Less than two months after President Goodluck Jonathan laid the foundation for the Second Niger Bridge, the entire Southeast region has been thrown into palpable fear over the fate of the bridge.
Minister of the Environment Laurentia Mallam said work had stopped on the project because the Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) was not conducted before the ground breaking, raising suspicion and fears that the project which was flagged off with fanfare may be abandoned.
The Ndigbo United Assembly (NUA) and the All Progressives Congress (APC) Southeast zone at the weekend warned against any “foul play” on the project but the preferred bidders for the project – Julius Berger Nigeria – and the Nigeria Sovereign Wealth Investment Authority (NSIA) denied that work had been stalled.
Addressing reporters after its emergency meeting, the National President of NUA, Sir Peter Okala, said the construction of the bridge remained a bond between Jonathan and the Southeast and called on the ministries of Works and Environment to put their houses in order for uninterrupted construction of the bridge, adding that anything short of that would be unacceptable to Ndigbo and Nigeria in general.
“NUA had to convoke this emergency meeting after reading on the pages of newspapers that the Federal Government has stopped work on the construction of the Second Niger Bridge because of the failure of the Federal Government to comply with the requirements of the EIA law before embarking on the project.
“Ndigbo is taking a stand that the both ministries should go home and do everything within their reach to settle the problem, get the EIA law in place and make sure we don’t hear this type of discouraging comments from the Federal Government again because the construction of the bridge is a great bond between Ndigbo and President Goodluck Jonathan’s administration and we wouldn’t want the Federal Government through agents or whosoever to push Ndigbo to the wall.”
Okechukwu insisted that “now that the second Niger Bridge has been suspended, we call for international competitive bidding and due process to govern the award of the contract.”
Okechukwu maintained that sooner or later, Ndigbo would discover to their dismay that voting further for the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) on sentiment and ancient stereo-types would lead us to nowhere.
However, in a statement on Sunday, the Managing Director, Nigeria Sovereign Wealth Investment Authority, Uche Orji, and his counterpart in Julius Berger, Wolfgang Goetsch, said the reports suggesting that work on the bridge had been suspended due to non-compliance of environmental laws represent inaccurate and misconstrued information.
“Contrary to recent reports, work on the Second River Niger Bridge Project continues to progress according to schedule, to ensure timely completion of the Bridge, which is set to be executed under the Public Private Partnership (PPP) arrangement for a concessional period of 25 years through the Design, Build, Finance, Operate and Transfer (DBFOT) model, “ the statement said.
It added that the nominated EPC contractor, Julius Berger Nigeria Plc, had commenced full mobilisation to site and timely execution of all scheduled activities is anticipated.”
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