The Governor of Imo State, Senator Hope Uzodimma has sought the urgent intervention of the United Nations (UN) to deal with the biggest security threats from ecological disaster which is flooding and gully erosion, saying they have ravaged different parts of the State.
Governor Uzodimma made the appeal when the Deputy Secretary General of the United Nations, Amina Mohammed, visited the Nigeria Governor’s Forum Secretariat at Abuja as part of her tour to some countries in West Africa.
Governor Uzodimma pointed out that his administration cannot tackle the menace alone due to the decline in revenue, both from the Federal and State Governments, occasioned by the devastating effect of COVID-19.
He said the time for the UN to come to the aid of the state is now, particularly as the rainy season is fast receding so that some remediation jobs could be carried out.
Responding, Mohammed regretted the devastating effect of ecological problems in Imo State in particular and the country in general and promised to use her capacity to alleviate the suffering of the Nigeria populace.
Earlier in his address, the Governor of Ekiti State who is also the Chairman of the Nigeria Governor’s Forum (NGF), Dr. John Kayode Fayemi enumerated the effects of COVID-19 pandemic which started in Nigeria in March, 2020 with over 64,000 confirmed cases and over 1,000 deaths.
Fayemi further highlighted some of the untold hardship the pandemic brought to the citizens to include lockdown, loss of jobs, youth restiveness (#End SARs Protest), high cost of living, short fall on prizes of oil and revenue, sexual violence and also increase in the school dropout.
He pointed out some of the measures the Governors put in place in collaboration with the Federal Government to curb the spread of the pandemic and to ameliorate its effect on Nigerians and sought for UN intervention in the area of releasing fund and all other necessary help to the Nigeria Centre for Disease Control (NCDC), National Emergency Management Agency (NEMA), Presidential Task Force (PTF) etc. to educate Nigerians on how to further contain the spread of the disease.
Other areas he sought for intervention include: engaging youths in governance, 10 percent of the 2020 budget for the COVID-19 expenditure, waiver to some individuals and companies, provision of palliatives and granting of soft loans.
