Abia Owes IFAD Programmes N190m Counterpart Fund

The Abia Government is owing N190 million in counterpart funding to the Community-Based Natural Resources Management Programme (CBNRMP), a consultant to the International Fund for Agricultural Development Fund (IF AD), Prof Gabriel Lombin, has disclosed.

Lombin disclosed this while speaking with newsmen during the IF AD-FGN Joint Supervision Mission to the state to assess the implementation of the programme.

He said: “Abia has not been forthcoming in this programme and they owe over N190 million since the inception of the project in 2006.”

“This is free money coming from the international community, the Federal Government and the NDDC and the government should assist its people to benefit from it.”

Lombin expressed regret that the State Programme Support Office (SPSO) lacked project monitoring vehicles.

He, however, applauded the current arrangement that would make the participating local government areas pay their contributions through deduction at source and urged the government to comply with the arrangement.

Meanwhile, the state Commissioner for Agriculture, Chief Ike Onyenweaku, said that the government was set to re-invigorate its support to all donor-assisted programmes.

Onyenweaku said that IFAD and Fadama-assisted programmes in Abia would be made more result-oriented, adding that government had decided to prioritise agriculture.

Reports say that the programme is being implemented under a counterpart funding arrangement involving the federal, states and local governments as well as the benefitting communities.

The NDDC is also providing additional financial assistance to the programme which is being implemented in the nine states in the Niger Delta region.

They include Abia, Akwa Ibom, Bayelsa, Cross River, Edo, Delta, Imo, Ondo and Rivers.