Ogun State Governor hails President Buhari’s leadership

Ogun State Governor, Dapo Abiodun has hailed the leadership style of President Muhammadu Buhari, describing him as a father to the nation.

The Governor gave the commendation while speaking to State House Correspondents, after paying a visit to the Nigerian leader.

“Let me first say to you that the President is so meticulous, he is so methodical, he is extremely organised and at any point in time any Governor wants to see the President, all you have to do is ask, He will give you audience and he will take notes.

“For those of us that know the President, he is someone who believes in constituted authority. When a Governor says this are my problems, the President takes it to heart and he follows through with it. One cannot ask for a better captain of our ship. That is what I have seen in our President and that is what I probably think most people will not know because our President is not a man of many words,” he said.

Governor Abiodun said he was in the State House to present his score card in the past one year to President Buhari.

“I came today to visit the captain of our team and President of our great country, President Muhammadu Buhari. I have not had the privilege of having a one-on-one with him, obviously, because of the situation that has affected all of us, the pandemic and I thought it was important for me to brief him on how we are doing in Ogun State and that has been encapsulated in a book, titled ’52 weeks of building our future together, from May 29, 2019-May 29, 2020,’ which I came to present its first copy to the President.

“This book encapsulates everything we did in our first year. I shared all that we have done with the President. I decided to present the first copy that rolled out of the print. We did not have the opportunity to do an elaborate presentation of what we did because of the pandemic so we decided to reduce everything to print,” he added.

 

The Governor, who listed his priority areas to include infrastructure, social well being and welfare, Education, youth empowerment and agriculture (ISHEYA), told Journalists that the President was happy with what he has been able to achieve in one year.

On infrastructure, the Governor said his administration has been able to build roads that link the State with neighbouring Lagos State.

 

“Being an expansion corridor for Lagos, it requires that we provide the right infrastructure to allow people to come between Lagos and our State and to go back. The first thing we did was we awarded the Akpe-Ijebuode road, which makes it easier for people who leave in the Lekki axis to be able go to the East without going through the Lago-Ibadan expressway, which is being reconstructed now and that also opens that corridor for industrial activity,” he said.

The Governor also announced that his administration has prioritised the issue of affordable housing for its citizens.

“In terms of economic sustainability dealing with the issue of the coronavirus pandemic, we have prioritised the issue of affordable housing and in view of the pandemic, we have fast-tracked that because we saw our housing programme as an opportunity to also empower our youths.

“So, we began to build houses and in our first one year, we have built 130 0f the first 500 affordable housing units. These houses are being sold for between five and six million naira and they were all built by direct labour.

“The most important thing is that it has allowed us to empower our youths; artisans, carpenters, bricklayers, masons and so on. Everything that they used for those houses were built on site,” the Governor explained.

He said the State is planning to build another 1, 870 of such houses across the length and breath of Ogun State, as part of its economic sustainability plan to cushion the effects of COVID-19 pandemic.

Governor Abiodun said he presented a letter to the President, requesting for permission to re-construct the Agbara-Lusado-Atan road, which leads to an industrial estate, so as to boost the economy of the State.

Our biggest industrial hub in this country is the Agbara Industrial Estate. There’s a road that goes from Agbara to Lusado to Atan, that road is the road that leads to this Agbara Industrial Estate, that road is in such deplorable state that trailers that are coming from the port, taking goods that need to be processed and finished to this industrial estate, trailers that are taking finished goods from the industrial estate to the rest of the country or back to the port, continue to have accidents and delays to the point where some of the multinationals have threatened to leave the country and go to another country.

“So, I came with a letter, requesting the President to note that because our people do not know the difference between a federal and a state road. This road has continued to be an embarrassment, not just to us in Ogun State, but to the entire country.

“This place is important to us for the economic survival of our state and the country at large. We have decided to intervene in the road, ourselves as a state and wanted Mr President to know that we are going to have to construct that road at our expense and wanted him to inform the Federal Ministry of Works that we’ll be doing so and we’ll also be making demands on them for a full refund of the construction of that road,” the Governor explained.

 

VON

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