The Minister of Transport, Idris Umar, said on Tuesday that the federal government was partnering the AkwaIbom State Government and private investors to develop the Ibaka Deep Sea Port to accommodate high volume of cargoes.
The minister stated this at the inauguration of the Development andSteering Committee of the port on Tuesday in Abuja.
Umar said the port would be developed under Public Private Partnership (PPP) to accommodate cargoes generated through maritimetrade; adding that the port's location, which is an integral part of Ibom Industrial City and an important milestone in the development of Akwa Ibom, offered investors unparalleled opportunities for maritime and oil and gas related productions.
According to him, the site will also accommodate dry docking for super tanker vessels and offer low cost access to off shore oil/gas fields.
“Mr President attaches great importance to this which is indeed part of the transformation agenda,” he said. “We are committed to the of the project by the year 2015.”
Umar said President Goodluck Jonathan convened a maritime sector retreat on July 3 to articulate concrete action plans to harness the potential of the maritime sector for sustainable national economic development.
“We are taking an important step in the actualisation of one of the key outcomes of that presidential initiative,” he said. “It is not in doubt that the nation’s existing six ports areover-stretched. With an overall handling capacity of 60 million tonnesper annum, the ports presently cater for over 100 million tonnes per annum. It is, therefore, evident that the existing ports cannot cope with the current demand of the sector.”
He commended Governor Godswill Akpabio for providing more than 5,000 hectares of land for the port, with further commitment to provide basic infrastructure; and urged members of the committee to apply their experience and expertise to the and diligent implementation of the project.
Responding, the Secretary to the Akwa Ibom State Government, Umana Umana, who is also a memberof the committee, thanked the president for approving the project, promising that the state would ensure completion of the project.

Good news! If this was a country were things were done properly without recourse to pandering to ethnic considerations or trying to render your perceived competitors economically impotent, then Ibaka deep sea port would have been something completed since the early 70's and we'd now be talking of expansion.

Nice to hear also that they plan on completing the project by 2015.

I sincerely hope this will not end up like Calabar Port Dredging where over N9B went with a Bogus dredging contract and uptill today no body is held accountable

Nice move by the govt. But what of bayelsa . We need a thing like this in brass. What is dickson doing.

belovedaja: Nice move by the govt. But what of bayelsa . We need a thing like this in brass. What is dickson doing.

^^^How did you get away with spelling the Governors name like that, without it being converted to joystickson ?

PROUD-IGBO:


^^^How did you get away with spelling the Governors name like that, without it being converted to joystickson ?

what do you mean?

I sincerely hope this will not end up like Calabar Port Dredging where over N9B went with a Bogus dredging contract and uptill today no body is held accountable

I think Ibaka sea is more than 17 meters deep, so it needs no dredging in this regard...

does anyone have any updates on this project?

ujoinme: does anyone have any updates on this project?

I am also interested in the updates. Is the work still ongoing or has it been abandoned?