Olamide Ohunyeye, aspirant under the All Progressives Congress in the forthcoming November 16 governorship election in Ondo State, has declared to key into President Bola Tinubu’s agenda towards developing agriculture for exports and growth of local foods consumption in the state if elected as governor.
Ohunyeye, retired brigadier general in the Nigerian Army, declared this while speaking with journalists about his governorship ambition on Monday in Akure, the state capital.
According to him, it is necessary to build the infrastructure within the state. “We have an infrastructure of road network, we have that of improvement in health facilities, educational system, agriculture amongst others.
“If we bring in the performance measurement criteria, we will see that there is a lot to do within the agriculture sector, do we have organisations that guide the performance of our farmers, do we have government support in terms of equipment to the farmers? This and other issues call for critical examination.
“This is a clear avenue for Ondo state to be able to improve on its generated revenue capacity, especially on foreign exchange that is currently scarce within the nation and I know that if we pursue this vigorously, we are going to create massive employment for our teeming youths in the state.
“Our parents, women, and youths in the villages will be fully engaged, we will achieve a lot towards reducing unemployment, and poverty in the state.”
The Ilu-Titun-born retired military officer, who also spoke on how to provide adequate security for the lives and property in the state said, “When there is no security, there won’t be any development and we have a lot to do again towards improving the security architecture of the state.
“What I intend to do is to leverage my 35 years in military service to ensure that we have absolute security. We are going to develop a blueprint for Amotekun, improve their mode of operations, ensure that Amotekun is better equipped, and enhance their collaboration with other security services, especially the DSS and Army. We have also planned to deepen our collaborations with our neighbouring states and to ensure that not even one element of criminals and bandits infiltrate Ondo State.
“We want to see the performance and functionality of the Amotekun Corps. There are plans to improve the blueprints to ensure that Amotekun Corps is more potent, mobile, agile, and intelligently driven to perform within the state.
“I will take a look at education, I will urgently review the infrastructure that supports the entire educational structure in Ondo State, and we will bring on board a straightforward affordable online platform that can aid the improvement in technology and learning.
“The same goes for healthcare services. There will be deliberate and conscious efforts to improve all health facilities, from the tertiary to the intermediate and primary levels.
“We will have a high-capacity hospital with maximum capability in terms of equipment and human resources that can manage all manners of medical care and this is very important and we are going to achieve it.”
On the economy, Ohunyeye said; “we need to improve on our productive capacity. Companies established by past administrations in the state are not alive, so there is an urgency to look back at these entities to revive them. If we cannot revive them, we will bring partners and collaborators with strategic investment so that we can either revive these companies or set up new ones and we have the capacity and resources to achieve it.
“We need the right capacity and competence to come in to take Ondo state to another level and I believe if everyone found me worthy to do that, we can push these ideas to the people of the state to let them know that I’m here to take the state to the next level and the same goes for other sectors in the state.
“The tasks of building Ondo state is not one person’s job, it is a collective and cooperative job and if I’m elected as governor, it will be our collective responsibility to move the state forward.”
