Bisola David
The inclusion of the Nembe-Brass Road among federal projects under the Nigerian National Petroleum Company Limited Road Tax Scheme by the Federal Government has been praised by Senator Douye Diri, the governor of Bayelsa State.
Daily Trust reported that the federal road was one of 44 projects chosen by the Federal Executive Council to be built in collaboration with the NNPCL at its meeting last week.
The Nembe-Brass road was officially opened and started being built by the Governor Diri administration in June of last year. It was anticipated that the first phase, which covered 21 kilometers and included 10 bridges over significant rivers, would cost N54.01 billion.
The governor stated that it was satisfying that the federal government chose to designate the route for building after multiple letters and a visit to President Muhammadu Buhari regarding this and other projects in the state that need for federal intervention and partnership.
The state’s former governor and minister of state for petroleum resources, Chief Timipre Sylva, received praise from the governor for his part in securing the project’s approval from the FEC.
In order to build infrastructure in the state, Governor Diri requested assistance from the federal government during a visit to President Buhari at the presidential villa in October 2022.
Being the most riverine and littoral of the country’s 36 states, he said, Bayelsa “struggles with very distinctive environmental difficulties.” The cost of infrastructure development is so burdened more.
He said that due to their significance to Bayelsans and the nation as a whole, his administration was only building the three senatorial highways in the state, all of which are federally conceived initiatives and are intended to end at the Atlantic Ocean.
Yenagoa-Ogbia-Nembe-Brass Road (Bayelsa East), Yenagoa-Angiama-Oporoma-Ukubie Road (Bayelsa Central), and Sagbama-Ekeremor-Agge Road are a few of them (Bayelsa West).
Governor Diri visited the President and asked for his help in coming up with a solution to right the wrong done to the state by the contentious cancellation and redistribution of the state-owned Atala oilfield licence (OML 46) to a different party.
In support of the President’s initiative to establish six new Federal Universities of Medical Sciences and Bio-Medical Technology across the six geopolitical zones, he also expressed the state’s willingness to transfer the Bayelsa Medical University to the Federal Government in order to serve the South-South region.
