Inadequate budgetary allocation was our bane- Usani

The Minister of Niger Delta Affairs, Pastor Usani Uguru Usani, has blamed the seeming inability of his administration to achieve the developmental mandate of President Muhammed Buhari for the Niger Delta Region on poor budgetary allocation.

Usani said this yesterday Monday, May 27, 2019 at Abuja during a media parley where he and his counterpart, the Minister of State for Niger Delta Affairs, Prof. Claudius Omoleye Daramola, gave account of their stewardship from November 2015 to May 2019.

The Minister said that though their administration faced many challenges, a lot was still achieved.

According to him, their major focus was the establishment and commissioning of projects that had direct impact on the lives of residents of the Niger Delta region.

Usani revealed that during his administration, skill acquisition centres, Information and Communication Technology (ICT) centres, housing units, electrification projects, erosion control, motorized water schemes and cassava processing plants, among others, were established and commissioned in various locations in the nine Niger Delta States.

On infrastructural development, the Minister disclosed that but for budgetary constraints, more roads would have been constructed. On the completion of the East West Road project, he said that sections one to four would have been completed but for some technical hitches.

He revealed that section five of the project had been approved and that the design and contract for the project would ‘be signed any moment from now’.

On the housing units, Usani revealed that some housing units had been completed though not allocated to the right recipients, yet, as some were illegally occupied.

He pleaded with the occupants to vacate the buildings as they were intended for the vulnerable: widows, those living with disabilities, internally displaced and destitute.

On youth restiveness in the region, the Minister revealed that a lot of policies and programmes had been put in place to curb the menace. He revealed that the Ministry had trained and empowered about 3,000 youths on various vocational skills, with a minimum of Three Hundred Thousand Naira, as starter packs.

Usani said that the Project Audit Committee set up to appraise the performance of contractors enhanced their performance. He disclosed that defaulting contractors who had abandoned their projects midway, after payment ran the risk of being reported to the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC), for prosecution, went back to site to complete their work.

In his remarks, the Minister of State for Niger Delta Affairs, Prof. Claudius Omoleye Daramola said that they were determined to change the narrative in the Niger Delta region in accordance with the “Change mantra” of the present administration.

Daramola said that he worked with Usani to improve the security and standard of living of the region. He reiterated that, despite the paucity of funds experienced by the Ministry, projects abandoned by previous administrations were completed.

The Minister of State expressed joy that they were leaving the region more focused than the way they met it.. “ We will not say we are perfect but we have tried out best’, he concluded

Concerning the issue of youth restiveness in the Niger Delta Region, Prof. Charles Dokubo, Special Adviser to the President on Niger Delta and Coordinator, Presidential Amnesty Programme, said that the programme had put a lot of measures in place to address the issue. He added that this was the major reason the issue of pipeline vandalism “ is now a thing of the past”.

Dokubo said that training and empowerment of youths also contributed to the relative peace in the region as a lot of vocational training centres had been established.

He stressed:“ We just don’t train for training we train for job placement.”