. If the ESUT permanent site is already a reality, the teaching hospital is already a beehive of activities. In fact, not only is the road network already covered with asphalt, with sidewalk kerbs, flower beds and street lights, but the wards are already filled with patients while the hostels are already in use by students.
On our return journey from the ESUT permanent site to Enugu metropolis, one had taken the liberty of detouring from the Ozalla-ESUT-Law School, which is by the way being dualised feverishly by the same government in anticipation of increased traffic to the campus, to the Amechi-Obeagu-Amodu-Umueze road, passing through the famous Nyaba Bridge which was only last year commissioned by President Olusegun Obasanjo. Back in Enugu, we drove to the site of Loma Linda Estate, an on-going low income estate with 324 two bedroom flats. From there, we headed to the newly-completed State Judiciary Headquarters complex where landscaping, street lighting, planting of trees and flowers, drainage channels and finishing touches were being made on the massive edifices consisting of 18 courtrooms and office suites which will soon house the entire judicial branch of government.
 Not far from the judiciary complex is another project which when completed will turn around the tourism potentials of Enugu State. It is the gigantic International Conference Centre overlooking the Michael Okpara Square. Apart from the main bowl of the conference centre, as well as another oval-shaped theatre adjoining an extensive office complex which were all being roofed as the team visited, another beautiful dome-shaped theatre was virtually ready.
As the team continued the Saturday cruise through the newly-dualised Rangers Avenue, with a long flower bed and street lights in-between, and drainage channels on both sides, Festus Adedayo, Chief Press Secretary to Governor Chimaroke Nnamani, said that the project was commenced just three  months ago.
It was however the Ebeano Tunnel Crossing that made the most lasting impression on the visiting journalists. The tunnel, which was constructed by first wading through the mound of earth under a rail track is obviously a major triumph in man’s quest to conquer and recondition his environment. In magnitude, construction, neat finishing, and as a great relief to motorists of Coal City, the Ebeano Tunnel is a legacy for posterity.
When the State Commissioner for Information, Mr. Igbonekwu Ogazimorah, was asked why the state government decided to embark on these landmark projects.
He said, “the Government of Enugu State is determined to bequeath an unprecedented legacy for the people of the state.  The story of Governor Nnamani has always been a departure from the norm. With eyes fixated on history, he has continued to defy and perplex cynics and skeptics who dismissed the projects two years ago as a deception that would end up in the usual notoriety of abandonment. It is interesting to note that the opposition is no longer talking about project abandonment."
On how the government got funds to execute these massive projects, he said, " Enugu is the best governed state, in terms of husbanding resources, development of human resources by donor agencies. This is a state that is third from the bottom of allocation in the federal account allocation scheme. This is a state that gets an average of about N900 million per month and which has a salary bill of about N540 million per month but has excelled in terms of infrastructure building, human development and poverty reduction."

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