By Emeka Mamah

Kaduna – The Enugu state government may not achieve its aim of executing the ongoing Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) projects on schedule.

This is because of the rejection of the Advance Payment Guarantees (APGs) obtained from the five banks, whose Managing Directors and Chief Executive Officers (MDs/CEOs) were sacked by the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) by the contractors executing the projects.

It was learnt that the First City Monument Bank (FCMB), which is the state government banker rejected the APGs, which would have enabled the contractors to collect advance payments and then commence work on the various projects awarded to them.

The projects,  worth over N1 billion are on water, health, education and agriculture among others.

According to sources, some contractors, who won contracts for some of the MDG projects obtained APGs from  Intercontinental Bank Plc, Union Bank, Afribank, Oceanic Bank and FinBank Nigeria Plc to enable them collect advance payments to execute the jobs.

APGs are letters of guarantee from banks, accepting responsibility on behalf of their customers for the paper value of the sum of money advanced to them for jobs they are to execute.

The implication is that, these customers will withdraw their accounts from the five trouble banks and this may lead to a run on them if CBN fails to take immediate action.