Ondo guber: I’ve raised Ondo IGR from N700m to N2b monthly-Akeredolu

 Romanus Ugwu, Abuja
The governor of Ondo State, Oluwarotimi Akeredolu, has declined comment on the disqualification of Governor Godwin Obaseki by the All Progressives Congress (APC) from contesting the party’s June 22 primaries, quipping that it is not yet time to react to issue about the party.
Speaking after submitting his completed APC expression of interest and nomination forms at the party’s secretariat in Abuja, he however dismissed the comments credited to the Governor of Rivers State, Nyesom Wike on the Nigeria Governors Forum and declined comment on the party’s treatment of Governor Godwin Obaseki.
He claimed that part of the achievements of his administration is raising the Internally Generated Revenue (IGR) from N700 million to N2 billion before the outbreak of the world health pandemic.
On his volume of the borrowing by his administration, he said: “I can assure you there is probably no state that can exist without borrowing. Not even a nation, not even America. We have tried to spend within our limit because of the debt we met. We met a lot of debts, we have to pay back.
“After we have paid the debt met before we initiated a move to have a borrowing of N30 billion. At the end of the day, the Debt Management Office ( DMO) said with our debt profile we are not entitled to more than N15 billion, so we have gotten N15 billion but all of that have gone on infrastructure development.
Because we have to pay salaries that is primus, I believe that every worker deserves his wages. But I can assure you, we have done a lot of work before the loan came so the loan had to be used pay a number of our contractors because we have adopted a way of doing our business which is different from any other person.
“We made it a policy, any contractor that wants to work for us, start the work. You must attain up to 30 per cent without your own money before we start paying you that allows for quality jobs.
“You ask about IGR, when we came in our IGR was less than N700 million per month and we used that as the basis for our construction but before COVID-19 had risen to N2 billion per month but after COVID-19 I am sure that things will get back again. We are looking at making a minimum of about N3 billion to N4 billion per month,” he said.