The World Bank-sponsored Ideato Erosion Project was abandoned, according to Senator Samuel Anyanwu, the National Secretary of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) and the party’s candidate for governor in the 2023 Imo election under the leadership of Hope Uzodinma of the All Progressives Congress (APC).
Through Ikenna Onuoha, his Special Media Adviser, the PDP national scribe made hints that the project’s termination was due to the World Bank’s purported refusal to permit the Imo State Government to oversee it and pay a N500 million counterpart fund.
Anyanwu made the claim in response to the environmental risks caused by erosion, which has isolated numerous towns and slowed down socioeconomic development in the region.
He accused the administration of Uzodinma of willfully permitting the erosion threat in Ideato North and South LGAs to continue destroying Imo citizens’ property after the government purportedly disregarded the terms of the World Bank contract.
Anyanwu claimed that an administration that is proactive does not require support from the public in order to carry out its constitutional duties, but that in the instance of the APC Imo State Government, these duties have been minimized in favor of personal benefit.
“The APC administration in the state is insensitive, non-proactive, and irresponsive to the yearning of the people.
“A situation where the people of Ideato nation and other parts of the State find it difficult to access the State capital on a motorable road despite huge resources available to the government is most unwholesome, pathetic and injurious to the fortune of the state,” he stated.
The media advisor went on to say that Uzodinma’s administration purportedly terminated a contract that had been started by earlier governments with the World Bank to address the erosion threat in Ideato, calling this debasing.
“The question is; if this government could treat the masses this way, what other dividends of democracy will Uzodinma’s administration offer to Imo people after displaying high level of ignominy, slur, infamy, intense dislike and utter abandonment of a N10 billion erosion control project in Urualla?
“It is regrettable to posit that if Uzodinma’s APC-led administration had allowed this project to continue, the issue of the devastating erosion menace in Ideato North and South LGAs would have been tackled,” he added.
