Amaechi tasks African govts on Nepad

PORT HARCOURT— FOR the New Partnership for Africa’s Development, NEPAD, to be effective, governments in the region need to change their approach to development related issues.
Governor Rotimi Amaechi of Rivers State,  who made the observation at the opening ceremony of the NEPAD Coordinators national conference in Port Harcourt, Rivers State,  yesterday said there was need for government to establish connection between governance and  poverty for the partnership to be   meaningful.

Governor Amaechi,  who was represented by his Deputy, Engr Tele Ikiru, said the issues that resulted in the birth of the partnership were still prevalent, adding that there was urgent need to take steps to tackle them.

“Well, I am an engineer and what I was taught in school is, if you want to pull this thing down, for example, you try, if it doesn’t work, you keep trying, it still doesn’t work, what we were told is at a point,  stop,  think about a better way to go about it and you’ll be surprised some new ideas will come and you will eventually achieve your goal.

“Having done the same thing between 2001 and 2010 and we are all seated here we cannot point at anything as an achievement, I think the time has come for us to stop, think and proceed again.

“Stopping and thinking, I will like you to deliberate this during the course of your deliberation. Stopping and thinking will mean,  what have we done in the last nine years or there about, which way can we do it better and one of the ways I think we can achieve better result is first by defining the relationship between governance and poverty.

“As a country, have we never planned where we want to be at any point in time and achieve it? I remember Vision 2010, have you people forgotten? This is 2010; we are still very empty. So we simply changed the slogan to 2020. If we still fail to plan, 2020 is just around the corner, we’ll soon be there and still remain empty,” the Governor warned.

In his contribution, Special Adviser to the President on NEPAD, Ambassador Tunji Olagunju, said the National Plan of Action, NPoA, of the programme, as ratified by the National Council of States, had taken some steps to correct the situation in 2008.