January 31, (THEWILL) – The Bayelsa State Chapter of the All Progressives Congress (APC), has once again called on the governor Douye Diri-led administration, to take appropriate measures to ensure that this year’s flood doesn’t affect the people of the state the way it did last year.
The state chairman of the party, Denis Otiotio, who spoke to the federated correspondents chapel members of Nigeria union of journalists in Yenagoa, on Tuesday, stated that the state movement should make hay while the sun shines, especially now that the relevant agencies have made the projection again that this year’s flood is going to be higher than that of last year.
Otiotio wondered why the prosperity government will appropriate a paltry sum of N2 billion or less to the ministry of environment and N4 billion to the ministry of works, arguing that the ministry of works has no work to do, as far as flood and erosion control is concerned.
On education, he knocked governor Douye Diri for his zero allocation to tertiary institutions in the state, adding that it is not how many institutions that matter, but the quality.
Oition said, “On flood, we knew that last year’s flood, the government was not prepared for it despite all the warnings. The warning came and the government didn’t do anything until the flood came and submerged all of us.
“Now the government should do something, they should start now because the federal government has warned, agencies have warned that this year’s flood is going to be bigger than last year’s flood.
“Now the ministry of environment is the appropriate organ to tackle flood and erosion problem because they have experts there who have gone to several trainings. They have the expertise and experience to handle flood and erosion, but do you know what the government did? The government just put a paltry 1 or 2 billion naira for flood and erosion in ministry of environment and then went to put another 4 billion naira in ministry of works and infrastructure for flood and erosion.
“What has the ministry of works got to do with flood and erosion? Why will the government put two budgets for flood and erosion control.
“Nobody is asking because none has taken time to look at that voluminous document. I challenge journalists to get a copy of that appropriation bill and study it and you will see that various anomalies are in the budget. There are several discrepancies in the budget.
“Now you see why the office of the S.A political has so much money appropriated to it, while critical infrastructures like our tertiary institutions have zero capital votes.
“In this year’s budget, Niger Delta university has zero capital votes, university of Africa has zero capital votes. College of education, Sabgama has zero Capital vote. Medical university has zero capital vote. No kobo was appropriated for those tertiary institutions and we say we are education-friendly state.
“And every day, we are establishing different tertiary institutions when we don’t have the capacity to fund them. Is it not wasting of our resources because it is not the number of tertiary institutions that matter, but the quality?
“Bayelsa state can just have one tertiary institution well-funded, well equipped and I tell you we can excel with that. What we just need is to have multiplicity of campuses”, he advised.
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