Complaints of yet-to-be-mended broken bridges, displaced communities, truncated education, lost livelihoods, and so on, became rife around Adamawa State on Monday, November 13, when members of the management board of North East Development Commission (NEDC) visited the state.
The host governor, Ahmadu Fintiri, talking in particular about bridges along federal roads destroyed by the Boko Haram insurgents, told the NEDC that his people in communities served by the destroyed bridges were still cut off from people and places they hitherto related with.
The governor, addressing the members of the board who were on a tour of projects being executed by the NEDC around the state, expressed regret about how a certain contractor failed to deliver the Wuro-Ngayadi bridge project along the Michika-Madagali highway in the northern part of the state after dragging the contract for years.
Fintiri said: “We are still without bridges and roads leading to some of the local government areas that were damaged by the Boko Haram. The state is making its effort, the NEDC has tried building one bridge; they tried to do the second one through a criminal contractor which was not realized.”
The Nation recalls that three major bridges, located within Michika and Madagali local government areas and close to Adamawa’s borders with Borno State, were destroyed in 2014 when Boko Haram seized Michika, Madagali, and five other LGAs in Adamawa state.
The newly reconstituted management of the NEDC was led to Adamawa State by the board chairman, General Paul Tarfa (rtd), who told the governor that the NEDC was in the state both to inspect its ongoing projects and to acquaint new members of the board with the projects.
Tarfa, incidentally a citizen of Adamawa state, commended Governor Fintiri for the development projects that his government has executed for the people, saying the Commission was proud of him.
He said: “Our mandate is to cooperate with the dynamic steps you and other governors are taking to put in place what is necessary for the North East zone as we are recuperating from the insurgency.”
Some of the projects inspected in Adamawa State by the NEDC included the ongoing construction of a mega secondary school in Song, a Technical Training Centre rehabilitated by the commission in Jibiro, Girei LGA, and a new Emergency Complex at the Modibbo Adama University Teaching Hospital (MAUTH), Yola.
At the different project sites, the Managing Director of NEDC, Mohammed Alkali expressed satisfaction with the quality of work done.
It could be recalled that the new mega school in Song, designed to house classes and other facilities for primary and secondary sections, is one of three such projects in Adamawa State. The other three are located in Guyuk and Lamurde respectively.
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Each of the other five states of the North East has three mega schools, bringing the total number of schools to 18.
The NEDC sees the mega schools in Adamawa, Bauchi, Borno, Gombe, Taraba, and Yobe as its answer to the truncation of education by Boko Haram which destroyed many schools and left pupils and students in the cold.
The technical training centre in Jibiro which the NEDC renovated came as part of the training in skills and empowerment of youths and women which the commission has done in the state to address the issue of lost livelihoods caused by Boko Haram attacks.
Apart from the new Emergency Complex at the Modibbo Adama University Teaching Hospital in Yola which the NEDC is funding, the commission has earlier donated equipment to the hospital and intervened in other ways to improve health delivery which was affected by insurgency.
