The Publisher and Chief Executive Officer of Business day Newspapers, Frank Aigbogun has urged Nigerian Governors to do more to enhance rapid development and better the lives of their people.
Aigbogun who stated this on Wednesday during the BusinessDay States Competiveness and Good Governance Awards held in Abuja, said if the governors focused on fostering rapid development, it would create wealth, reduce youth restiveness and enhance adequate security.
According him, such jobs as done by the governors, apart from creating wealth, would further provide jobs and create the enabling environment where business will thrive.
He noted that to improve the lives of the citizenry, the governors must take decisive actions to execute physical projects and to improve internally generated revenue, and move from recurrent expenditure to capital expenditure. This, he insisted, would foster health, educational and infrastructural development.
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“My message to governors is to do the least possible and it will amaze them how perception will be shaped so rapidly and development can be achieved in states that they have being given mandates to govern.
“I believe that the focus today is to not put too much on the federal government with the hope that they alone can develop the states.
“State governors and their local government chairmen should do the best they can do to make their states more developed, to make their hospitals safe, to make their schools as institutions where quality knowledge can be impacted.
He reminded the governors that the states collect a larger chunk of the federation allocation which vests on them high responsibility of delivering more.
Explaining the imperativeness of the awards, the publisher stated that the aim was to identify and reward governors who have worked tirelessly to fulfil the mandate bestowed on them from their people.
“This is an event for which we commit our resources singularly aimed at identifying and rewarding governors of states who tirelessly work to fulfil the mandate given to them by their people.
“What we do every year is to travel across the length and breadth of the country to monitor closely the work that is being done by governors in the states. We believe in a country where the possibility of finding positive trends and development can emerge across the states, where actions, projects and catalysts by state governors who are doing their very best to improve internally generated revenue would move from preponderance of recurrent expenditure to growing capital expenditure, build infrastructure in the real sense, and commit to better education and healthcare service delivery, among others,” Aigbogun stated.
Insisting that the governors must collaborate to ensure development, the publisher urged them to run inclusive government where abject poverty would be reduced to the barest minimum.
“Your work as governors is bringing about inclusive development to states and helping in many ways to reducing poverty in Nigeria. It is our believe at Businessday that such inspiring works should not go unnoticed.
“We can mve from our challenges of creating jobs, reducing restiveness, keeping our borders safe, and making our lands safe wohere our people can live happily and business will thrive and wealth can be generated.
“The people of Nigeria have very high expectations and even as their expectations are high, our people are not so difficult to please or impress, Aigbogun stated.
