2025 Budget: “Publish Projects Allocated to Ijaw Areas”, IPF Dares Oborevwori

• Governor Sheriff Oborevwori of Delta State has been tasked to publish projects allocated to Ijaw areas in the state.

• The Ijaw Publishers Forum queired recent claims by Oborevwori’s aide that the 2025 budget contained massive projects for Ijaw areas.

• The group also labelled claims of empowering 250,000 Delta entrepreneurs as a scam.

The Ijaw Publishers’ Forum (IPF) has challenged Governor Sheriff Oborevwori of Delta State to publish projects allocated to Ijaw areas in the 2025 budget.

The demand followed a claim by General on Orientation and Communication, Dr. Fred Latimore Oghenesivbe, who said in an interview on a radio programme in faraway Lagos that the 2025 budget of N979 billion contained massive projects for riverine communities.

Oghenesivbe also claimed that the Oborevwori administration had empowered over 250,000 entrepreneurs through the Ministry of Women Affairs and State Bureau for Wealth and Job creation.

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According to Latimore, “the improved and renewal rural and riverine mega roads and other infrastructural projects that would open intra and inter-trade opportunities are captured in the 2025 approved budget”.

IPF queries Delta 2025 Budget allocation to Ijaw area

However, the IPF, in a statement on Tuesday by its President Comrade Ozobo Austin, tackled the Delta State Government over the marginalisation of Ijaw communities in the state.

Ozobo stated that ”the government runs on lies and propaganda and that a responsible government feels in the pains of the people and not to do a disservice which may add more injury to the unbearable pains of the people with audio projects.”

Using the infamous Ayakoromo bridge as a pointer, the e group emphasised that Delta Ijaw riverine communities have been victims of such beautiful lies of fake projects over the years.

On Latimore’s claims the ”Governor Oborevwori has empowered over 250,000 Entrepreneurs, Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises (MSMEs) through D-CARES programme ministry of women affairs and State Bureau for Wealth and Job creation”, the IPF said such remarks were nothing short of a “scam against Deltans”, stressing that Ijaw riverine communities and its group with over 30 registered media enterprises were not aware of such opportunities.

Challenging the Latimore to publish and name numbers and location of such projects and benefiting enterprises and businesses, the group likened his remarks as a recurrent decimal to defraud Ijaws by successive administrations in the state.

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”We will not take such media charades any longer, seeing audio projects beautifully crafted by media engineers like Dr. Fred Latimore Oghenesivbe, who is good at propaganda, playing politics with the Ijaw development in the state,” the group said.

IPF described the political propaganda of Latimore as a great disservice to the Ijaw nation by telling lies to boost the ego and image of his pay master, while the Delta Ijaw riverine communities are suffering with no tangible development to count on, from the time of Dr. Emmanuel Uduaghan and Okowa administrations.

The statement reads in part, ”We want the Governor Chief Sheriff Oborevwori led administration to publish names of projects allocated for the Delta Ijaw riverine communities per local government area and money allocated for the Ayakoromo bridge project in the 2025 N979 billion approved budget.

“We also challenge the governor and his aide to publish the names of entrepreneurs and amount of materials or money given to those who benefited from the Ijaw riverine communities in his over 250,000 entrepreneurs, Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises (MSMEs) through D-CARES programme ministry of women affairs and the State Bureau for Wealth and Job creation under his administration”.