Governor of Ondo State, Oluwarotimi Akeredolu, has said that no state or nation, including the United States of America (USA), can exist without borrowing.
Akeredolu made this declaration while fielding questions from journalists after submitting his expression of interest and nomination forms at the All Progressives Congress (APC), national secretariat in Abuja.
The governor, who is seeking the party’s ticket to contest second term in the October 10, Ondo Governorship election, said he had since inception been spending within limits as he inherited debts that had been paid back.
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“We have paid the debt we met before we initiated a move to have a borrowing of N30 billion. At the end of the day, 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. We have to pay salaries that are 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 to 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% with your own money before we start paying you that allows for quality jobs,” he said.
Akeredolu further disclosed plans to improve the Internally Generated Revenue (IGR) in state to N4 billion per month after the COVID-19, which is negatively impacting economic activities not only in the State but across the country.
“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 it 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 – N4 billion per month,” he said.
On the defection of Governor Godwin Obaseki from APC, the Ondo governor said: “Let me be fair to all of us, and I know that you will be fair to me too, that for now, most of us who are in the party have decided that, ‘look, this is not the time to talk about our party or apportion blames’. We will wait. The time will be there for us to look at what the party has done and by then I will be able to respond accordingly”.
