Governor Chukwuma Soludo has said that the South-East region of the country is eternally grateful to President Muhammadu Buhari for completion of the Second Niger Bridge.
Asides from the Bridge which has been completed, Soludo added that the region needs a dredging project which needs to be executed to enable the south-east have access to the Atlantic Ocean in terms of access to the sea, a highway from Anambra to Lokoja, a gas pipeline around the south-east and a rail line infrastructural project.
The Governor who sat for an interview with Channels Television, days after the commissioning, lauded the Buhari government for keeping to its promise of finishing the bridge named after the President. He said;
“I had to make efforts to be there personally for the commissioning of that project. It is a major game-changer.
“It is a very important project and we are eternally grateful to President Buhari for delivering on that agenda.
According to him, the Second Niger Bridge is one of the five core projects the South-East has been clamouring for in the region.
While others are yet to be done, he believes the completion of the Second Niger Bridge is a step in the right direction.
“But we are now eternally grateful that at least one of five [has been done],” the former CBN governor said.
“The people of the south-east have cried, we have agitated, we have complained and (did) all we can — over five key fundamental infrastructural provisions that will change the south-east.
“One of such infrastructure is the dredging project, which needs to be executed to enable the south-east have access to the Atlantic Ocean in terms of access to the sea.
“Number two was the Second Niger Bridge, and three is the highway from Anambra to Lokoja abandoned by the federal government. Number four is the gas pipeline around the south-east and the last one is the rail line infrastructural project.
“Those are the five major infrastructural projects we thought the federal government would have been able to help us kick start, but we are enterally grateful that one out of five has been completed.
“It was a promise made and a promise kept. It is a game changer and it will decongest traffic, and create a twin city between Asaba and Onitsha.”