AKS-RAAMP BAGS NiRTMS AWARD AT WORLD BANK MISSION
The Akwa Ibom State Rural Access and Agricultural Marketing Project, AKS-RAAMP has been ranked and awarded overall best in the Nigeria Rural Transport Infrastructure Management System (NiRTMS) by the World Bank.
NIRTMS is a web-based application that captures the geometries of rural roads to ease accessibility and evaluation of projects sites by the World Bank and other stakeholders. Under the project, the status of ongoing civil works are captured via the Construction Site Monitoring System, CoSMoS and uploaded to the NiRTMS server for effective monitoring by the stakeholders in real time.
Minister of Agriculture and Food Security, Senator Aliyu Sabi Abdulahi presented the award recently at the 8th Joint World Bank and French Development Agency Implementation Support Mission of the Rural Access and Agricultural Marketing Project, RAAMP
held the Shehu Musa Yaradua Center – Abuja, February 03 – 06, 2025.
Mission is a bi-annual exercise by the Bank to evaluate progress of all participant states in RAAMP with a view to identifying their challenges as well as adding verve to their areas of strength for best results.
In their respective remarks, the Task Team Leader of the World Bank, Mr. Rakesh Treparti and the National Coordinator of RAAMP, Engr. Aminu Mohammed described AKS-RAAMP as very efficient and congratulated the team on the feat.
It could be recalled that earlier in December last year, AKS-RAAMP had similarly been applauded at a policy meeting of the project also held at Abuja, granting approval for an additional 32 kilometers of roads, as a reward for exceeding her projected implementation milestones between June and December last year, 2024. The Bank had scored AKS-RAAMP 110 percent over her implementation performance milestones, having exceeded all her agreed action plans within the period under review, among other notabilities.
Representative of the State Governor and focal person on RAAMP, Dr. Offiong Offor expressed deep appreciation over the award, describing same as a recognition of hardwork by the Akwa Ibom team and a testament of the enormous support to the project by the State Governor, Pastor Umo Eno. “We appreciate every member of the AKS-RAAMP team; let’s keep up the spirit and continue to project Akwa Ibom as a high flier to blaze the trail. We thank His Excellency, the Governor immensely for his support; I know he will continue to support the project towards the realisation of the ARISE agenda.”
Dr. Offor further hailed RAAMP as a major supporter of the ARISE agenda in rural development; construction and rehabilitation of rural feeder roads under different interventions: upgrading, backlog maintenance, cross drainage structures; improvement of agro-logistics hubs – all with a view to developing the rural economy. In fact RAAMP is doing so much in rural development; that’s why you see the Governor giving the project all the support she needs to ensure that our rural areas are developed to reduce rural – urban migration, reduce post-harvest losses and all of that. We are very appreciative of what the Governor is doing just as we thank the World Bank, French Development Agency; the Federal Government and indeed all stakeholders both individually and collectively for their respective support to the project.
Highlights of the mission was the presentation by the project coordinators by states.
Pastor Gideon Akpan enumerated the milestones recorded by AKS-RAAMP to include: construction of the 11 kilometer demonstration rural road which was nearing completion in about a fortnight as well as ongoing construction of other multiple projects: 71.166 kilometres of roads under the backlog maintenance component; construction three agro-logistics centers across the state; while one cross drainage structure project had been completed in Ikot Abasi 1, Etinan Local Government Area, among other accomplishments.
The Permanent Secretary Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development cum Chairman of the State Project Monitoring Committee of AKS-RAAMP, Mrs. Rosemary Ubia; and members of the State Project Implementation Unit of the project also attended the mission.
