By Eval Asikong
The retreat, which started on Monday, being 19th, of September, 2016 at the Channel View Hotels, Calabar, is being hosted by the Cross River State Commissioner for International Develelopment Cooporation, Honourable Francis Ettah. The retreat concerns World Bank and European Union funded projects for State and Local Governance Reforms (SLOGOR).
The retreat is primarily purposed to foster good governance by mainstreaming inclusive growth in the implementation of the SLOGOR projects; create enabling environment for sustainable revenue generation in the SLOGOR states; learn from experiences of best practices in other similar projects and to explore various strategies for eliminating the bureaucratic barriers, seen as nuisance factor that confounds the implementation of SLOGOR projects.
One of the salient issues raised during the retreat was how to effect some adjustments, as it concerns SLOGOR project implementation mostly now that recession and BREXIT are trending global phenomena. Brexit is very critical to SLOGOR, since Britain was part of EU multilateral institution with donor and intervention priorities to frontier societies mostly at the southern pole. Therefore, the exit of Britain from the European Union, as a result of the June, 2016 referendum where 51.9 percent voted for Brexit, heralds a downturn in EU common purse which is likely to compound the effect of recession in the course of SLOGOR project implementation.
This is not going to be business, as usual. Therefore, the urgency for adjustment to cope with the current recession and future challenges becomes imperative for all the 6 SLOGOR states which are: Cross River, Osun, Kano, Jigawa, Anambra and Yobe. It is based on this that reviews from the various SLOGOR states were entertained so that past mistakes could be leveraged upon to do things correctly in the next six months, since the project will be winding-up in March, next year.
The Chief host, Hon. Francis Ettah, the Commissioner for International Development Corporation, in his remarks, revealed that the Governor of Cross River State, Prof Ben Ayade, had developed 50 initiatives from the SLOGOR action plan. So far so good, 25 projects have been mapped out to be executed in Cross River State. According to the Anambra State Coordinator, N6 billion naira draw-down has been made to the state within this SLOGOR phase about to wind-up.
However, Hon Francis Ettah emphasizes the need for viable implementation mechanism to be put in place by each state so that the desired results will be achieved to enable a state to be prequalified in accessing these donor funds by the next donor season. Mr Bassey Ebri Asuquo, the state SLOGOR Project Coordinator, played the co-host, while Mr Samuel Eloho, the Director of International Cooperation/National Project Coordinator of SLOGOR, anchored the event.
Join me on Thursday for real-time report on the grandfinale of the event.
Eval Asikong is the S.A. to the Governor on Social Media