S’East summit seeks region’s role in repair of federal roads

[TGD]

 A CALL has been made at the end of a two-day economic summit of the Southeast zone held in Enugu on the Federal Government to release certain percentage of the votes appropriated for the construction and maintenance of federal roads to the southeast governments to enable them tackle the myriad of failed highways in the zone.

They said that the realization of full economic potentials of Ndigbo lies in the provision of adequate infrastructure such as power, water and good roads in the zone.

Meanwhile, Senator Nkechi Nwaogu has urged the Federal Government to handover the   maintenance of federal roads  to states while it monitors and evaluates  the construction of such highways.

Nwaogu who represents Abia Central in the Senate made the call  during an inspection of federal roads in the area , adding " money assigned for federal roads should be released to states that they traverse while the Works Ministry takes charge of monitoring and evaluation. More funds should also be given to the Federal Road Maintenance Agency  (FERMA) to enable it be doing some palliatives".

In a resolution reached at the end of the summit attended by the governors, present and past political office holders, religious and traditional rulers and prominent members of the public, the zone resolved to work together for the economic expansion and development of the southeast region as well as return it to the path of growth.

They said: "The Federal Government should delegate powers to build and maintain federal roads in the South East states to the state governments. An agreed percentage of the money appropriated in the Federal budget for roads should be transferred to the governments of the six geo-political zones. By so doing, the building and maintenance of federal roads in the geo-political zones will be fast-tracked, monitored and effectively supervised.

The summit further heaped the root cause of failure of many businesses in the zone to poor state of the business environment such as regulatory and administrative bottlenecks, high utility prices/taxes, harmful business policies, stressing that appointments to government boards are made for political reasons to those who have little or no experience to manage those enterprises.

It resolved to adopt the Songhai model of Agriculture by all the governments and people of the South East states as a way of boosting its agricultural potentials.

"The Singapore and Malaysian models should be adopted for total and rapid industrialization of the South East. This should include revitalization and establishment of industrial clusters/centres, development of incubators and industrial capacity-up-scaling in Enugu, Onitsha, Aba, Umuahia, Owerri, Abakaliki, Nsukka, Nnewi and other emerging urban centres in the South East Nigeria", it said.

On politics, the zone resolved to put machinery in motion to contest and produce the president in 2015 as well as fight for equality of states in the zones by ensuring the creating of additional state in the region.



The Guardian