Fayemi doles out N300m to 82 communities

A total 82 communities in Ekiti State on Thursday got cheques totaling N300 million to undertake various community projects under the Self-Help Programme of the state government.
Presenting the cheques to the various benefiting communities in Oye-Ekiti, the state Governor, Dr. Kayode Fayemi, said the gesture was in fulfillment of the resolutions reached with community leaders in the state during the stakeholders’ meetings held last year.
Fayemi added that the self-help project is in line with the government’s commitment to doing development with the people.
Representatives of the benefitting communities as well as their traditional rulers were in joyful mood as they filed out to receive their checks.
Many of the towns unions defied the early morning rainfall, came out in full traditional regalia and masquerades, which turned the ceremony into a carnival.
Fayemi, who personally presented the cheques, assisted by the National Chairman of the Action Congress of Nigeria, Chief Bisi Akande, and a former Governor of the state, Otunba Niyi Adebayo, said the communities had at the meetings submitted their priority self-help projects for grants assistance and were getting the N300 million grant for the completion of various ongoing, abandoned and uncompleted self-help projects as well as provision of boreholes, access culverts among others in the benefiting communities.
He assured the people of the state that every community, no matter the population, will benefit from the grants-in-aid programme of the administration before the end of the year.
He said the Ministry of Rural development and Community Empowerment was specifically created to focus on development in the rural areas.
Fayemi said: “As part of the efforts of the present administration to bring development to the rural communities where over 75 per cent of the populace reside, the Ministry of Rural Development and Community Empowerment was created in January, 2013.
“Unlike the previous administration, all the stakeholders in the state were fully involved in the preparation of the year 2013 budget, and we have adopted the zero budgeting method as is currently being practised all over the world.
“The opinions of all the various strata/segments of the people in the state were sought before the 2013 budget was prepared using a dynamic bottom-up approach.”