SPEECH:A Speech Delivered by His Excellency Rt. Hon. Ahmadu Umaru Fintiri at the Commissioning of Urban Roads in Michika and Flag-off of Distribution of Grant to 1,320 Women from Madagali LGA, Adamawa State – Nigeria.

19th – May, 2021

Protocol

It is with great delight and gratitude to God Almighty that we are gathered here to commission the Mukadas , Lassa, Futu, Low Cost roads and Hospital road in Michika. These township roads with complete drainage span 7.8 km. This is part of the package for our Urban renewal campaign in the State. It is a campaign we are deliberately prosecuting to bridge the infrastructural gap between our urban and semi-urban centers. We hope to continue at this pace until all our citizens derive the right comfort to live anywhere in Adamawa State enjoying all the basic infrastructure they would ordinarily crave for in the cities. This indeed is our mitigation measure against rural-urban drift which is already placing needless pressure on our overstretched municipalities. 

The journey to this point has been laced with several hurdles. We have together gone through tribulations occasioned by financial crunch imposed on the world and the country by the dreaded COVID-19 Pandemic whose impact suffocates  harder, the struggling sub-nationals like ours. I made you a promise to ensure no one is left behind and nothing is left untouched in our development drive in the State. I am determined to keep that promise now even as it were when I made it. 

We promised to address the Infrastructural deficiencies in the State. We went on to adopt a two-pronged approach: Urban renewal programme and Rural Infrastructure and Community Development. Our Urban renewal programme is going full swing as evident by today’s commissioning. Rural Infrastructure and Community Development drive, has seen us through to the successful construction of 347 km of rural roads across the State. This has unlocked limitless opportunities for our hardworking rural dwellers. Yesterday, we started by commissioning the urban roads in Numan, today we are here in Michika, God’s willing tomorrow, we are headed for Toungo Local Government to celebrate their liberation from darkness. For over 20 years, Toungo has remained unconnected to the National Grid.  I am happy to announce to you that in keeping faith with our creed of fulfilling every promised made, we have delivered on this one and the Toungo electricity is set for commissioning. 

For Michika town and all the communities in the northern zone, this is a period of recuperation from the effect of a devastating insurgency which consumed our relatives, destroyed our infrastructure and even saw us fleeing our homes. The best way for the government to demonstrate sensitivity to the plight of the people is a commitment to fast track the recuperation process by rebuilding the infrastructure with the required speed.  While hoping that this project will serve as a catalyst for growth and development, it is partly our modest way of encouraging a people devastated by the cruel effect of a destabilizing insurgency to return to their ancestral abodes, reclaim their homes, their lives and livelihoods. This indeed is one sure way to build community resilience, reconstruct faith and shame the deadly merchants of conflict and purveyors of mayhem. Work is steadily progressing at the Permanent site of the Adamawa State College of Health Technology Michika. It is our fervent hope that academic activities would commence there before the end of this year.  

On this note I want to appreciate all our partners in the recuperation enterprise especially the Federal Government of Nigeria through the MCRP which availed us with the grant we rightly channeled to constructing the Bazza-Vintim-Tsamiya-Mubi Road for the benefit of the people of those communities and Adamawa State in general. We hope that this kind of support will be sustained until our people are all returned home, our farms are accessible and harmless, our markets are all unlocked and our schools are all opened and safe.

Part of our recovery plan is the launch of our regional stabilization strategy which targets society’s most vulnerable groups, especially women and children.  It is against this background that, we are leveraging on this occasion to flag off the poverty alleviation programme which targets a total of 1,320 vulnerable rural women in Madagali Local Government. With support from UNDP, giving a cash grant of N50,000 to each woman. This grant is expected to cushion the economic hardship, provide a start-up for petty trading and improve on individual household’s income for the vulnerable people. 

Your Excellency, Distinguish Guests, Ladies and Gentlemen, in the past two years, we have strived hard to uphold the sanctity of our covenant with the electorates of Adamawa State. To us as a government, trust is sacred. This informed our commitment to investing adequate thoughts into careful planning and implementation of policies and programmes that would have significant impact on the welfare and wellbeing of the Citizens of Adamawa State irrespective of their social standings in the society. In line with our 11 Point Agenda, we have been able to achieve so much with prudent management of scarce resources and strategic demand for value on each dime of the State that we spend. We are dedicated to doing even more in the remaining two years of our mandate with the grace of the Almighty.

I want to acknowledge Messrs Triacta Nig. PLC for delivering the project according to specification and meeting up with the schedule even before time.

While I appreciate my brother, Senator Bala Mohammed, Kauran Bauchi, the Executive Governor of Bauchi State, for honouring my invitation to be our guest, I hereby formally invite him to commission the Mukadas, Lassa, Futu, Low Cost and Hospital roads, all in Michika to the glory of Almighty Allah and the use of humanity. 

Thank you.