An interesting piece about Rivers state Governor Amaechi has done some major good work. It is important to underline this and his work has been well advertised. What is not well advertised is that Rotimi Amaechi can be a bit of a guided missile. Once he makes up his mind on a direction to go, it is fiendishly difficult to talk him down. The seventy billion naira monorail project is probably the project which raises the question if indeed the governor of Rivers State is a loose cannon. One can understand his supposed excitement with newfangled things. For one moment, one can even allow oneself to visualize his multi-colored monotrain filled with comfortably seated Rivers people flying across the horizon from Lagos bus stop to Garrison. It is a short flight of fancy. The scene fades quickly and the voice of reality intrudes. Is the thing just imagined worth seventy billion naira ? If Amaechi actually succeeds, using hitherto unknown contractor Megastar to build the monorail, commissions and runs it before the end of his tenure. What will be the impact on the traffic situation. Marginal. Negligible. The monorail will start from the Lagos bus stop area and terminate at Garrison. That is a distance of less than ten bus stops. Never in peace time has so much been spent for an advance of less than two kilometers on land. The traffic challenge to getting from Lagos bus stop to Garrison is hardly formidable. There are alternative routes. For a real traffic snarl, check out Choba Bridge, Eliozu Junction, Ikwerre Road , Woji bridge and Rumuomasi. One must concede that the Amaechi administration had opened up quite a few roads to alleviate the bottle-neck in certain areas. The monorail is situated in an area without a great traffic challenge. This is difficult to understand, if it was meant to address the worst of Port Harcourt traffic jams. For the sum of money involved, it should not serve any less. It is also situated where it won’t be missed by visitors to the Government House. Even at its presently inconclusive stage, it should make a surreal feast for august visitors. Amaechi is betting his billions against a mission impossible. The ironic thing about it is that after he has left Government House and the monorail stands unsustained and abandoned like a closed amusement park ride, its power to illustrate Amaechi’s peccadilloes will remain undimmed. The monorail is a seventy billion naira gamble. The project is not market driven. The state lacks the technical capacity to sustain it as the state has clearly failed to sustain a much simpler mass transit bus service. The so-called partners who brought the idea in the first place could not come up with the money. The governor is currently in debt to finance the project. This much has been confirmed by Chamberlain Peterside the Rivers State commissioner for finance. All the workers on the monorail site are clearly people who have never worked on a mono-rail project. It is like trial and error and it makes a great conversation for cab or bus passengers when the traffic is slow on Azikiwe Road. Amaechi means well. He is a good intentioned, tough talking, cunning, impatient guided missile. He is impatient to get Rivers into the twenty-first century. He had a plan and when those he depended on to be his partners in the plan failed him, he decided to go it alone. He did not dream up the mono-rail. People sold him the idea; people who included a former military governor of Rivers State Gen. Anthony Ukpo. They were supposed to bring 80% of the investment but at crunch time, they owned up that they did not have the funds. They wanted suddenly to be contractors for the project while the state coughed up the money. Amaechi agreed, coughed out eleven billion naira for a start and a hitherto unknown company Megastar appeared on Azikiwe Road, started digging holes, filling the holes with cement and iron rods and casting pillars out of them. How can it be so simplistic to build a mono-rail network and yet it is the first in Africa. One expected at least that if the state was putting down tens of billions of dollars for such a project, the reputation of contractors involved would at least be international. Who’s Megastar ? Remember Agip bridge and Rumuokwuta-Choba Road. credit Andy Briggs Report
Posted on: Sat, 12 Jul 2014 17:11:33 +0000
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