ABUJA – Mr Asishana Okauru, the Director General, Nigeria Governors` Forum (NGF) Secretariat, has said that the crack within the forum is negatively affecting the operations of the secretariat.
The DG, who said this on Friday in Abuja in an interview with the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN), expressed sadness over the crack within the forum.
He said the situation was affecting the relationship between the secretariat and development partners as well as its peer review initiative.
“We had been able to establish a very strong relationship with virtually all the development partners; UNICEF, DFID World Bank and others, but today nearly all of them are understandably jittery,’’ he said.
Okauru said the secretariat of the forum under the chairmanship of Gov. Rotimi Amaechi of Rivers, had established strategic relationship with development partners within and outside the country.
He said that in spite of the crack within the forum, the secretariat remained committed to the elected governors in the 36 states of the federation.
He expressed optimism that the crisis would be resolved at the level of the governors.
While stressing that he would not want to be involved in the crisis Okauru said, “it is very clear that there are some external interests to the crisis within the forum.’’
Okauru said the infrastructure in the secretariat was at the disposal of all the governors of the 36 states.
He said the infrastructure was structured to service the governors irrespective of party affiliation.
He said that as long as he remained the DG of the NGF, he would ensure that the secretariat was not used as a platform to induce politicians.
The NGF split into factions after the controversial election of its chairman on May 24, 2013 which led to the emergence of two chairmen.
