The Anambra State Government has reacted to the alleged budget padding of the revised 2022 budget which is currently before the Anambra State House Of Assembly waiting to be passed into law.
An official statement from the government released to this effect which was signed by the Chief Press Secretary to the Governor Mr Christian Aburime and reads as follows;
The misinformation in the referenced article above should evoke pity for the purveyors in the light of the manifest ignorance boldly couriered in every paragraph of the hasty piece of distraction. Bad as it is, no credible reporter has signed this off, establishing it for what it is; lazy propaganda!
For clarity, it is important we state that we are not oblivious of the diversionary antics of;
- Those whose lucrative criminal enterprise is smoked out by our renewed fight against all forms of criminality in the State, housed in various camps and bushes perpetrating heinous crimes.
- Those whose source of livelihood is government money and patronage as a result of free oil money which sadly has stopped coming given the paucity of revenues coming from Abuja. Currently, to even fund infrastructural development we would of course have to borrow until our internally generated revenue (IGR) is gotten to a point where we meet these obligations. In doing this, we owe it as a duty to ndị Anambra to ensure that every penny of our borrowed funds is accounted for, and deployed to building quality infrastructure, and not for consumption.
We are moving to the next stage of making Anambra state a livable and prosperous smart mega city by confronting head-on the infrastructural decay in our beloved state. The road infrastructure in our state is in such deplorable situation that the Solution Governor has declared a state of emergency on the road infrastructure with an unprecedented budget allocation of about 64% percent of the capital budget and an ambitious target of flagging off at least 220km of roads as soon as the rains abate; with this ambitious programme and knowing fully, that failure does not exist in our determined minds, the detractors are at loss and are raising the battle cry with the sole aim of trying to scuttle our determination with all manners of blackmail.
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They claimed that the commissioner for works refused to appear before the state Assembly to defend the budget. This again is the figment of the imagination of the unknown writers with the intent of creating rancor between the executive and the members of the house of Assembly. The commissioner for works and infrastructure was, indeed, the first Commissioner to appear before the house committee on the first day of the budget defense being 29th of June, 2022 at about 10.00AM.
On the cost of road per kilometer, it is funny that the “Unknown Writer” like his counterpart, the “unknown gunmen”, is using propaganda and deceit to hoodwink the unsuspecting public. How do you start talking about the cost of contract for roads currently designed and contract not awarded? Very funny!Of course people always judge others by their own standards.
Since the “unknown writer” made dubious comparisons to previous administrations, it is important that we place on record for the purposes of Ndi Anambra who employed us and to whom we are accountable, that the previous administrations awarded roads with the cost per kilometer varying from above One billion Naira per kilometer to a little over Two Hundred Million Naira per kilometer when diesel was about One Hundred and Twenty naira (N120) per liter and asphalt was about Eighteen thousand Naira (N18,000) per ton. Of course, cost per kilometer depends on several factors including the topography, soil texture, design, stone base or just on laterite, overall quality etc.
