Senator Victor Umeh weeps over projects abandoned, says it's frustrating

Over 50 water-related projects in Anambra State, facilitated by federal lawmakers as constituency projects, have either been abandoned or have not even started years after funds were released by the government, investigations by Udeme have revealed.

The projects, under the supervision of the Anambra-Imo River Basin Development Authority (AIRDBA), were nominated by the lawmakers between 2017 and 2019. In 2019, Udeme had also found a number of projects under the supervision of the same agency in similar conditions in Abia State.

In Nigeria, contaminated water leads to diseases such as diarrhoea, which annually kills more than 70,000 children below the age of five, according to UNICEF.

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Millions of naira spent annually by the government have failed to provide safe drinking water for many Nigerians.

PREMIUM TIMES’s partner organisation, UDEME, has examined Zonal Intervention Projects from 2015 to 2019, and has found that about 99 projects worth over N5 billion in Anambra State were either abandoned, poorly executed or not executed at all by AIRDBA. Twenty-seven of those projects are water-related.

The projects include the construction of solar-powered boreholes, rehabilitation of classrooms, erosion control, and supply of beverages, among other projects.

Searching for water

Most communities visited by UDEME have difficulty in accessing potable water. They get water from rivers, buy from water tankers or from neighbours who have boreholes in their homes.

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This reporter set out to locate an N8 million solar-powered borehole with an overhead tank nominated for construction in 2018 for Urum community in Awka North Local Government Area of Anambra. The project was facilitated by Victor Umeh, the senator representing the area in the National Assembly.