Joe Effiong, Uyo
The Forum of Civil Societies Organisation (CSO) has demanded that the Akwa Ibom State government publicly show a breakdown of how it spent N3 billion to tackle COVID-19 pandemic.
Governor Udom Emmanuel during a recent update on COVID-19 had announced that the government had invested about N3 billion to contain the spread of the pandemic in the state.
Chairman, Forum of CSOs in the state, Harry Udoh, yesterday, said there was the need for the government to explain in details how it spent such a huge sum of money when only 1,103 persons were tested for the disease in the state.
He said since the state government had testified to having received monetary and material donations from individuals and corporate organisations, it was expedient for the people to know if the N3 billion was part of the donations received, especially as the 2020 budget did not capture the COVID-19 expenses, and even had to be slashed because of the economic down-turn owing to the pandemic.
“We need to know exactly where the N3 billion was channeled to. Giving us figures like that, doesn’t help the case. We need to know the things that gulped the N3 billion. Was it on the building of the treatment centre at Uruan. Did they buy drugs with that money? Was it on laboratory tests? We are aware that testing costs between N30,000 to N40,000 as we learnt in other states. If you are spending public funds, you should be able to make the account public.
“It is after the breakdown that we will be able to say, you couldn’t have spent this on that etc. Until that is done we won’t be able to say much. So that we know what the recurrent expenditure is; don’t forget that the same day he made that statement, he announced the increment of health workers salaries and allowances. So we want to know if it is part of the N3 billion. You know this is extraneous expenditure, because it wasn’t something that was envisaged when the 2020 budget was put together, no one envisaged COVID-19.”