By Oghenemairo Ozah
The Chief of Naval Staff, Vice Admiral Awwal Gambo, at a brief ceremony on Saturday, unveiled the newly-completed six units of three-bedroom apartments for officers at the Navy Town, Ojo Lagos.
Gambo also inaugurated the expansion project of the Nigerian Navy Reference Hospital, which is also located inside the Navy Town.
For the Flag Officer Commanding Western Naval Command, Rear Admiral YB Wambai, it was an ideal occasion to formally present the ‘Western News Magazine’ of the Command before the CNS.
In his presentation, Admiral Wambai told the CNS that contributions in the magazine were done by young officers, as a way of tasking them in making rich research contributions at this stage and build on that path as they advance.
His words: ‘In adding to the body of knowledge as is customary with the Western Naval Command, in trying to develop and encourage a reading culture in our younger officers, we tried to make this publication a very peculiar one. Most of the publications are done by Lieutenants and Lieutenant Commanders from the Command. We tasked every unit to task our officers to make some research for their contribution and we chose the ones that were considered the best among them in terms.
“The idea is that the young officers would key into that and not until they are Commodores and want to be Rear Admirals that they would start looking for publications. If they start that now, it becomes a part of them. So, we decided that as you are coming for this occasion, it would be right to have you unveil the magazine , Western News, for this quarter of the year. Thank you, sir.”
Earlier, Alhaji Kassim Bello, Managing Director of the project construction company Messers Borwa Engineering Service Limited, officially presentation the completed project to the CNS.
Expressing his company’s appreciation for the opportunity to undertake the construction of the apartments, Bello gave a lowdown of the work carried out on the project from start to completion.
He said: “We are indeed grateful for the opportunity given us to serve and contribute our quarter in providing accommodation to the Nigerian navy as part of the CNS infrastructural transformational agenda for the entire Nigerian navy formations.
“The 12-month contract period was awarded to our company on 26 March, 2021, and the site was handed over on 12 May 2021; we started the project on 21 May 2021.
“We did deep soil text to determine the appropriate depth of excavation of the structure and a team from the project directorate office visited and reassessed the site and gave a new down proof course (DPC) level of 600mm of the adjoining road level. This was to take care of the any eventual over flooding of the area or the level of the adjoining building should not necessarily be the same, but should be aligned.”
Bello told the CNS that the project was completed at the end of September 2022 and pre-handling over was done on 14 October 2022.
He said that the project was finally handed over on 25 November 2022, after a satisfactory assessment after structural tests had been done on all the component parts of the buildings.
