NG-CARES: Kogi CSDA executes N150m micro projects in 9 communities

By Friday Idachaba, Lokoja.

KOGI State Community and Social Development Agency KGCSDA) has facilitated the execution of 21 micro projects worth N150 million in nine communities across the state under the Nigeria Covid-19 Action Recovery and Economic Stimulus (NG-CARES) Programme.

Chief Dauda Momoh, General Manager of the Agency disclosed this while presenting cheques of Project Retention Money to representatives of the nine communities that successfully completed their various micro projects.

Momoh while presenting the cheques at the Agency’s office in Lokoja on Thursday said that the projects were executed under the CSDA’s Community-Driven Development (CDD) initiative.

He said that the 21 intervention projects were in various sectors including Water, Education, Health and infrastructure among others.

“Like we said during the flag off of the projects, in this term, nine communities were considered with each of them having a total of N15 million in their portfolio for between two and three micro projects”, he said.

We have committed over N150 million on the community projects with part of the money expended on monitoring, training, logistics and all other things to facilitate execution of the projects.

Chief Dauda Momoh revealed that the Agency recently received the sum of N100 million from the State Government out of which N5.6 million was committed to payment of the Retention Money for all the communities that completely executed their projects to specification.

The General Manager said the Agency would soon flag-off approved micro projects for no fewer than 10 communities for intervention projects with direct bearing on the lives of the people in their various areas of need.

He commended representatives and members of the Community Projects Management Committees (CPMC) of benefiting communities receiving their Projects Retention Money for judicious application of their project funds in execution of the projects and urged them to sustain the performance.

“These projects are for the communities, they should own them, protect and preserve them as their own and with the Retention money we have given them, they should be able to keep the projects going.

“And like I told them, we will be coming to monitor them from time to time to check and if we found out that there are issues with the projects in any community, that community may not benefit further from the Agency.

“Right now we are still expecting the third Country Monitoring Team that will go around to see that all these project that we have executed in order. So, the communities need to keep the projects afloat”, he said.

Representatives of communities who spoke at the occasion commended Governor Yahaya Bello for providing CSDA the necessary impetus to function.

The communities include Abache, Adavi-eba, Angwa-Ogebe, Asanta, Bagido-Omowa, Ebogogo, Eika-ehizenyi, Ebokehi and Gboloko from the three Senatorial Districts of the State. (Ends)