Excerpts:
Alert on security
First, let me say that so far, so good. At the national level, security wise, many of us are in tune with the happenings and we still have the challenge of terrorism, which is still ranging in the north eastern part of Nigeria. Once in a while, there are bombings in various parts of the country.
The effect of that is being felt around the country and if anything happens in any part of the country, the way Nigeria is, you have a relation that might be affected; and beyond, there is also the fact that there are some influx of people from the northern part of Nigeria into Delta and other parts of southern Nigeria. There is also an increase in the number of persons, who are internally displaced who are coming down this way.
For us, as long as anybody coming into the state will not give us any security challenge, we would manage the influx, but for those that would come into the state, especially illegally, I need to emphasis this. Those who are coming into Nigeria illegally are not welcome here, they are not Nigerians and are doing such illegally . In other climes, once you enter a country illegally and you are caught the person is deported. We have asked our immigration department to fish out the illegal nationals and send them back home.
Dropping
Kidnapping is reducing, we cannot say it is over as we still have flashes of kidnappings here and there, but I think we are doing well in trying to handle that challenge.
Iselegu/Ibabu land dispute
The other challenge we have is about communal clashes. In the Ndokwa area, we have had the Iselegu and Ibabu communities having communal clashes so much so that it got to a point that they started coming to the Ughelli/Asaba road and even attacked travelers leading to the death of a professor on the road. What we did, first, was to bring truce to the area and then mobilized security agencies to the area to stop the fight and do a thorough search to bring out all the illegal weapons in those communities. We then set up a judicial panel of inquiry that will dig into the origin of the crisis and of course proffer a solution to the crisis.
Gas city controversy
The other community that was of concern during our last briefing was in Warri South West, where the Gas City is coming up and of course you know the kind of publications that the Ijaw and Itsekiri nationalities have been on. I had to eventually call all the stakeholders to Asaba here and we held a meeting and agreed that I put up a committee headed by the Deputy Governor to look into some of the issues there and that committee will start work in the next few days.
Know -your -neighbor campaign
One of the things that I have strived to propagate is the issue of, “Know your neighbour.” Who is your neighbour in the same compound and the next house? This is important so that when anybody comes to your area that you do not know or somebody with a suspicious life, let us say yesterday, he was riding a bicycle, today he is driving a Hummer Jeep, you must at least find out the origin of the Hummer Jeep. So, this know- your -neighbour campaign is still on and we must know our neighbours especially our landlords. You must know who the tenant is. And if you do not have money to complete your buildings, you must monitor it and not allow illegal persons to take over such buildings.
Our flooding challenge
For us as a state, we are continuing with our infrastructure development. But in this raining season, flooding is big challenge to us like other states in the Niger Delta region. Each year, we try to work had to minimize the effects of flooding, but I do not know of any governor in Nigeria that can say I can deal with flooding and there will be no flooding in my state.
.Roads
Now, let me say this, there is no way this administration can construct all the roads in the state in eight years. It is not possible. Another eight years and another governor cannot complete all the roads in the state. You know because, sometimes I read and I hear oh, this particular road in this place has not been done and so the government is not doing anything. It’s not possible for us to do all the roads, but as we get funds, we would continue to work on them and do the best that we can. If we complete all the roads and all the schools, then there is no need to bring a governor after me. So we do the much we can and same applies to schools and every other project or sector.
My way of renovating schools
In the state, there are over 600 schools, both primary and secondary and there is no way I can do all of them as most of them require rehabilitation. So, if you go and pick the ones that I have not done and go and publish them, if am asked, I would say yes, I have not reached there and the next governor would do that. I will show people the ones that I have done. What I am trying to say is that we would do as much as we can. When I started, I had a reservation about picking one building in a school instead of the whole school; I prefered to take a school and complete it comprehensively. But we were forced to do some work on some schools where there were shortages of classrooms and some of the blocks were very bad. For your interest, for this year, some have been approved; some have been awarded while some are in the process of award.
No flyover collapsed in Asaba
Also, we have our fly-overs that are ongoing. At a time I read about the fly-over that collapsed in Asaba and some people died. When they asked me, I said there is no fly-over there yet, there has to be fly-over before it collapses. When I read the report, the picture on that particular write-up was the Effurun fly-over, but the story was about the Asaba fly-over. There might be some caving in of sand, but I do not think any fly-over collapsed in Delta.
DBS digitalization
Another infrastructure I want to talk about is the DBS Stations at Warri and Asaba. Now, let me just explain what happened. There is a national policy on the digitalization of our broadcasting houses. It used to be analogue and we were told to migrate from analogue to digital broadcasting and that must be in place by 2015. For us in Delta, we have started the process and have awarded the contract to a company called Confax that have done such works in other places.
Don’t tarnish Tony Iredia’s image
That contract was awarded to Confax which has nothing to do with Dr. Tony Iredia. I need to emphasize that and stress it again. Because Dr. Tony Iredia is someone who has made his name in broadcasting and I feel very sad that people are trying to drag his name down. Even before we awarded this contract, I went to meet him and said, “Oga, you have experience, come and help us with our broadcasting houses.” He is a friend and elder brother and he is a columnist with Sunday Vanguard. That was how I brought him in even before this contract came up and the first thing he did was to give us, members of the State Executive Council, a seminar on management because he is also a management guru and we had a seminar on management and I said, see how you can help in the training of our broadcasters, both in Asaba and at Warri, that is the relationship we have with him.
As part of it, I said as they are installing the equipment, you may also have a look at it. I think it is unfair to try and drag his name down.
He was not given the contract for the installation of the equipment. His contract is that of training and that was all. I feel pained and bad about dragging his name to it because we have pen and paper and we have a medium that can take anything.
Game changer
Finally, on the issue of the Local Government election, politically all over Nigeria, though other political parties do not like hearing this, PDP is still the number one party in Nigeria. Yes, we had our challenges last year, but things are turning around. We have a game changer in our national chairman and things are changing. Of course, all of you are witnesses to what happened in the Ekiti election where PDP won clearly. Osun election is coming up and it is likely the same thing would be repeated.
So, we are taking them one by one and by the time we get to the Presidential election, you would see that the difference will be clear. For us at the national level of PDP, it is no shaking and for the state, PDP is getting stronger and stronger every day. A lot of people are coming back to the PDP.
I‘ve not anointed anybody
Now, what I have said and what we are doing is that as much as possible, leaders should come together and try to reduce the tension. There are some local governments that as many as 13 persons have shown interest, but only one person would emerge and we need to manage that kind of situation because ones you have picked ticket, you consider yourself as the local council chairman. Let me say this that I have not anointed anybody in any local government council. As a human being, I have my interest but because I am the governor, I need to be very careful in managing that interest but there is no aspirant that is anointed.
Credit: Vanguard
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