Following the recent Environmental Impact Assessment approval by the Federal Ministry of Environment for the Cross River State signature project, the superhighway and the Bakassi deep seaport, over 71 companies are bidding to handle the projects.
The Cross River State Governor, Ben Ayade, disclosed this in Calabar on Wednesday.
A statement from the state government quoted him as saying, “The superhighway and deep seaport projects are in progress. Only yesterday, there was a major opening of the bid and about 71 different companies bid.
“We are using this opportunity to call on the anti-graft agencies and other organisations to please come and watch the bid evaluation process, which will take in about 10 days.”
The statement also said, “In the process of arriving at a preferred bidder commencing work under our proposed deep seaport and superhighway, it is critical that we show transparency because we have very massive bids and very big international companies will be participating in the bids.”
Ayade was quoted as saying that the state government had no cash to fund the project but it had idea, intellect and knowledge.
He said, “We know where to go for the investors that have the appetite for infrastructure in Sub-Saharan Africa with emphasis on the Gulf of Guinea.
“A team from China will be in the state for some months, going from one local government area to another in order to do solid mineral mapping of Cross River State, tell us in each local government what mineral economic value we have in deposit and give us the coordinates.”
