By Ummi Ismaeel,
Minna
Twenty nine states, including Niger State and the Federal Capital Territory (FCT), Abuja are drawing from the World Bank’s $140 million grant targeted at improving the living conditions of the ‘poorest of the poor’ in Nigeria.
Among the criteria before being considered for the grant also include, the level of existing infrastructure in the communities within each participating states as determined by certain indices provided by the World Bank.
The states are also to provide details of the number of educational institutions, health facilities, roads and number of pupils enrolled in each of the existing facilities while benefiting states are also expected to counter-fund the programmes with N50 million yearly.
The General Manager, Niger State Community and Social Development Agency, Malam Ahmed Yussuf Usman, disclosed this while briefing newsmen in Minna on Tuesday.
He said that the first phase of the programme would end next year.
Usman, however, said the World Bank had given assurance that the scheme would be extended for another five years ‘because of its positive impact on the participating communities and ability to reduce the level of poverty among the people to the barest minimal’.
Niger State government had the potential to draw N1.2 billion, Usman said, adding that the government had so far collected N778 million in addition to counter-funding the project with N150 million in the last three years.
Usman further explained that, 120 micro projects had been executed in 20 local governments participating in the scheme and some of the projects executed included; sinking of boreholes, provision of electricity, construction of schools, empowerment of women and building the capacities of junior and senior staff of local government councils.
The general manager however said that the execution of 48 micro projects approved by the agency for the first quarter of the year had not started but gave assurance that the projects would start before the end of the year.
On the poverty situation since the inception of programme, Usman said that Agwara and Rijau were identified as the ‘poorest’ while ‘the urban local government of Chanchaga, Bida, Kontagora, Lapai and Suleja were rated as the richest out of the 25 local government areas in Niger State.
Usman, who enumerated some of the major challenges facing the agency to include, ‘how to meet the huge number of requests from communities’, said, ‘as at today we have more than 1, 000 requests but we are treating them on first come, first served basis’.
