A rights group, Human Right, Liberty Access and Peace Defenders Foundation (HURIDE) has called on South East governors to set up budget portals to enable the citizens assess and monitor fully the implementation of budgets in their respective states.
Chairman, Board of Trustees (BoT) of the group, Dede Uzor Uzor, who said this on Friday in Onitsha, regretted abysmal performance and poor implementation of budgets in the zone.
He attributed the ugly trend to the prevalent poor governance culture in the zone, vowing that the group would soon expose them.
He said, “There has been consistent poor implementation of budget in the zone to the extent that many projects were rolled over to the next budget for several years with full budgetary provision in each of those years.
“Apart from Ebonyi State under Governor David Umahi that tried to implement its budget up to 50 percent, all other South East States of Abia, Anambra, Imo and Enugu hardly go beyond 30 percent implementation of their budgetary provisions.
“This is the principal reason for infrastructural deficit and decay in the region especially road networks.”
While citing the instance of the 2018 budget of Anambra State, which provided N40m for staff quarters at the State Polytechnic, Mgbakwu, Uzor regretted that the project was yet to take off.
“There was another provision of N167m for the procurement of tractors for the Agricultural School of Vocational Training, Okija in Ihiala local government area of the state, but as at November 2019, the tractors have not been procured.
“The same thing is applicable in all other South East States of Enugu, Abia an Imo. Apart from Ebonyi, others merely achieve between 20 and 30 percent of their budgetary provisions with Imo State under Rochas Okorocha being the worst,” he added.
Uzor maintained that the budget portals, if created by respective governments of the South East, would assist citizens’ asses and monitor government full implementation of budget.