By Peter Yohanna
On July 20, 2023, a Facebook user shared the image of a bridge and claimed that it “is the famous Spaghetti Highway Bridge built by Ben Ayade linking Calabar Municipality and Odukpani LGA in Cross River State”.
At the time of this report, the post has garnered over 11,000 reactions, more than 2800 comments and has been shared over a thousand times.
Claim:
The image is a spaghetti highway bridge built by Ben Ayade in Cross River
Verification
A Google Lens search of the image revealed that the bridge is the Nansha Bridge located in Guangzhou, Guangdong Province, China and not in Calabar Municipality and Odukpani LGA in Cross River State. The Spaghetti Highway Bridge connects the Nansha District of Guangzhou City and Shatian Town of Dongguan City in China. The bridge is located on the Pearl River Shiziyang. It was formerly known as Humen Second Bridge. It is another super bridge in the Pearl River Delta of China after the Hong Kong–Zhuhai–Macau Bridge.
The Government of the People’s Republic of China started the Bridge‘s construction on December 28, 2013; it was completed and opened to traffic on April 2, 2019. The bridge has a length of 12.9 km and width of 40.5 m, accommodating eight traffic lanes, and is regarded as the world’s widest steel box girder suspension bridge. The deck is a two-way 8-lane highway, and the design speed is 100 km/h. The bridge cost 11.2 billion yuan (US $1.6 billion).
In addition, It is also the steel box girder suspension bridge with the largest span (1,688 m) in the world.
Verdict: FALSE
The claim that the image shows a popular bridge linking Calabar Municipality and Odukpani LGA in Cross River state is false; checks show that it is the Nansha Bridge located in Guangzhou, Guangdong Province in China and not related to anywhere in Nigeria.
Leave a Reply