Following the recent EIA 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.
Governor Ben Ayade disclosed this, yesterday, shortly on his arrival from Abuja, at the Margaret Ekpo International Airport, Calabar.
His words: “The superhighway and deep seaport projects are in good progress. Only yesterday, there was a major opening of the bid and about 71 different companies bided. We are using this opportunity to call on Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC), Independent Corrupt Practices and Other Related Offences Commission (ICPC), non-governmental organisation (NGO) and other organisations to come and watch the bid evaluation process which will take about 10 days.”
Governor Ayade maintained that the essence of inviting the anti-graft agencies was “to demonstrate the transparency in the process of arriving at a preferred bidder commencing works under our proposed deep seaport and superhighway.”
The governor further added: “It is critical that we show transparency because we have very massive bids and very big international companies will be participating in the bids.” On the funding of the projects, Ayade intimated: “As we speak today, nobody or organisation so far has put a dime on the project except those that have put direct technical services…”