Paul Osuyi, Asaba
Governor Ifeanyi Okowa of Delta State, yesterday, directed his commissioners to present their hand over notes to the various permanent secretaries in their ministries and directorates before the close of work on Friday, May 24.
The governor gave the order during a valedictory session with members of the state executive council in Asaba, ahead of his swearing in for a second term on May 29.
Okowa, who thanked his cabinet members for their contributions to the overall success of his first tenure, promised to run an all-inclusive administration in his second term, saying such was instrumental to the success recorded so far in the delivery of policies and programmes by his administration.
“In the last four years, I have had a working team, an executive that realised that we are together and that our success story will be told together and I am proud to say it is the collective efforts of each and every one of us that has given us our success stories which also resulted in the resounding victory we recorded at the elections.
“God’s grace was obviously with us, but I believe if each and every one of us had our own different beliefs, working in different ways, I believe we will not have been able to achieve what we have achieved thus far.
“So, I will first of all want to thank each and every one of you (members of the state executive council) for the wonderful comments that you have made this afternoon and appreciate you more for the commitment of each and every one of you in your previous offices in the last four years, because, there is no doubt that you have all been loyal to the deputy governor and myself and that loyalty has kept the team together.
“I thank God that we have tried to stay within the limit, so, when I looked at our papers and I saw that in 2018, that our performance rate was at 98 percent, I was very pleased, because realistic budget is important so that when we explain to the people that with this budget, this is what we are expected to do and the people at the end of the day see you doing nearly all the things that you said you will do, it is better than to raise the hopes of our people and then dash their hopes at the end of the day,” he said.