Oyo First Initiative (OFI), a youth group within the All Progressives Congress in Oyo State has urged Governor Oluseyi Makinde to work towards sustaining the legacy of developmental governance put in place by his immediate predecessor, Senator Abiola Ajimobi, who did his best to uplift the standard of living of the people.
Apparently reacting to the controversies surrounding the plan to utilize a loan of N7.6b by the Oyo State government, OFI said in a statement issued at the weekend in Ibadan by its State Coordinator, Comrade Ayo Adekanmbi, that the present administration needed to wake up and face the business of governance with all seriousness it deserved.
“It is time Gov. Makinde is told in a plain language that trying to erase the indelible footprint of Sen. Ajimobi from history book of the Pacesetter State would amount to an exercise in futility since the record of achievements of successive administrations would always be available for the whole to see. As it stands today, Ajimobi administration is adjudged the best thing to have happened to the state since its creation in 1976.
“It is on record that Sen. Ajimobi came into office in 2011 fully prepared. He realized that the bulk of resources available to the state would be going into servicing recurrent expenditures and he started laying a foundation that would yield prosperity for the state in the nearest future by prioritizing infrastructural development which revolved around improved security architecture and modern physical infrastructure.
“To realize this lofty objective, the option of controlled borrowing to finance key projects became inevitable. If the state government’s wage bill was N5.2b and the monthly allocations hovered between N2b and N4.5b for the eight year period, what magic could have produced many dualized roads in all the major cities, ultra modern overhead bridges, reliable security and effective crime control, Model schools, sustained beautification and urban renewal projects, upgrade of health/medical facilities in public hospitals and many more?
“When the Ajimobi was working round the clock to ensure a great future for the state, Engr. Makinde made campaign of calumny the hallmark of his electioneering and this culminated in the constant inflation of the state’s debt profile on several occasions until the Debt Management Office (DMO) came up with the true picture recently.
“To set the record straight, it is true that the immediate past administration applied for the said N7.6b loan to achieve an all-encompassing agricultural development goal but the loan request did not materialize. However, similar efforts manifested in the preponderance of grants and other funds which have been collected by the Makinde administration since it came into office. For example; the $611, 000 BESDA fund and the N2.8b UBEC fund made possible after Ajimobi had paid the Counterpart Fund. Same goes for the Primary Health Care (PHC) grant and the $200m World bank intervention fund from which the past administration only spent less than 30 per cent.
“All these were monies secured by the Ajimobi administration for developmental purposes and are now accessible to the present administration without anybody raising an eyebrow since government is a continuum. Meanwhile, the honeymoon has since been over for Engr. Makinde and it would be unfortunate if he relied on the pseudo populism which earned him the declaration as the winner of the last gubernatorial election in the state by INEC.” Adekanmbi said.
Related
