Edo coral city to accommodate 50,000 residents — Commissioner

The Edo State government on Wednesday said it expected its proposed coral city would accommodate not less than 50,000 residents when completed.

Edo State Commissioner for Physical Planning, Housing, Urban and Regional Development, Isoken Omo, who addressed a joint press conference with his counterpart in the Ministry of Communication and Orientation, Chris Osa Nehikhare, said that the reason for the new city, which she said started September 2023, was to reduce the pressure on the Benin City Centre.

“We have done the design, and we have 1,300 plots available for different land uses: residential, commercial, multi-purpose, religious leisure, schools, markets, health centres, everything you need for a city to thrive, and it is coming with full infrastructure like roads, drainages, power, telecommunication, and others.

“We intend to house 50,000 people when it is fully completed. We have broken the project into four phases so that within the tenure of the current administration, we will do the first phase with the expectation that the subsequent governments will continue the project. We opened for subscription with 467 plots to jump-start the project,” Omo disclosed.

To achieve that, she added that a New Town Development Authority had been set up to oversee the comprehensive development of the project and appealed to Edo residents to begin to apply for plot allocation in the new city, assuring that the land acquired would come with title documents.

She said that the project would be in four phases, adding that after the initial subscription, subscribers would also be allowed to do staggered and instalment basis.

Also speaking at the press conference, Nehikhare reiterated the state government’s commitment to prioritising the people’s welfare.

Nehikhare disclosed that since the state government flagged off its free bus rides a penultimate week, the feedback from the people had been most encouraging as commuters who had been using the free buses had been able to save their daily transportation fares.

He said over 1,500,000 passengers had benefited from the free inter and intra-city transport, which he noted the state government put in place to cushion the effects of the subsidy removal, since September 11, when it started.

“We have carried 1,494,000 passengers for the intra-city scheme while for the intercity we have carried 33,000 passengers. A lot of our people have been directly touched by this gesture. It was not a knee-jerk programme by the state government but was properly planned.”

On the distribution of palliatives, Nehikhare said, “We are still collecting data of the poorest of the poor to ensure that those who are directly affected will be the beneficiaries and will be devoid of politics.”

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