Niger Bridge Makes Me Cry -dr. Orji Uzor Kalu Few weeks to Yuletide, former Abia State governor, Dr. Orji Uzor Kalu is disturbed that respite may yet come as travellers continue to use the lone Niger Bridge in Onitsha.Kalu said: I am really emotional about this. I feel the pains of millions of Nigerians from the South-East to the North-Central,f rom Ikot Ekpene to Opobo. Going home in December is worse than spending 48 hours in Kirikiri Maximum Prisons. The former governor, who plied that route in 2012 bewailed the slow take-off facing the second bridge while condemning past administrations for using it as part of the dividends of the Civil War. Yes, we are now talking of the Second Bridge 43 years after the war. In the American State of Maryland, there is a city called Sandy Point with the William Lane Jnr. Memorial Bridge. The first one was built in 1952. When congestion set in, a second Bridge came up in 1973. That is government in action. Work on the Niger Bridge began in 1964 by French contractors Dumez. It took five million pounds to complete it in December 1965. The same year as Bendorf Bridge on the Rhine, Germany and the same month as Oosterscheldebrug that links Flushing to Rotterdam in the Netherlands. The Second Bridge will not cost as much as Istanbuls Bosporus, the link between Europe and Asia. It cannot be as long as Europes longest, the 19,822 feet Oland Island Bridge in Sweden. I just pray this job gets started in 2014 as promised, Kalu stated. The former governor called on the Federal Road Safety Corps (FRSC) to deploy a deputy corps marshal to the Asaba end of the Bridge beginning from December 10. I overheard one family talking of travelling by rail through the North to avoid the bedlam. Another is considering the road route through Okene-Lokoja from Lagos. And these are families who live in Ijesha-tedo. The kids cannot understand why there are three long bridges between Lagos Island and the Mainland while their parents do Christmas arithmetic with the Niger Bridge, Kalu said.
Posted on: Sat, 30 Nov 2013 05:31:31 +0000
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