Yahaya Bello, governor of Kogi State, has said that his administration in the last seven years has succeeded in eliminating the prevalent out-of-control insecurity and decimated the long-standing tribal, and religious prejudices in the state.
Bello said that the administration has also decimated other fault lines that retarded development in the state.
In a message to the people of the state as part of the activities marking the seventh year anniversary of his ‘New Direction Administration,’ in the state on Friday, Bello equally said that he made several far-reaching promises on behalf of himself and his team in the new Government, in his inaugural speech on 27th January 2016.
He said: “We promised that Change had come to Kogi State and that our people were the proprietors of that Change while those of us in Government were merely chauffeurs employed by them to drive it”
“We promised that the long-standing divisions along tribal, religious and other fault lines were over and that fairness, equity and justice to all would be guaranteed.
“We swore to eliminate the out-of-control insecurity Kogi was notorious for, back then, and we undertook to make all of Kogi’s resources work for all of Kogi’s people.
“It has been my privilege and pleasure since that First Inauguration to oversee an accelerated and proportional
transformation of our state through innovative thinking and prudent management of all resources– human, financial, material and natural.”
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Bello also pointed out that his administration did not underestimate the enormity of the work it needed to do to overcome the abysmally low levels of socio-economic development it inherited.
“But we also refused to glorify impossibilities. We met great problems but we also mobilised great courage and inventiveness to solve them together.
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“We assembled a multidisciplinary team of consultants to develop our New Direction Blueprint as a governance roadmap to help focus our efforts in executing the promises we made to Kogites,” the governor said.
He further said that his administration had worked assiduously to fulfill the mandate the people entrusted to it for two tenures, adding that the regime had executed life-transforming projects across the length and breadth of Kogi State from cities to towns, villages and even hamlets.
He listed some of the projects to include “Confluence University of Science and Technology (CUSTECH), Osara; Confluence Rice Mill, Ejiba; GYB Model Science Secondary Schools and Muhammadu Buhari Square (Civic Centre) at Lokoja.
“Hundreds of kilometres of urban and rural roads; water supply schemes; a State Universal Healthcare Insurance Scheme and simply uncountable number of projects sited everywhere you look in Kogi State.”
He however, conceded that no single governor could completely rebuild a society within the time available to one administration.
“But even if we vacate office today, we can live with a clear conscience, confident that we did our best for Kogites with the time and resources available to us,” he said.
