The Managing Director of the Northeast Development Commission (NEDC), Mohammed Alkali, announced that the agency has achieved eighty percent of its mandated interventions in the region.
Alkali made this statement on Thursday during a session with senior media executives in Abuja.
The NEDC was established in 2017 by an Act of the National Assembly to coordinate and facilitate the reconstruction, rehabilitation, and long-term development of communities across the six states in the region that have been affected by insurgent activities.
Additionally, the Commission has developed a ten-year Stabilization and Development Masterplan, which is structured into four phases: Recovery and Stabilization, Renewal, Expansion, and Consolidation.
Alkali expressed satisfaction with the agency’s intervention in the health sector. Previously, the entire zone managed only one Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) machine for all six states, but now it has increased to eight machines.
He said: “We did a lot of diagnostic studies of the health situation.
We discovered that only one functional MRI machine existed in the North east.
“We invited stakeholders in the tertiary institutions and we discovered that aside MRI machine, there was no CT scan machine.
“Today, at the end of this quarter, we are going to have 8 state-of-the-art MRI machines.
We also provided all the health institutions with CT scan to help them.”
The MD of the NEDC also disclosed that in the area of education, the Commission has constructed three mega schools in each of the six states in the region.
“The total number of mega schools is 18, and all of them are functional with all the facilities to make learning easy.”
He also noted that priority has been given to rehabilitation and construction of roads, submitting that many roads in bad shape across the states in the zone have been fixed.
“Today, you can see critical bridges fixed that are working well. We have over 50 bridges completed across the zones.”
Alkali, who was flanked by the Chairman of the Commission, Major- General Paul Tarfa(retd), also declared that priority is being given to power stability, as he noted that efforts taken in other sectors like health, education and road infrastructure would amount to nothing in the absence of stable and available power.
He further assured Nigerians that the Commission was mindful of Nigerians experience with abandoned projects submitting that the Board and management of the Commission would not embark on any projects without adequate funds on the ground.
He said: “Before any project is awarded, we will make sure that funds are available by all means so that we dont abandon projects midway. I can say categorically that if you are given a job and you dont do it, we won’t pay you.
“So I can tell you that any contract we do must be to standard before we pay you.”