By Nahum Sule (Taraba State Correspondent, in Jalingo)
The Taraba state government under the leadership of Arc. Darius Dickson Ishaku, has warned state politicians who represent the people at the federal level to desist from using government intervention project as personal effort for election gain.
In a press briefing on Monday in Jalingo, the state capital, the commissioner for Budget and Planning, Mr. Solomon Elisha, said the state government is worried because certain political players representing Taraba South have cornered the sovereign wealth of citizens and conceptualised a federal government project to become theirs.
Elisha who highlighted that federal government projects which are worth over N916 million such as the supply of sewing machine to central senatorial district, grants to assist youths/widows in entrepreneurship; construction of Mararaba-Donga community hall; purchase of three 18-seaters Toyota buses; rehabilitation of traditional council secretariat etc, are now seen as individuals projects.
According to him, "It has been observed that certain zonal intervention projects and consolidated capital projects are seen by many Tarabans as individual projects rather than Federal Government Constituency projects that they truly are.
"The conceptualisation of government projects interventions as individual efforts has become worrisome because the players are our supposed representatives who have cornered our sovereign wealth to become theirs.
"The big question agitating our minds that the little space given them at the constituency level has been mortgaged, is: how can we now or in the future aggregate our collective mandate for such representatives to lead us or provide leadership at the state level?", he queried.
Elisha further stressed that other worrisome issues includes votes of some federal agencies which are claimed to be implemented in the state. He added that such projects have no colloration at all and that they are monumental fraud. NNL
