Ihedioha Meets Buhari To Seek Help On Infrastructure Development

The Governor of Imo State, Emeka Ihedioha, has met with President Muhammadu Buhari at the presidential villa, Abuja to seek his intervention in infrastructure development in the state.

Speaking to correspondents after the closed-door meeting on Monday, he said the President has assured him of his readiness to assist Imo despite being an opposition state.

The governor said if the various parties were able to work together in synergy, it would be to the benefit of the people.

He said: “We have significant federal roads in Imo, most of them are not receiving attention. So, it is important that we begin to rebuild the state in that manner.

“You won’t believe that in Imo there is nowhere that we have public water running. It is strange to believe but that is the fact. So, what do we do? We came in immediately we have tried to activate the water corporation so that we can get water.

“So, we need the Federal Government support in all facets of the economy. The government would need to support us in agriculture because the government we succeeded didn’t take advantage of government policies in agriculture.

“So, we are working towards the agricultural revolution to ensure that that becomes a source of revenue. So, we need federal government support in that regard. We need government support in education, we need government support in the area of healthcare, we need government support in the area of building institutions.”

Ihedioha revealed that his administration’s introduction of the Treasury Single Account (TSA), has restored fiscal discipline in the state.

The operation of the TSA followed the discovery of over 260 different Bank accounts operated by the immediate past government on behalf of the state.

He said: “What we did is that when I came in I found out to my shock that there were accounts in the number that was reported in the media, and of course, so many leakages and we were not as a state making significant progress from the IGR.

“The IGR base of the state was very weak and when the IGR base is weak without having a productive economy that obviously meant that we depended essentially from what came from federal allocation and of course other agencies being an oil-producing state.

“But most of the things were run in a peck of accountability and transparency like you may have found out in my state was something obviously in the breach of what it should be.

“It became necessary that we should find a way out and I set up a Financial Advisory Committee and Financial Advisory Committee recommended that in view of where we are and because of our decision to instil a regime of fiscal discipline and a regime of transparency and accountability and of course to reduce the level of corruption in the state, we had to introduce the Treasury Single Account, TSA, which is not very ideal in many places.

“But for us, we felt we needed to start anew, we needed to confront the issues and begin to reposition our state as a state that will be alive to the demands expected of us by our people.

“When the electorate voted us in, they believed in our ability to come and transform the state, to reign in a regime of transparency and accountability. That is what we are trying to do. So, we have done that.

“But apart from that, we are strengthening the Bureau for Public Procurement in the state. If you check through the what is the ranking in ease of doing business, Imo finished 34th out of 37 and in several ways we have been lagging behind, we have fallen back, deteriorated from where we used to be. Ours used to be a very civilized state

“So, we have a duty and conviction that we need to take it to that level. So, we have taken steps, closing the gap and we have enjoined the MDAs to work with the authorities to ensure that we can have an account to have a more accountable system of running the affairs of the state.”