Civil Liberties organisation, CLO, Rivers State branch, has called on the state governor Rt Hon Chibuike Rotimi Amaechi, to order a probe of the Commissioner for Agriculture Emma Chinda, over a N100 counterpart fund on World Bank projects for 2013, which it claimed the Commissioner had allegedly embezzled.
In an open letter to governor Amaechi, signed by its Director of Publicity and Research, Livingstone Wechie, released in Port Harcourt, yesterday and made available to Nigerian Pilot, the organization alleged that the commissioner allegedly converted the N100m to himself and, failed to remit to FADAMA and the International Fund for Agricultural Development, IFAD projects, the sum of N50m each.
Expressing dismay, the group regretted, ”Chinda has failed to remit to FADAMA and IFAD the sum of N50m each, even after the Accountant-General of the State had in a written instruction dated March 31, authorized Zenith Bank Plc to pay the Ministry of Agriculture in Rivers State the sum of N100m for onward remittance to IFAD and FADAMA accounts respectively, for the benefit of Rivers people in the agricultural project”.
“We have been monitoring some activities of MDA’s in Rivers State and the ministry of agric in particular. We feel that the commissioner of agriculture, along with his co-travelers in some of the MDA’s are hell bent on running down Rivers State possibly without the knowledge of the governor, who has made several promises to Rivers people. It follows that if the governor fails to act now, Emma Chinda and his co-conspirators will join in running down Rivers State”, it observed.
The Civil Society group also questioned the authenticity of claims by the Commissioner that he had expended monies on some projects as fish farms in Abonnema, Andoni and a Rice Meal project, which it alleged are “are neither found or functional or better put, existent anywhere”.