N5bn committed to palliative scheme, free education – A’Ibom Gov

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N5bn committed to palliative scheme, free education – A’Ibom Gov

The Governor of Akwa Ibom State, Umo Eno, on Wednesday, said his administration had committed over N5bn to the palliative scheme in the state.

Éno disclosed this in his address to mark 100 days in office in Uyo, the state capital.

He explained that the government’s commitment to the scheme followed the distribution of additional bags of rice to each of the 2,272 villages, cash transfers to 53,000 workers for three months and levy-free Fridays for transporters for three months.

He said, “Distribution of additional bags of rice to each of the 2,272 gazetted villages, cash transfers to 53,000 workers in the state for three months, levy-free Fridays for transporters and traders for three months; all these have raised our contributions to the palliatives scheme to over N5bn.”

On agriculture, Eno said that the state government acquired over 50,000 hectares of land across the 31 local government councils of the state and also signed a Memorandum of Understanding with Songhai Farms to tackle food insecurity in the state

“To ignite our agricultural revolution in line with our ARISE Agenda, we have acquired over 50,000 hectares of land in all the 31 Local Government Areas, to ensure food security and to get our people involved in agro-allied enterprises.

“As a practical demonstration of this resolve, we recently signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with the world-renowned Songhai Farms to start a model farm in our state.

“We have already sent hundreds of our people for training so they could form the nucleus of the skilled workers to drive this exercise,” he said.

While stating that education remains free and compulsory at primary and secondary levels, the governor added that as part of the palliatives, his administration intends to support parents with uniforms, shoes and payments of bursaries to students

“Education remains free and compulsory at primary and secondary school levels and as part of the palliatives we are rolling out, based on the initial N2bn we received from the Federal Government, in the form of loan and rice, we intend to support parents with school uniforms, shoes and the payment of bursary to students in tertiary instructions after proper verifications.

“Our commitment to the payment of WAEC fees is irrevocable and we have already done so since we came in,” he assured.