Imo State’s experimental fourth tier governance, the Community Government Council (CGC) has attracted a World Bank micro-financing facility to the tune of N2 billion for millions of rural dwellers in the state.
The soft loan, according to Val Mbamala, the commissioner for Community Government Council, which would be advanced to the rural people, is aimed at empowering them with credit facilities to finance their mainly village based micro businesses.
Mbamala said at an interactive session with journalists of the Correspondents’ Chapel of the Nigeria Union of Journalists (NUJ) Imo State council that the loan package, which is being supervised by the nation’s apex financial institution, the Central Bank of Nigeria (CBN) would be made available to millions of Imo State rural people, who are now already grouped into 637 autonomous communities under the CGC arrangement.
He said each autonomous community has been directed to raise at least a hectare of land for agricultural purposes where the community folks would undertake farming, production of a particular crop; and in some cases, take it further with a micro processing industry with the loan facility.
The CGC is a rural governance concept initiated by Governor Rochas Okorocha upon assuming office in 2011, to replace the age-old Town Unions; but now enlarged enough to assume a government system, headed by a President-General, with the active participation of the community-elected Eze (paramount ruler).
It has been generally referred to as a fourth tier governance, designed to reach the autonomous rural communities with development.
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