|
|
Coal City:
Development with Eye on History05.04.2006
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."
RELATED ARTICLES
- Olumba
Obu, the Mysterious Child at 86
12.30.2004 18:01
- 24
Hours Before Stepping into Nonagerian Club
12.30.2004 03:28
- As
Fortune Smiles on a Chief, Farmer
12.29.2005 12:42
- Violence
Against Women... What Role for the Clergy?
12.29.2005 12:42
- T. D.
Jakes: A Message for Nigeria
12.28.2004 22:46
- Making
Electricity Generation Environment-friendly
12.27.2005 13:42
- Way
Out of Apapa Traffic Bottlenecks
12.27.2005 13:41
- Season
of Homecoming for Community Development
12.27.2004 22:09
- Shiloh
2004 and Helicopter Shuttle Service
12.27.2004 22:08
- ‘How
Internet Helps My Business’
12.26.2005 16:58
|
|