PUNCH NEWS
The Governor of Bayelsa State, Douye Diri, said on Tuesday that the outgoing President, Major-General Muhammadu Buhari (retd.), did not initiate any new project in any part of the state throughout his eight years in office.
He stated this at the virtual inauguration and handover ceremony of the Federal Secretariat Complex in Yenagoa, which is named after former President Goodluck Ebele Jonathan, whose administration started the project in 2011.
Diri said, “While it is good that the Federal Government completed some of the projects started by President Goodluck Ebele Jonathan, we want to place it on record that for the past eight years, we never saw one new project in Bayelsa State.”
He pointed out that the Federal Government had witnessed firsthand the comparatively high cost of executing infrastructural projects in the state, stressing that the cost of constructing a kilometre of standard road in Bayelsa could be used to construct four or more kilometres of the same grade of road elsewhere in the country.
The governor, who was represented at the event by his deputy, Lawrence Ewhrudjakpo, noted that the Goodluck Ebele Jonathan Federal Secretariat, which was initially pegged at N2.5 billion, had to undergo a cost variation after the 2012 catastrophic flood and was completed at a total cost of N3.1 billion.
Diri expressed hope that, with this experience, the Federal Government would henceforth be more cautious in matters of project cost evaluation and execution in Bayelsa State…
