By Ike Uchechukwu

Calabar — The Management of Cross River Basin Development Authority, CRBDA, has described the wanton destructions of their facility as a blessing in disguise, which has opened new vista for the establishment to grow. 

They further revealed that it challenged their leadership to think outside the box, despite daunting challenges occasioned by the mayhem 14 months ago, as they embarked on viable projects, including fish pond worth over N200 million. 
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Speaking with journalists during a facility tour/project assessment and site evaluation, the public relations officer of CRBDA, Dr. Jackson John, asserted that they are doing better after the #EndSARS destructions.

Jackson explained that though the plans were already on ground, the EndSARS protest managed to disrupt and vandalise most of the projects they embarked on.

He said: “You will not even see the scars, because the improvement we have now is far better than what we had before the EndSARS protest. All the green houses were destroyed and all our birds looted but, as we speak, we have restocked them up again. 

“Before the EndSARS protest, we had about 5,000 birds, but now, we have capacity for about 10,000, both broilers and layers. 

Vanguard learned that some of the completed/some ongoing include Anti open dedication facilities in Calabar, Calabar,  academic administrative block for the CRBDA Nursery Primary and Secondary school as well as  construction of ICT Hall and rehabilitation of the water production factory, construction of earth amongst others .

Senior commercial officer for CRBDA, Mr. Inyang Umana who explained the concept of their projects initiatives, functionalities and production capacities said it was an idea meant to showcase miniature Songhai integrated farm.

“What we have here is a miniature Songhai integrated farm, where you have one section being an input for the other.  For instance, the waste from the poultry becomes an impute fertilizer for the crops.  The exchange of water from the earth pounds is also used as irritation for the crops.

“The waste leaves after harvesting are fed to Pigs, so it is a closed loop system whereby, everything just goes within and is recycled. There is no room for waste.”