Nnamani justifies priority on rural access
February 23, 2007

Governor Nnamani, who was represented by the Secretary to the State Government, Dr. Dan Shere, promised to collaborate with the World Bank team, and other development
partners, to open up the rural areas of the State and provide the basic needs of life to that sector of the society where the majority of the people reside.

According to the Governor, "we believe that we will continue, by God's Grace, to collaborate with all, especially the World Bank and other development partners in making life worth living for our people in the rural areas", he said.

The Governor used the occasion to thank the World Bank for its contributions towards the success so far recorded in the state's poverty reduction strategy and other reform programmes and expressed the hope that the present rural access roads and mobility projects would help consolidate the gains recorded by the bank in the state.

"We cannot really thank you enough for all we have done together and we promise that Enugu State Government will keep to that commitment, will keep to this rather symbiotic relationship between the World Bank and ourselves in other to make life better for our people", the Governor said.

He pointed out that since assumption of office, his administration had always believed in people-oriented projects since the basic unit of every polity is the people, the grass roots and women and children.

In his words, "for the past eight years, most of our programmes are rural based on the understanding that every politics is rural, is about persons. You do not play with the rural people, the basic unit of every polity is the people,
the grass roots, not the big men..."

The Governor announced that already government has provided rural map of the state, office accommodation, project staff and equipment and ready to do more for the take off of the road rehabilitation project.

In his speech, the leader of the team, Mr. Ben Gericke told the Governor that their mission was to visit rural communities in parts of the state with a view to finding out what their real needs are in terms of rural roads.

According to him, "I just want to thank Your Excellency through your State Government, especially the Ministry of Works and Transport for a very good work in terms of Rural Axis and Mobility projects. We are thinking of this project as trying to provide greater movement between the community themselves, their farms and their markets", he said.

Mr. Gericke explained that the project which will take off next year (2008) will be in two phases, first, road rehabilitation and construction, and secondly, construction of bridges and culverts.

He disclosed that while in the state they inspected many rural roads that needed rehabilitation, adding that in a matter of weeks a team of World Bank consultants will be . visiting the State to assess these roads with a view to liaisoning with the State Government for the commencement of work.

According to him, "yesterday we were taken on a wonderful mission through the southern and western parts of the state... I also saw that there are many kilometers of these roads in Enugu State, I use this mission as an opportunity to see what the real needs of the people are", he said.

He noted with satisfaction the level of development in the state and thanked the Governor for his commitment to those projects and appealed to him for continued support to see to the success of the road maintenance project.