By Brave Dickson
The Civil Society Organisation in Rivers State has urged Governor Siminalayi Fubara to invest in human beings not roads and bridges like his immediate predecessor, Nyesom Wike.
The State CSO said this through its chairman, Enefa-a Georgewill in the wake of recent approval by the state lawmakers to allow Fubara borrow N200 billion to fund ring road project in Port Harcourt, the state capital.
Georgewill said: “The governor will have to work with fund. The question now is: Is there any fund for the governor to work with? If there is fund, then it is too early for the governor who is just less than 100 days in office to borrow a whopping sum of N200 billion.
“But if there are no funds for him to work with, then of course, he can not run government without money.
However, the reason for the borrowing shows that he wants to embark on an expensive project which means there is money but he needed additional money for the project.
“For us, we think he should have run the government with the existing budget and fix the ring road project in the next appropriation bill.
“Our position on this is that it is too early for the governor to start his tenure with borrowing especially with such a huge sum of money.
“Again, the previous administration embarked on several capital projects such as roads and bridges and we expect this current government to focus on human beings and production projects.
“We thought that the governor would have invested in low cost housing across the 23 Local Government Areas. If he borrows for such a mass housing project that will affect the lives of the people directly, that would have solved the housing deficit problem in the state.
“Another area the governor should have focused on is urban/rural migration. People are coming to stay in Port Harcourt because nothing is happening in other LGAs.
“Also, production companies are another area the governor would have put his interest in and invest so much in information technology and agriculture across the 23 LGAs.
“We also expect the governor, if at all he wants to borrow to invest heavily in electricity which would have automatically bring development and money to the state. Not to focus more on roads and bridges like Wike.”
