Imo State: Poverty in Imo communities worries CSOs

Poor budget implementation and under-representation of  the 27 local government areas in Imo State, have been identified as the cause to the unending  poverty situation in the state.

This was the outcome of a town hall meeting of mainly community based Civil Society Organisations, CSOs,  organized recently in Owerri, by the South Sahara Social Development Orgarnistion, SSSDO.

Among other issues raised in the round-table meeting, they wanted the Imo State government to run an open budget system, a process, which they said, would not only capture the lack of basic social amenities in the rural areas, but would also go a long way to address the continual denial of the electorate to enjoy the benefits of their God given resources.
Another area of concern was the “inexplicable” that the Imo State government had refused despite invitations to participate in the many accountability and transparency programmes by the CSOs in the state.

They also appealed to the government to form it as a habit to endeavour to organize a public hearing, in order to know how far the people had been deprived of their dividends of democracy, adding that, through the public hearing development could be extended to the rural areas and the people would have input in the budget, in order to make it the people’s budget.

One of the facilitators of the South Sahara Social Development Organi-zation, Mr. Emeka Onona-madu, said the programme was aimed at intimating the electorate that their responsibilities include actively involving in the process of governance.