Nwifuru Promises To Transform Ebonyi Airport Into World Class
By Okoh OMAKA (Abakaliki)
Ebonyi State governor, Francis Nwifuru has promised to transform the Chuba Okadigbo airport in into a world class standard.
Nwifuruu, who made the disclosure during a regular inspection of the Airport, said it would soon be ready for inauguration by the president of the federal republic of Nigeria, Bola Ahmed Tinubu, promising speedy completion of the runway rehabilitation, control tower and prompt payment to contractors handling various projects at the airport.
According to him, “the airport is what we think that our money should go into, and it is for the benefit of all of us, since our manifesto is centered on the ‘People’s charter of needs’ we couldn’t have spent so much money on this airport, but we have to become, we shouldn’t abandon it.
“We have about three projects ongoing in this airport; the runway, control tower and it is almost one hundred percent completed. Another one is the security control light in this airport, and it is almost completed too.
“When we assumed office, having campaigned on the same platform of Divine mandate, continuity and consolidation, we were constrained and it became an obligation that we complete this airport, and put it to the standard that everybody will be proud of. And as a people of Ebonyi state, we made a serious promise to our people that we will punish our enemies with very gigantic projects.
“To actaulise its speedy completion, we have ensured regular payment of salaries to airport workers, accepted for an upward review of the contract sum of the runway handled by the infrastructure Development Company (IDC) from N13.5 billion to N17.3 billion as a result of inflation and cost of construction materials in the country.
“The contractor (IDC) handling the airport runway rehabilitation has been doing wonderfully well, but the state government has been doing very exceptionally well. At July last year, we agreed to re-award the construction of this runway. We gave it to IDC because they have an asphalt plant close to Ebonyi state. And they agreed to build an asphalt plant here, which you can see there.
“Due to the issue of fluctuation in our currency, this job was supposed to stop, if not the understanding, I personally talked to the contractor, I made serious promises. We called for an upward review. The runway was initially awarded for #13.735billion, at the time of the upward review. The balance left then was N4.7billion and we reviewed it upwards by 70 percent from the balance. And that’s what made the contractor come back to site” he stated.
Ebonyi airport site is located at Ezza South local government area of the state with 3.5 kilometres runway constructed earlier with concrete, is now being reconstructed with standard asphalting. The runway of the Chuba Okadigbo’s Airport is about 90 per cent completed.
