Mr Rachid Benmessaoud, Country Director, World Bank Group, says the bank’s net commitment to Nigeria over the years is about $11 billion. He said this on Thursday in Abuja at the maiden edition of the Nigeria Portfolio Performance Award.
Organised in partnership with the Ministry of Finance, the award was to recognise and honour outstanding performance from project implementation units of World Bank supported projects at states and federal levels.
According to him, the bank’s commitment is geared toward projects targeted at alleviating poverty and improving the lives of the people. He said that 60 per cent of the bank’s programmes were implemented at the state level and another 40 per cent by the Federal Government.
Benmessaoud said that the bank’s portfolio in Nigeria was among the largest in the entire African region, adding that it had more than 30 operational projects. He said that the projects cut across health, education, agriculture, social protection, energy, infrastructure, and governance among others in the 36 states of Nigeria, including the FCT.
He also said the bank was working toward a new country partnership framework that would outline the new reform challenges that the government faces and how it could support it in implementing solutions to the challenges.
Speaking about the awards, the country director said that it was introduced to recognise the various entities that were involved in implementing the bank’s programmes in terms of their performance. He said that the states were evaluated based on their investments, quality of briefings that they prepared for reporting to their boss (governor/commissioner) and quality of mechanisms that exists at the state level.
Benmessaoud added that the awards would henceforth be an annual event. Mr Mahmud Isa-Dutse, the Permanent Secretary, Ministry of Finance, restated the ministry’s commitment to the World Bank in building an enabling environment to manage its portfolio in Nigeria.
He added that the ministry would assist the bank deliver on all its projects implementation. Mr Nasir El-Rufai, Governor of Kaduna Sate while speaking with newsmen on the sidelines of the event said it was an excellent idea that would make the states to compete at the level of governance.
He also said that the awards would make the state governors interested in World Bank projects and utilise them. El-Rufai said that the Nigerian Governor’s Forum (NGF) was currently more aware of the bank’s projects because of the bank’s constant briefings, but that some governors engaged more than others as some were hands-on while some were a bit disconnected.
He said: “My appeal to my colleagues is that they should take charge of their World Bank projects and other multi-laterally financed projects so that they will know what is happening. “I get monthly briefings in Kaduna about our projects and that is why we got some recognition for our level of coordination.
’’ The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN), reports that the best performing state on disbursement North Nigeria by volume went to Yobe, Southern Nigeria by volume went to Oyo state and by disbursement ratio to Ebonyi. Best performing state by region for North East went to Yobe, North West to Kano, North Central to Kogi, South West to Oyo, South South to Akwa Ibom and South East to Ebonyi.
The overall best performing state across the federation for Investment Project Financing Instrument went to Yobe, while Performance for Result Instrument and best state coordination mecahnism went to Kaduna State. (NAN)
