The multi-billion naira Ibaka Deep Sea Port project being undertaken by the Akwa Ibom State Government will be completed in less than three years.

The State Governor, Mr. Udom Emmanuel, disclosed this last night in Uyo during a media chat.

“Latest by April 2018 we should be able to have a deep sea port,” he said.

If this is achieved, it would be six months ahead of the December 31, 201 deadline which Governor Emmanuel gave the 10-member Technical Committee on the actualisation of the project during its inauguration in early June.

The Governor, who last night clocked six months in office, described the Ibaka Deep Sea Port project conceived by his immediate past predecessor, Senator Godswill Akpabio, as the only one in the country that has both Federal Executive Council and Presidential approvals. He described it as a very significant project which will help to unlock the non-oil potentials of Akwa Ibom in the face of dwindling returns from crude oil, in which the state is a major producer.

“We are quite on tract,” he said. “Every single step we set for the project, we are achieving it,” the Governor said.

He also disclosed that his administration has moved swiftly to make the state-of-the-art Specialist Hospital built by the Akpabio administration functional by bringing in expatriate medical personnel who will run the hospital and later transfer knowledge to their Nigerian counterparts.

On education, Mr. Emmanuel said that he has set a target to improve Akwa Ibom’s performance in external exams and is motivating teachers and school administrators to achieve that target.

The Governor also spoke of his administration’s dream to make Akwa Ibom number one in sports in the country, describing the recent lifting of the Federation Cup by the state-owned Akwa United as the beginning of greater things to come. He disclosed that his administration is setting up 10 sports centres across the state with a view to providing the right environment for the sports talents that abound in the state to be developed into world beaters.

Asked where he would get the money to finance the projects in view of the declining cash flow arising from the slump in the global oil market, the Governor said he was drawing from his rich expeience as an investment banker for 26 years to explore other sources of funding.