Group urges EFCC to probe N162bn Adamawa skills-centre, hospital projects

By Patrick Andrew

A group, the Save Adamawa State Movement (SASM), wants the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) to probe the N162 billion the Adamawa state government said it has spent on the Skills Acquisition Centers and the German Specialist Hospital, in the state.

The group, which said the amount was doubtful, claimed the skills acquisition centres and the hospital could not have cost as much as N5 billion and N157 bn, respectively, which the government said it committed into them, and therefore appealed to the anti-graft agency to turn its searchlight to Adamawa.

The group, which also accused the state governor, Murtala Nyako, of wide talk in the current war against insurgency in the North-East, alleged that the state government has failed to deliver dividends of democracy to the people but would rather attempt to shift attention from his poor performance to other scapegoats, like the federal government.

“Till date, Governor Nyako is yet to commission any project because there is none. He is owing teachers and civil servants, which was why in the last WAEC results, of the 31,000 students from the state that sat for the examination, only 1,300 passed,” stressing the government has lost focus.

“As indigenes of Adamawa state, we feel humiliated as a people by the strong words used against our governor by his fellow governors and indeed by everybody that attended the Expanded National Security Council meeting, where he was made to read the memo he wrote to the Northern Governors which attempted to incite the North against the president and none Northerners.

“Mr. Governor, for your fellow governors to have described your memo as written “in bad faith” and described you as an ethnic irredentist is a big shame. Simply put, the verdict of the meeting was clear; please, resign your office,” the communiqué stated.

The group said the paper delivered by Governor Nyako in Washington and the memo he wrote to Northern States Governors’ Forum was meant to position him as the “new Defender-In-Chief” of the North and regretted that the real aim was designed to cover up his disastrous years as Governor of Adamawa state.

The group threw its weight behind the call for the imposition of full scale State of Emergency in Adamawa, Borno and Yobe states which would ensure that the respective state governors are removed to make way for the military take charge control and finish the job at hand without political interference.