* To hire consultant for permanent, sustainable solutions to Ogun floods
By Nudoiba Ojen
Ogun State Governor, Prince Dapo Abiodun, has said that he will personally review the State’s Social Register to ensure fairness and inclusiveness.
Abiodun lauded President Bola Tinubu for the laudable intervention programmes put in place to cushion the effects of the subsidy removal and the ones meant for the state.
The governor spoke when he received the Minister of Humanitarian Affairs and Poverty Alleviation, Dr Betta Edu, who paid him a courtesy call in his office at Oke-Mosan Abeokuta.
He said, “I have set up an expanded Committee under the Ministry of Budget and Planning and I have also expanded the participation to ensure that it is an inter-ministerial team working alongside Council Chairmen, religious bodies, to look at the list and ensure an inclusiveness and that it is the true representative of those that are in need.
“Soon the list will be ready, and the state will join the comity of states that are enjoying the programmes,” Abiodun submitted.
Abiodun also spoke of an urgent need to engage a consultant to conduct proper study and come up with holistic plan that could lead to permanent and sustainable solutions to flooding problem in parts of the state.
Abiodun said that adequate dredging and channelisation of the Ogun River would go a long way in curbing the perennial flooding of Isheri and its environs.
The governor, who described this year’s flooding in the Isheri axis as the worse in recent times, said that it had affected the people’s commercial and social lives as residents now take refuge in camps of various religious bodies across the State.
Abiodun said that though the area was flood plain, successive governments allocated the land for development purposes, saying the immediate concern of his administration was to look at the remote causes and the interventions that could be deployed to bring relief to the residents as government could not embark on demolition exercise as there are warehouses, different estates, businesses and schools in the axis.
Speaking earlier, Edu said the Federal Government was considering the construction of buffer dams to control flooding around communities abutting the Ogun River.
The minister said she and her counterpart in the Ministry of Water Resources and Sanitation had discussed the issue at the last Federal Executive Council meeting on the need to have dams that would act as buffer to prevent further flooding in the axis.
She also hinted of the Federal Government’s plan to take 50 million Nigerians out of poverty in the next 42 months and get every single person in the country out of poverty line by the year 2030 in line with the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).
Edu said she was in Ogun State to assess how the Federal Government could provide immediate succour in terms of relief to the people affected by the recent flooding in the state.
The minister noted that the President Bola Tinubu government had put in place various programmes to meet the objectives it had set for itself in eradicating poverty in the country.
She also said she was in the state to have the sign off of Ogun State Social Register, which fits into the National Social Register so that people in Ogun State could begin to receive the N25,000 Conditional Cash Transfer which has already started in other states of the Federation.
“Beyond this, we have carefully mapped out immediate interventions that will be carried out in Ogun State. Some are designed specifically for the state, like the Adire fabric scheme, with which we want to support women to produce the Adire. We also have the GIP programme, which is the market and traders, as well as the farmers’ money.
“We have the End-Hunger Programme, which will be started almost immediately. The State’s sensitization team would engage with the communities, market women, and the state government so that we can have a smooth flow of the interventions,” she said.
Edu said the Federal Government is also working with the state government to provide grants for the vulnerable women to set up their own businesses, adding that the GIP programme which is a zero interest loan to the vulnerable, is aimed at supporting the already existing programme being implemented in the State.
