ASOPADEC General Manager, Venerable (Dr.) Joshua Onyeike.
ASOPADEC needs N5.7bn for 2025 fiscal year
Boniface Okoro, Umuahia
Abia State Oil Producing Areas Development Commission (ASOPADEC) has proposed a budget estimate of N5,656,156,309.00 for its services in the 2025 fiscal year.
General Manager of ASOPADEC, Dr. Joshua Onyeike, who made this known while defending the agency’s budget estimate before the 2025 Budget Estimate Committee, explained N4,653,990,000 of the estimate would be dedicate to Capital Expenditure while N1002,166,309 would go for recurrent expenditure.
Dr. Onyeike said the estimate was to enable the Commission to execute it mandate of bringing development to oil-producing communities and other parts of Abia.
The ASOPADEC General Manager said that the Commission, as an interventionist agency, was committed to keying into the administrative policy of the State government led by Dr. Alex Otti, in realising the new Abia vision by ensuring that funds allocated to the Commission were properly utilized, adding that the Commission was established to tackle the peculiar challenges emanating from oil exploitation and exploration activities such as environmental degradation, infrastructural dilapidation, as well as enhancing human capital development in these areas.
Reviewing the Commission’s 2024 budget, the General Manager said that the agency was striving to live up to her mandate through providing water boreholes, funding scholarships, reconstructing roads, market stalls, civil centres and other tangible and intangible developmental initiatives. He however pointed out that the 30% of 13 % oil derivation fund was not enough to tackle the multiple demands of developmental projects by the oil-producing areas, coupled with challenges posed by oil subsidy removal-induced inflation in 2024.
The General Manager commended the Governor for his support to the Commission and requested the 2025 Budget Estimate Committee to approve his proposed budget.
The 2025 budget is tagged “Budget of Sustained Momentum.”
Responding, the Chairman of the 2025 Budget Estimate Committee and Commissioner for Budget and Planning, Hon. Kingsley Anosike, represented by the Permanent Secretary, Budget and Planning Commission, Mrs Jimonu Ugonma Mercy, praised the General Manager of ASOPADEC for his proposal which, she said, was in tandem with the guidelines and assured that appropriate approvals would be made within the limits of available resources.
