Port Harcourt Ring Road Project, a Concrete Form of Cash Transfer to the People, Says Group

…Hails Gov Fubara

A group, Rivers Coalition for Good Leadership and Excellence, has described the Port Harcourt Ring Road project in Rivers State as a concrete form of cash transfer to the people of the state.

The group Convener, Mr. Ken Agala, described the N195 billion project as a crystallised form of the conditional cash transfer policy of the federal government which is also known as Helicopter Money.

Agala, a strategic communications expert and political analysts, told THISDAY that: “It was Milton Friedman, the 1976 American Nobel Prize Winner in Economics who coined the term Helicopter Money in 1969 when he wrote a parable of throwing money from a helicopter to illustrate the theory of monetary expansion in his famous works ‘The Optimum Quantity of Money’.

“Helicopter money refers to a monetary policy tool of printing large sums of money, expanding money supply and distributing it to the public to spur economic growth.

“The major aim of Helicopter is to boost economic output. The theory behind helicopter money is that money handed to the public, which are consumers, would increase their disposable income, resulting in increased consumer spending that would ultimately trigger economic output.

“As a response to the removal of fuel subsidy and the accompanying poverty, the federal government has employed the same monetary policy of conditional cash transfers of the previous administration, this time targeting 12 million households who will receive N8000 monthly for the next six months totaling a whopping 500 billion.”

He added that: “Although the Tinubu’s administration variant is not mainly funded by ways and means, but unfortunately, I’m afraid that the result might not be different from the attempts made by the Buhari administration.

“For me, massive infrastructure spending is the most concrete form of helicopter, money as the end product often provides a facility that generations yet unborn will forever benefit from. Look at it critically, while the federal government cash transfers last about six months after which the N500 billion disappears, the Port Harcourt Ring Road Project is going to employ at least one million people through direct and indirect employment for the next three years. This includes regular staff, artisans, engineers, technicians, supply chain staff, suppliers, sub-contractors, community liaison officers, and secondary employees like food vendors, beverage vendors, local pubs and even the wives and girlfriends of those involved. You can see that the local economy is stirred up. This is even very minimal compared to the massive benefits of opening up the city, creating new business clusters, connecting communities and creating massive opportunities.”

In his remark, the group Secretary, Mr. Kenneth Minimah, corrected the impression of a 45 kilometre paved road.

He said: “The Port Harcourt Ring Road project is a 45km to and 45km fro project since it’s a dual carriage way with each carriage way over the standard 7.5 meters median of Nigerian roads. So it’s a total of about 90 km with a bridge over the Mgboshimini River and six flyovers across six local government areas in the state.

Minimah lauded the state for carrying out the single biggest infrastructural project by a regional government in West Africa.

The state Governor, Sim Fubara, had yesterday invited former state Governor, Nyesom Wike, who conceptualised the idea of the New Rivers Vision, to flag off the construction of the project.