By Jimitota Onoyume

PORT HARCOURT-GOVERNOR Chibuike Amaechi of Rivers State has assured that his administration was working to provide 24-hour power supply in the state by Decem-ber 2012.

Amaechi, who spoke at Nigeria’s 51st independence anniversary celebration, weekend, expressed confidence that although the power problem cannot be fixed in a hurry, his administration would achieve the goal within the set time.

The governor expressed confidence in his administration’s ability to deliver on this target conside-ring what the state was doing with Afam and Eleme power plants.

He said: “You know the power problem cannot be addressed overnight. But once our independent power projects come on stream, power outage would be a thing of the past.”

Amaechi added that by January next year, about seven of the ongoing major roads and flyovers under construction in Port Harcourt, would be completed and open to traffic.

The projects include the Ken Saro-Wiwa/Stadium Road, Chief G. U. Ake Road, Olu-Obasanjo Road, Obiri Ikwerre/East-West flyover and interchange, Choba/NTA Road and the Ikwerre Road-Agip Junction flyover, among others.

He said his government would continue to sustain its free education and health care programme.

, adding “it is no longer news that this government is committed to ensuring free education up to secondary school level and the provision of free and qualitative healthcare for all our citizens.

“Only yesterday, 83 of our children returned from Singapore after four years of scholarship study in Information and Communication Technology, ICT. These graduates represent the first crop of our new focus on developing a knowledge economy in Rivers State. At present, we have over 3,000 Rivers young men and women in various parts of the world studying in the key areas of engineering, medicine, ICT, law and economics.

“Our human development is not limited to university scholarships alone. We had trained over 150 of our young people at the Songhai farms in Port Novo and had employed those of them who were interested in our Songhai farms in Bunu, Tai Local Government Area of the state.”