The government of Akwa Ibom State has condemned the destruction and stealing by some citizens in communities across the state of certain electrical components in transformers.
This added that such an act frustrated the government’s efforts to give social services to the communities.
The Special Adviser, Bureau for Rural Development and Cooperatives, Mrs. Ekemini Umoh who stated this on Friday during the 2019 International Day for community Development Celebration held in Uyo said such practice was anti-community development, urging those involved to stop in the spirit of the celebration.
The Special Adviser who announced the approval by Gov.Udom Emmanuel to link more communities to the National Grid tasked the communities on ensuring that projects and utilities sited in their areas by government are protected.
Umoh further announced that the state government has approved a 100-hectare Cooperative Agro-Park Initiative for communities to ensure food sufficiency.
Her words, “Gov. Emmanuel has succeeded in making Akwa Ibom state, a one community state through his inter-community road construction. Also Many of our communities host some industrial projects and we urge our people to protect such projects.
“It is regrettable that there exist some communities in the state that are fond of vandalising government projects, especially removal of vital electrical components from transformers.
“This practice, I must remark, is anti-community development and as such must be stopped in the spirit of this celebration.”
In his remarks, the General Manager, Akwa Ibom State Agency for Community and Social Development, Ishmael Akpan said the Agency, through the empowerment of state government, has so far funded live touching micro-projects in 151 communities across the state.
Akpan listed some of the executed projects to include: construction of health centres, motorized boreholes, classroom blocks, market stalls, civic centres, mini bridge/culvert, electrification and public toilets among others.
According to him, “CSDP has sustainably increased access of the poor to social and natural resource infrastructural services. CSDP adopts Community Driven Development (CDD) approach in which the community people have absolute control over their decision making in the identification of their felt-needs, planning, implementation, monitoring and evaluation of their micro-projects.
“This has been a key success factor in the ownership and sustainability of completed micro-projects which provide services to people.”
He, therefore, commended the World Bank for partnering the state under CSDP which in turns has positively touched the lives of Akwa Ibom people and prayed that the theme of this year’s celebration tagged, ‘Community development: A better tool for sustainable livelihood,’ would be fully achieved.
The guest lecturer, Prof. Nse Essien in his keynote address said available community development officers should be adequately trained to be able to adapt to challenges of current global changes in the environment.
He also called for multi-stakeholder cooperation including government officials, businesses, non-governmental organizations and community-based organizations for effective community development outcomes.
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