How we’ll make Enugu hub of S/East – Gov Ugwuanyi
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e Enugu State Government on Wednesday struck a deal with two infrastructure companies on how to make Obollo-Afor community the hub of the South East.
e Enugu State Government on Wednesday struck a deal with two infrastructure companies on how to make Obollo-Afor community the hub of the South East.Under the arrangement, Integrated Infrastructure Backbone for Nigeria and Hyundai Engineering of South Korea, will engage five infrastructure projects – a power grid, fibre cables, high-speed rail, dual carriage road and gas pipeline in the area.
The projects were unveiled yesterday when leaders of the firms visited Governor Ifeanyi Ugwuanyi in Enugu.
They told their host that talks with the Federal Government on the projects had progressed to an advanced stage.
The Principal Consultant at Integrated Infrastructure Backbone for Nigeria, Dr Stephen Dike, who spoke on behalf of the firms, noted that the idea was to create a catalyst for the economic development in the region.
According to the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) report, Dike said, “The idea is to make Obollo-Afor in Enugu State the centre-point of integrated infrastructure plan for the South-East region within the national master-plan.
“Along this backbone, we are going to have five dimensions of infrastructure development that will include power grid, fibre cables, high-speed rail, dual carriage road and finally, it will include the gas pipeline (70-inch diameter).
“The whole idea is that economic development in Nigeria can only go as fast as infrastructure development will go’,’ he said.
The consultant noted that infrastructure development had not been strategic and integrated due to the cost of security and the cost of right of way/compensation.
“We are looking at other developed economies like Shanghai, Japan, Singapore and we are trying to emulate their successes to bring the same thing to infrastructure development in Nigeria by making it integrative to involve all’’, he said.