Actionaid Tasks Citizens On Poverty

from All Africa

Segun Awofadeji
Gombe

ActionAid Nigeria (AAN), an NGO committed to poverty eradication through various community-based initiatives has launched a framework for institutional change with a view to changing the psych, perspective and attitude of Nigerians towards public belongings.

The agenda tagged Coalition for Change (C4C) is geared towards the coalition of civil societies for monitoring and ensuring accountability and justifiable utilisation of the over U.S. $1billion under Virtual Poverty Fund (VPF) to be invested in Millennium Development Goals (MDG) projects in Nigeria.

Speaking at the launching of the project which attracted people and NGOs from all walks of life in Gombe state, the Country Director of ActionAid Nigeria, Dr. Otive Igbuzor said, as watchdogs, they would be obliged to ensure that the budgeted fund made the real impact on the lives of the targeted beneficiaries.

According to him, the poor and vulnerable that constituted over 50.4 per cent of the country's population that go to bed on empty stomach, the 10.4 million of school-age children that could not go to school because of poverty, people living with HIV/AIDS but have no access to Anti-Retroviral drugs, high infant mortality rate from preventable diseases and the over 800 out of 100,000 women who die annually from pregnancy related complication due to inadequate obstetric services must be provided with an equal opportunities which the coalition is determined to institutionalise.

Igbuzor added that ActionAid Nigeria was concerned in active partnership with Nigerians from all works of life for fighting against corruption, lack of probity in the award of governments' contracts and abandonment of projects littering in the country as well as non-involvement of the people in development process.

The Director explained that, "the monitoring of the VPF otherwise called debt relief gains was not the only primary responsibilities of the coalition but also the entire Nigerians' to aid in attainment of the MDGs goals".

He stressed that, Action Aid Nigeria was concerned in active partnership for fighting against corruption, lack of probity in the award of government's contracts and abandonment of projects littering in the country and non-involvement of the people in development process.

In his speech, the Secretary to the State Government (SSG), Alhaji Abubakar Sule Bage, said Gombe State had more reasons than most states in the country to welcome the new initiatives in developments, saying "the state is relatively young and therefore, has a larger appetite for development".

Bage stressed that; it was for this reason that the state was pleased with the initiative by the Coalitions for Change and its members and working hard for the even development in the state.

He challenged civil society organisations that partner in the C4C project to provide honest, constructive and timely feedbacks on the range of interventions funded under the debt relief initiatives which the ActionAid is determined to ensure.