European Union Spends N4.2b On Transformation Program in Nigeria

The European Union-Agents for Citizen-Driven Transformation Programme (EU-ACT) is spending over N4.2 billion (10 million Euros) in improving the livelihood of Nigerians at the grassroots, especially the physicall challenged.

This was revealed by the EU-ACT Focal Person in Rivers, Mr Temple Oraeki, in an interview in Port Harcourt, Rivers State.

Oraeki spoke on the sideline of the EU-ACT meeting with Civil the Society Organisations (CSOs) involved in executing the programme targeted at the physically challenged persons in the state.

He explained that the 4-year programme which commenced in 2019 was instituting a system through the involvement of CSOs in communities across nine states and the Federal Capital Territory (FCT).

Oraeki said the basic aim of the EU-ACT programme was to strengthen the capacity of the CSOs for them to be able to deliver their mandates and become credible agents of change in society.

.‘’The CSOs have very promising mandates, promising visions, missions that they carved out for themselves.

‘’But they are not able to meet up with all these visions and missions when they don’t have the capacity to deliver; this is the gap that the programme has come to fill.

“We believe that CSOs are the watchdogs of the society; they are the third eye,’’ he said.

He explained that the selected CSOs were trained for three years in accordance with the EU internal criteria and sent to the field to implement what they had learnt through their individual projects.

The EU-ACT focal person told NAN that the grant was given to them for the implementation of the programme which was divided into three categories – the mature, developing and emerging projects.

Oraeki stated that the EU-ACT was not interested in the result per se but the process, how it had changed and what changed that contributed to the result got.

Dr Kingdom Nwanyanwu, the Executive Director, Ability Initiative, one of the CSOs, earlier commended the EU-ACT for the training.