Civil society organisations (CSOs) in Ebonyi State have dismissed the state government’s defence over its alleged failure to qualify for a $27 million World Bank-supported HOPE Governance Programme grant, insisting that the funding was strictly performance-based and not influenced by political considerations.
The coalition, comprising the Committee for the Defence of Human Rights (CDHR), Human Rights Action Group, and Good Living Initiative (GLIN), maintained that Ebonyi failed to meet the independently verified governance benchmarks required to access the grant.
The latest response follows the Ebonyi State Government’s rejection of the coalition’s earlier claim that the state lost the funding because it failed to meet reform targets in education, primary healthcare and public financial management.
In a statement issued on Saturday, the Special Assistant to the Governor on Documentation, Dr. Boniface Nwankwo, described the allegations as misleading and politically motivated, accusing the CSOs of attempting to undermine the administration of Governor Francis Nwifuru.
Nwankwo argued that the governor’s People’s Charter of Needs agenda has remained focused on inclusive development, responsive governance and improved welfare for residents.
He further cited several federal and international projects attracted to the state within the last three years, including the Nigerian Army Training Depot in Amasiri, Afikpo and Edda LGAs, the Nigerian Navy Secondary School in Amechara, Izzi LGA, and the proposed University of Aeronautics, among others.
CSOs Reject Government’s Defence
However, in a fresh statement obtained by Blueprint on Wednesday and signed by the coalition’s spokesperson, Charles Otu, the CSOs said the government’s response failed to address the central issue raised by the World Bank assessment.
According to the coalition, its position was driven solely by concerns over governance and development in the state.
“We at the Civil Society Coalition wish to completely disagree with the government’s lines of thoughts, reasonings and arguments as we reiterate that our thoroughly-researched position is not borne out of politics or political interests but a genuine concern for a better and a more prosperous Ebonyi State where the government leaves no stone unturned to better the lives of citizens through strategic investments in core sectors like basic education, Primary Health Care, rural development and strategic human empowerments.
“In a nutshell, we wish to posit for the benefit of Ebonyians and millions of others who could be misled by the rather pedestrian position of the Ebonyi State government as that the State government committed a monumental category error by its attempt to list, cite or categorise projects attracted to the State by the Federal Government in defense of its gross failure to show commensurate fiscal responsibility and commitments to projects financing and execution- a development that made it fail the basic integrity tests of Independently Verified Systems as set out in the World Bank’s assessment standards.
“For us in the coalition and in setting the records straight, the response of the Ebonyi State government does not in any way address the gross governance lapses and failures revealed by the World Bank HOPE Governance Assessment Programme. The central issue remains whether governance performance in Ebonyi State met the World Bank’s independently verified benchmarks. The answer is NO! And it remains NO!
“First and foremost, it is good that we step up efforts to inform and educate Ebonyi people about governance lapses and the poor performance of the government of the day, and to call on all Ebonyians to step up and demand quality, competitive leadership from those presently running and ruining the affairs of Ebonyi State: for us, this is the citizens’ action and demand for better and improved governance which this coalition has just done.”
‘HOPE Programme Rewards Performance’
The coalition stressed that the World Bank’s HOPE Governance Programme is a performance-based initiative designed to reward states that implement measurable governance reforms.
It argued that Ebonyi failed to qualify because it did not meet the required benchmarks.
“Ebonyi missed a legitimate opportunity to qualify for and access performance-based financing under the World Bank-supported HOPE Governance Program, which has a $500 million pool to be accessed as a GRANT (not a loan) for states that qualify, which Ebonyi failed to qualify for due to poor governance performance and failure to record a rating score that meets the independently verified World Bank benchmarks.
“The substantive public policy question, therefore, remains: why was Ebonyi unable to secure any of the announced performance incentives while neighboring states such as Abia, Enugu, and Imo qualified under one or more independently verified results? That question cannot be answered by listing unrelated and existing federal projects or sector interventions. It requires the release of Ebonyi’s HOPE GOV participation records, the Independent Verification Assessment, the specific results the State achieved or failed to achieve, and the reforms being implemented ahead of the next assessment cycle.
“For us in the Civil Society Coalition, the government’s response appears to conflate different categories of development financing. The HOPE Governance Programme is performance-based. It evaluates measurable institutional reforms in areas such as public financial management, governance systems supporting basic education and primary healthcare, transparency, accountability, and other agreed Disbursement Linked Results. Eligibility is determined through an independent verification process, not by the number of projects a state announces or lists in its capital budgets, which are eventually never executed, as is the case in Ebonyi State.”
‘Federal Projects Do Not Address Governance Performance’
The coalition further argued that projects listed by the state government have no bearing on the World Bank’s governance assessment.
“Consequently, we wish to state that references to the Nigerian Army Training Depot, the Nigerian Navy Secondary School, the proposed University of Aeronautics (NCAT unbundled campuses from Zaria and shared across six geopolitical zones), the Productive Use of Energy initiative, the SPIN Program, or the African Development Bank WASH intervention do not directly answer the question raised by the HOPE Governance assessment. These are separate programs with different objectives, funding arrangements, and eligibility criteria. Their existence neither proves nor disproves compliance with the World Bank’s governance performance benchmarks.
“These programs listed by the state government in her lame response are not programmes-based on Ebonyi state government competency governance performance; rather, they were distributed based on the poor human capital and multidimensional poverty records in Ebonyi state, which this present government has ended up plunging the state into worse poverty zones.
“Ebonyians must be made to understand that a government may legitimately participate in several development programmes while still falling short of the independently verified governance standards required under another programme. That is why each initiative must be assessed on its own merit.”
Coalition Demands Transparency, Public Debate
The CSOs called on the Ebonyi State Government to publish its participation records under the World Bank programme, including the Independent Verification Assessment and indicators achieved or missed.
“More importantly, the discussion should not be reduced to politics. It should focus on governance performance. This is because over the past few years, independent assessments and Ebonyi State’s official fiscal records have consistently highlighted governance challenges that deserve public attention. These include; concerns regarding public financial management, transparency, budget implementation, procurement oversight, debt management, and institutional performance.
“The most constructive response at this stage is not to dismiss legitimate public concerns as politically motivated. Rather, it is to publish the evidence. The Ebonyi State Government should make public its World Bank HOPE GOVERNANCE participation records, the Independent Verification Assessment, the indicators achieved, the indicators missed, and the corrective measures being implemented before the next verification cycle. We believe that doing so would strengthen transparency, improve public confidence, and demonstrate a genuine commitment to continuous institutional improvement.
“For us, this conversation is ultimately not about scoring political points as the government claimed in its rejoinder. It is about ensuring that Ebonyi consistently positions itself to compete successfully for performance-based development financing that strengthens healthcare, education, public financial management, and institutional capacity without increasing the state’s debt burden.
“We believe that is the standard increasingly expected by the World Bank and other international development partners. It is also the standard that citizens should expect from every government committed to sustainable development. We believe that politicking begins shortly before and end immediately after the election of leaders; but without deliberate, conscious and intentional vigilance by citizens, transparency and accountability in governance would be grossly vitiated. The basis, the end, the purpose of politics is for good governance!
“Finally, the coalition of Civil Society Groups in Ebonyi challenges the Nwifuru-led administration to a public debate on this matter and admonishes the government to learn from its past mistakes and be strategically positioned to do better in the next cycle!”
As of the time of filing this report, the Ebonyi State Government had yet to respond to the coalition’s latest statement.