Nwifuru working to ameliorate poverty in Ebonyi -Unwuekumenyi Youth

By Nkechinyere Ewa-Okpara

A social-cultural organization in Ebonyi State, Unwuekumenyi United Youth Forum, has called on Ebonyi people to disregard the report from the opposition, alleging that there is a high poverty level in the state.

The group noted that the state governor, Francis Nwifuru, has done so much to lift the state out of poverty, hence the reason he embarked on empowerment and employment of the citizens.

Unwuekumenyi United Youth Forum was reacting to a media statement credited to the 2023 PDP governorship candidate in the state, Chukwuma Odii.

The guber candidate, through a statement by his media spokesperson, Moses Idika, claimed a high poverty level in Ebonyi, that the state was owing an external debt of $92, 655,060.01 and a cumulative internal debt of over N170bn apart from various commitments to some other domestic financial institution.

But the group absolved Governor Nwifuru of any debt and promoting poverty, among others.

Uche Ega, the national president of the group, at a press briefing in Abakaliki, the state capital, said Nwifuru has never borrowed any loan since he came to power.

He further noted that the governor inherited internal and external debts from the past administration.

“The parameter for measuring poverty is varied and , be reduced to simple statistics. Poverty is in every land and a product of many factors, both man-made and natural, but what is most important is the effort of a leader to ameliorate these factors by tackling them from their roots. Governor Nwifuru has so far proven his mettle in this area.

“If the writer has been around, he should have known that under Nwifuru, business activities are speedily returning to the state as artisans and other specialized technicians hitherto sent indoors by strict operational rules are now flourishing. Governor Nwifuru, contrary to the release, has exempted all petty traders and micro businesses in the market from paying any form of tax. Just recently, the media was awash with the arrest of fake revenue agents extorting money from such traders. These extortioners are currently under prosecution to serve as a deterrent to others. “

On the alleged debt profile, the group said,
“Chief Odii failed to understand the fact that government is a continuum because if he had researched well, he would have realized that the loan statistics he quoted as emanating from the Debt Management Office, DMO was not pointing directly to this administration but an accumulation from previous administrations, which the Governor in his determination to make the state self-sufficient has significantly decimated within these few months in office.

” It is on record that as of March 31, 2024, Governor Nwifuru had already cut the state’s domestic debt down from N76.14 billion to N70.44 billion, down by N6.30 billion. Going by that, it is obvious that as it stands today, the domestic debt profile of the state has gone far below what the writer quoted. The same justifiably goes for the foreign loan profile.

“He should be reminded that the statistics he quoted through his paid agent, from DMO have remained a contentious one as the state government had earlier refuted the claim that Ebonyi was among the 17 states that borrowed $125.1m (#112.24 billion) from the World Bank and International Monetary Fund.

“These erroneously documented records have already cast doubt on the authenticity of the statistics quoted by this writer. Let us assure our beloved people of the state that the debt profile is a relative term, and the state’s debt profile is not as high as represented in the write-up.

“As it stands, Ebonyi State is still the least in both domestic and foreign debts among the South East states,” he said.

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