The Governor of Ebonyi State, Engr. David Nweze Umahi, has signed the 2017 appropriation bill of N127,233,074,799 and the state Public Procurement and Related Matters Amendment Bill into law.

While performing the ceremony at the Government House, Abakaliki, Umahi said that much was expected to come from his administration’s agricultural programme.

He consequently directed key officers in agriculture to structure the sector in such a way that it would generate very high revenue for the state.

Umahi stressed that hard work was needed in addition to prayers and faith to achieve the best result.

The Governor said: “If you check, you will find out that we have a lot of budget coming from our agricultural programme and that’s why I said to the Commissioner for Agriculture and the Secretary to the State Government and Senior Special Adviser, Rice Production that we must have to structure our agricultural sector so as to make money.

“Fasting and prayer will not achieve this budget alone. It has to be a combination of our faith, our honest approach to governance, very hard work and then fasting and prayers.”

Umahi identified abandoned projects and poor quality works as things hindering the growth of the state and disclosed that the amendment law would ensure that projects were executed according to specification.

“One of the factors setting us backwards as a state is the issue of abandoned projects and poor quality works in our state and there is no way this state can develop and move forward if we continue to do poor quality work,” the governor said in a statement on Friday by his spokesman, Emma Anya.

“The amendment law is to put our contractors on check. Never again will some take our money and vanish into thin air,” he added.

The Governor emphasised that the road projects being executed by his administration were stone- based, adding that the aim was to make the roads last for a long time.

He said: “Virtually all the roads that were done in the past four years are being reworked but good enough, we are using stone-base no matter the size of the road. Not only stone-base, we are doing very wonderful work. We are working to please God and to lay an irreversible foundation for the growth of this state.”

The Governor used the opportunity to commend the House of Assembly members for their observation on the poor performance of members of Internal Revenue Board but promised to reassign them.

Umahi said: “We thank you for your observation regarding the Board of Internal Revenue because we understand that the key factor of rating any state is the IGR it has. That’s why I thank the House of Assembly for its observation and advise. I think we were also disturbed about the performances of the board members and we feel we need to inject younger persons into the board and reassign the members.”

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