Inyali Peter|30 September 2016
In what can be best described as an utter wickedness and greediness on the side of Cross River State Governor, Senator Ben Ayade, the state is set to loose about $30 million world bank funded Commercial Agriculture Development Project (CADP).
This is as a result of the governor's refusal to sign the CADP list of successful candidates for training of the last set of people in the current agreement simply because all his candidates who predominantly are his family members failed to make it at the interview stage.
It is so unfortunate that this is happening after the panel had awarded more slots to Obudu, Ayade's local government to accommodate some of the names from government house in the list.
CADP is a fully funded world bank program aimed at improving Agriculture produce in Nigeria by commercialization of production, processing and marketing outputs among small and media-scale commercial farmers and Agro-Processors.
The program is a five years renewable investment program which has been running in Nigeria since 2009. Cross River became one of the states to benefit from the project in 2011 and the agreement for the current tranche is set to expire by December this year.
As a state which pride itself as investors destination in Nigeria, one would have expected the self acclaimed " digital " governor to do everything within his powers to renew the agreement. But unfortunately, the lack of vision and foresight characterized in the Ayade's administration is likely to deny the state opportunity for renewal.
Part of the agreement is that funds released for states must be exhausted within the period of the agreement to be qualified to bid for renewal. And in situations where the funds are not used, World Bank who still have direct control of the account domiciled in the Central Bank of Nigeria will retrieve the money and block every opportunity of possible renewal.
Early this year, thousands of Cross Riverians mostly youths and women who are the major target in the program applied for different value chains to include, Cocoa, Oil Palm and Poultry available in the program for the state. Qualified candidates were invited for interview and six hundred people were selected to participate in the training for their respective value chains.
After training, the world bank would disburse funds in the form of grants and also provide equipments for them to start up their own businesses.
This batch was supposed to be the last for the current agreement so it was panned to be a fast process to avoid the sponsor (world bank) retrieving what is left in the state CADP account operated by the Central Bank of Nigeria.
The process was going on smoothly until the list of successful candidates was sent to the governor for his approval which is part of the requirement for world bank to disburse funds for the successful candidates.
The Governor in his usual egocentric and self-centered manner declined from signing the list for a simple reason that all his candidates who are mostly his family members and political appointees were not in the list.
Several attempts to convince the governor to give the approval has heat the rock as he has vowed to rather have world bank retrieve the money and block the state from possible renewal than sign a list that doesn't contain all his interest.
How the governor has consistently put his personal interest ahead of the overriding public is what has left the applicants and Cross Riverians wondering.
With the increasing unemployment rate across the country, governments at all levels need to be proactive and responsive to issues of public interest such as this. This project would have instantly created about six hundred jobs for Cross Riverians.
The state was selected among Kaduna, Lagos, Kano and Enugu in the first place because it is believed that Agriculture employs about 80 percent of the state labour and contribute highly to the Gross Domestic Product (GDP). But that was in past and not Ayade's administrations which has killed virtually all the programs in the agriculture sector.
The state cocoa estate in Etung local government area has been hijacked by Calabar based politicians and Ayade aides who know little or nothing about cocoa farming. Cocoa farmers are crying that they have lost a full year farming season owing to the disagreement with government over the allocation process.
And now, Ayade has not only damaged the opportunity for the state to engage young jobless graduates but has also greedily terminated an agreement that other states are seriously struggling for.
While the other four states are in serious negation on how to renew the deal, Ayade is thinking of how to monopolise the whole system for his family members at the detriment of the public.
Democracy is generally referred to as "Government of the people, by the people and for the people" not government of the family, by the family and for the family. This is the best time for all well meaning Cross Riverians to rise against this wickedness melted on our jobless graduates by a betrayal of public trust-Ayade.
As the federal government is working round the clock to diversify the economy, Cross River state can place herself as a key partner for the development by running a transparent CADP. Cross River state belongs to all of us not a particular family. The governor's family is a part of Cross River, not the entire Cross River.
In this era of no tolerance for corruption, Ayade must come clean from the many fraudulent allegations hanging on his neck especially as it concerns the development of agriculture in the state.
Inyali Peter
Writes from Calabar
