Ebonyi to spend N20b on Abakaliki ring road

IN a move to ease transportation in Ebonyi State, the government says N20 billion would be expended on the construction of the Abakaliki ring road that connects various parts of the state capital. The ring road would be served by capillary internal roads to decongest intra city commuting.In an interview, the Commissioner for Works and Transport, Chukwuma Nwandugo, told The Guardian that Governor Martin Elechi promised that the ring road would be accomplished by his administration. He said that already, his ministry has specified that the road would be done on 200 millimeter of stone-base for durability.Nwandugo disclosed that apart from the dualisation of a section of Abakaliki-Afikpo high way measuring about four kilometres at the cost of about N6 billion, the government has not awarded many contracts so as to concentrate on the completion of the existing ones.Contrary to insinuations in some quarters, the commissioner maintained that the quality of work done on all the roads and bridges projects is high, even as he said his ministry has pencilled down one bridge among the 34 unity bridges for demolition based on faulty design and improper materials for the foundation.His words: 'When an engineer is talking, he talks exactly as it concerns materials and other inputs. The work done on the bridges are excellent; it is only one particular bridge that I discovered that the design of the foundation was not so good. Efforts are on to conduct geotechnical survey on one of the bridges, which I personally discovered that the foundation does not look too good to me.'That work was done before I came in as commissioner. After my investigations, I discovered that what they used in the foundation was not proper. So, I have ordered the demolition of that particular bridge. I have conducted same survey on virtually all the other 34 bridges that have been done, it is only two that have that kind of problem.'Nwandugo said that though any visitor to Abakaliki might be tempted to say the government has not been doing anything, the work done outside the state capital is enormous. 'Hardly can you see a governor that can rival what Elechi has done, especially in proportion to what he receives from the federal allocation. The percentage of achievement is unquantifiable.
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