The Cross River mono rail project and the rest of us... I read again the news of a monorail project under execution by the CRSG today with shock and alarm. I must confess that when I read news to the same effect last week or so, I thought it was a lie and a mistake. I reacted by asserting that no such project is under construction in CRS. But I was wrong. There seems to be. In todays news report by Calinews, one of the front line online publications in the state, the project is to link the CICC with Tinapa. Now, if you know the layout of Calabar, you will understand my earlier assertion. The CICC itself is located within Tinapa. Indeed the fence wall of Tinapa was broken down for access to the conference centre. In other words, it is to transport people between two points within Tinapa! In its original conceptualisation, the monorail was designed to move traffic from the Margaret Ekpo International Airport, Through Unical, Watt Market and onwards to Tinapa to capture the major traffic centres of Calabar and ease movement to the Resort. That distance was estimated at 12 km. In the wisdom of the present Administration which made the CICC a priority project for the sake of Legacy and in response to the Duke Administrations Tinapa, in the twilight of the Administration. There have been knee jerk policy drives to make sense of what is obviously an ill advised, ill motivated project that is at best a poor attempt to make sense of absolute nonsense! Hence the resurrection of the monorail. It is unfortunate that the administration is packaging this as as a 12 km rail. Nothing can be further from the truth. I challenge anyone to take the press in tow and measure the distance! I said Resurrection because the Gov has been quoted elsewhere as saying the project was not feasible and all already acquired components should be sold off. So why the resurrection? Can someone please tell me what traffic originates from the CICC to Tinapa? If you travel all the way to the CICC what distance do you need to shorten again between it and Tinapa which is a stone throw away? We must be consistent with our stories, gullible as we assume the populace is. The story of shortening distance was from the town to Tinapa! Now we want to sell it as shortening distance within Tinapa? Haba! Even if we need money to finance the forthcoming election we can do better! 3.6bn or three thousand, six hundred million Naira can do a lot of good to improve the welfare of cross riverians. We can do better than this indeed!
Posted on: Mon, 28 Apr 2014 21:44:59 +0000
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