Ebonyi indigenes decry debt profile under Umahi: Threaten to petition EFCC

The Association of Ebonyi State Indigenes in the Diaspora (AESID) has expressed concern over what it called rising debt profile of the South-East state under Governor Dave Umahi.

President of the AESID, Ambassador Paschal Oluchukwu, who in a statement put the estimate of local debt under the present All Progressives Congress administration in the state at N42 Billion decried the approval of N10 billion for the Governor Umahi administration by the State House of Assembly “for the purposes of completion of numerous ongoing infrastructural projects in the state.”

AESID which noted that the state can only point at lean resources said every legal steps would be taken to halt further loan request and approval by the state government while it urged the nation anti-corruption agency, the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission to beam its searchlight on the south east state.

“We at AESID urges the EFCC and good spirited Nigerians to please wade in to halt these deliberate and calculated stealing of our lean resources by a government that has made hunger and starvation of the masses it’s official policy.

“AESID will take every necessary legal and remedial steps towards ensuring that the Umahi government does not further take the indigenes for granted by wasting the said plum sum when most families in Ebonyi cannot afford even a square meal due to the excruciatingly biting anthropogenic poverty and hardship foisted on it by the Umahi administration.”

“We are also aware of undisputed claims in certain quarters that Ebonyi State government under Umahi has unofficially been making borrowings from some commercial banks in the State without due process or even recourse to the lackeys in the State’s House of Assembly. Our foreign debt profile have also skyrocketed to a whooping about $64M US Dollars. This does not include the borrowing of $150M from the Islamic Bank for the State’s ring road project.

“For a government that inherited a near zero debt burden from his predecessor and has habitually been wasting public funds on non-economically viable or sensible projects, this latest desperation to make our poor Ebonyi a debt stock of the nation is highly condemnable and most unfortunate.

“We can conveniently bet that Umahi has in the course of his deceptive ego-driven, white elephant projects borrowed and lavished what the next government in the State could have borrowed for the next eight years. It is even most disturbing that such humongous borrowings does not translate to the establishment of even a sachet water factory that can generate a Kobo to the coffers our economically strangulated Ebonyi State.

“As though the unconscionable squandering of public funds on frivolities is not already enough, AESID read in the media very recently about plans by the Umahi administration to spend N600M of tax-payers money to celebrate its Seventh anniversary in office. For a government which took Ebonyi’s poverty index from about 64 percent to a whooping nearly 80% with the state now officially the poverty capital of the entire Southern Nigeria, Umahi should be ashamed of celebrating the near total debt extinction of the State’s economic life and prosperity.”