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Ighomuaye Lucky, Benin
The Edo State governor, Mr. Godwin Obaseki, has appealed to investors to continue to invest in the state as his chances of getting re-elected in the forthcoming election, is extremely high.
Obaseki made the appeal during the state Alaghodaro summit with the theme “delivering to the people, the next level” to mark his three years in office.
“Next year is election year in Edo State. Despite the anxiety associated with the forthcoming election, I want to assure our partners and other investors that because of the fundamental reforms which we are very popular with, our people, the chances of continuity of these policies are very high”, he said.
He said the goal of his administration is to entrench good governance, fiscal accountability, judicious use of public resources for the good of the people while also creating a competitive environment for private sector to lead the economy.
The governor announced that his administration was in the right path to deliver the Benin Port and Industrial Park in the first quarter of next year so that Edo will be the economic hub of the nation.
“Our reforms are yielding results. When we took over, the revenue collected by the 18 local governments across the state was N21 million per month but as at October 2019, the revenue was N205 million representing 158 percent”, he said.
Besides, he said the state policy on infrastructure is aimed at improving the road networks and transportation, access to electricity among others, disclosing that he had constructed over 150 roads covering more than 200km in urban and rural communities to facilitate easy movement of goods and people.
Obaseki also disclosed that the state had taken advantage of the Central Bank of Nigeria programme on agriculture to develop its Agripreneur programme with over 10,000 hectares of farmlands cultivated across the three senatorial districts.
According to him, each farmer in the programme is assigned a minimum of five hectares of land to cultivate, adding that apart from crops, poultry and livestock have been included in the programme.
In a keynote presentation, Mr Dato’ Sri Idris Jala, former Minister and Chief Executive Officer and Delivery Unit, Malaysia, said Governor Obaseki had made tangible improvement but needed to set aggressive target.
Represented by Chris Tan, he said: “Many governments hide under official secret act and legislation to manoeuvre their way from meeting their obligations so that people cannot hold them accountable but a good government makes everything open to the people”.
While noting that Governor Obaseki was committed to the new way of doing things to get things done, he called for the establishment of a delivery unit to fast track execution of programmes.
