The Edo State government says it expects its proposed coral city would accommodate not less than 50,000 residents when completed.

The Commissioner for Physical Planning, Housing, Urban and Regional Development, Isoken Omo, told journalists in Benin that the reason for the new city, which she said started September 2023, was to reduce the pressure on the Benin City Centre.

According to her, “We have done the design, and we have 1,300 plots available for different land uses: residential, commercial, multi-purpose, religious leisure, schools, markets, health centres, everything you need for a city to thrive, and it is coming with full infrastructure like roads, drainages, power, telecommunication, and others.

“We intend to house 50,000 people when it is fully completed. We have broken the project into four phases so that within the tenure of the current administration, we will do the first phase with the expectation that the subsequent governments will continue the project. We opened for subscription with 467 plots to jump-start the project,” Omo disclosed.

To achieve that, she added that a New Town Development Authority had been set up to oversee the comprehensive development of the project and appealed to Edo residents to begin to apply for plot allocation in the new city, assuring that the land acquired would come with title documents.

She said that the project would be in four phases, adding that after the initial subscription, subscribers would also be allowed to do staggered and instalment basis.