The Spokesperson for the Ebonyi Civil Society Coalition, Charles Otu, has alleged that Ebonyi State lost a N37.8 billion World Bank governance grant after failing critical performance assessments, while claiming that more than 95 per cent of government contracts in the state are awarded to politically exposed persons rather than independent contractors.
Speaking in an interview with ARISE NEWS on Friday, Otu said the state’s poor performance in governance, fiscal responsibility, budget transparency, education and healthcare management prevented it from accessing the World Bank’s HOPE governance grant, warning that the lost funds would have strengthened critical sectors, including education and primary healthcare.
“In the key nine areas, Ebonyi scored weak, weak. And then it was only one area scored moderate. And for a state that is grappling with education, that is grappling with primary healthcare, what it means is that Mboye missed out on getting a total of 38 billion, 37 billion, 800 million Naira.”
He explained that the World Bank assessed Ebonyi across nine governance indicators, including public financial management. “We had a press conference, we detailed nine criteria, nine key areas the World Bank assessed. Number one was public financial management. Number two was education governance. Number three was public healthcare governance. And then there was also the issues of fiscal responsibility but a total of nine of them In the key nine areas, Mboye scored weak, weak. And then it was only one area scored moderate.”
Otu argued that the consequence of the state’s poor rating was the loss of resources that could have transformed education and healthcare infrastructure across Ebonyi. “The implication of this is that this money would have come on its own to help Mboye in critical sectors such as education, It was unable to improve its health sector, primary healthcare sector.”
He further alleged that politically exposed persons dominate the state’s procurement process. “Ebonyi is about the only state where politically exposed persons have more contracts than contractors that are unknown. And you can quote me because we have done our research and we found out that more than 95% of the contractors are actually politically exposed persons.”
Otu claimed that many of the companies awarded multi-billion-naira projects were newly incorporated and lacked the track record expected for such contracts. “These individuals register companies as late as some of them this year, some last year. A company, for instance, was registered in September 2023 and by February, just about five months after, the company was awarded contracts running to billions of Naira.”
He also questioned the implementation of a N6.02 billion school renovation programme.”6.02 billion Naira that was allocated for school renovations across the entire 13 local governments of the state. None of the projects have gotten to 50-60% completion. What you see are politically exposed people just taking these resources from the government.”
Otu accused the state government of failing to meet basic fiscal transparency obligations required under the World Bank’s governance framework. “The issue of publication of budgets, medium-term expenditure frameworks and fiscal documents, which are not made public, became concerning. In terms of budget performance, in 2023 particularly, Mboye never published its budget records. It never made it public. The medium-term expenditure framework was not published in 2024-2025.”
While acknowledging that Governor Francis Nwifuru’s administration had recorded some achievements, particularly in overseas scholarship programmes, Otu argued that. “The government has done well in the area of education. Some people have scholarships abroad. Kudos to him. But if you don’t take care of the proper foundation, which are the schools you saw you cannot assess a school that has a complete laboratory. Where are the modern schools across the 13 local government areas? Three years down the line, the government has not justified expenditures in these directions.”
He criticised the state’s budget implementation over the past three years, describing it as poor.
“The execution of the budget in the last three years has been most lacklustre.”
Responding to allegations that the coalition was politically sponsored, Otu rejected the claims saying. “The only concern we have is that whenever we tend to talk about government, government takes it up as politics, most of the information we sourced during the press conference came from the website of the state government.”
Calling on the Ebonyi State Government to engage the coalition on the issues raised, he said. “All we expected was a more modest and honest way of saying, look, we have looked at the issues, and there is another cycle coming, we will improve.”
Erizia Rubyjeana
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