This
is the full text of the inaugural speech of the 6th civilian governor
of Ondo State, Arakunrin Oluwarotimi Odunayo, SAN, on the 24th of
February, 2017 tagged 'Journey To Redemption'.
Governor Rotimi Akeredolu
Humbled by the uncommon kindness of the Almighty God and an
unequivocal expression of preference by the good people of Ondo State,
exemplified by the victory of our great party at the last gubernatorial
election, I am extremely delighted to share with you all the joy of this
day of glory.We are grateful to Almighty God for granting this state
such a beautiful day and a beautiful moment like this.
I thank the President of the Federal Republic of Nigeria and leader
of our great party, President Muhammadu Buhari GCFR, for his leadership
and unwavering stance to support what is just and noble. Today’s
celebration would, perhaps, have been impossible without his steely
disposition to always stand against all acts not in consonance with
decency, probity and justice.
I thank the President of Senate, Dr. Bukola Saraki and the Speaker
of the House of Representatives Hon. Yakubu Dogara. I thank all APC
Governors who stood to be counted with us in our hour of need andother
eminent Nigerians too numerous to mention.
An especial reverence must be reserved for our indefatigable party
chairman, Chief John Odigie Oyegun, whose strict adherence to lofty
principles and doggedness laid the foundation for our resounding victory
at the polls. This exemplary leader behaved like a true elder, whose
sagely presence in the village square not only professed rectitude but
acted it, resolutely, affirming nobility of the human spirit. Our party
benefitted, tremendously, from his vast experience in public service. We
are eternally grateful. The verdict of history shall be kind to him.
We express our profound appreciation to all the leaders of the
party, at the national, state, local government, ward and unit levels,
for their untiring and selfless efforts during the election.
May I also use this opportunity to pay tribute to those who have
served this state in this capacity, both living and departed, for their
invaluable contributions to the development of the state. On behalf of
our State, I pay tribute to Governor OlusegunAbdulramanMimiko for his
several years of service toOndo State. I thank all our guests and
friends both far and near who have taken it upon themselves to be here
or sent words. I thank all citizens of Ondo state, particularly our
resilient youths and women.
I come to you this day, with a message of hope, a clear agenda of
prosperity and a vision of life abundant. I believe the greatest
expression of faith in our ability is to be strong enough to look upon
our imperfections and decide that it is in our power to remake our
society to align with our highest ideals.
We can rise out of this dust and build a new Ondo state where
honesty, prosperity and confidence can once again be our self-identity.
We can pull ourselves by the bootstraps and shake off our current
frustrations and disappointments. We must recognise the need for a
cohesive platform, indispensable to an effective and efficient
implementation of policies and programmes of both government and party,
respectively.
Divergence of opinions is integral to party politics. We are bound
to disagree as politicians but we must cast aside bitter recriminations
and destructive predilections. Democracy thrives on infinite
multiplicity of ideas. Popular participation is one of its fundamental
norms. The subordination of individual preferences for the collective
will is essential if we are to avoid anarchy. Party supremacy should be
respected at all times. This should not be difficult for us to accept if
we are truly desirous of bringing about positive change in the lives of
our people.
We listened to the voices of our people in the course of our
campaigns to all the nooks and crannies of the state. We heard themloud
and clear through their votes. We witnessed, first hand, the deplorable
conditions under which they exist. To those who cast their ballots in
favour of our programmes, your trust is not misplaced. We are determined
to make the difference with the specific mandate of redemption
liberally handed over to us. Those who expressed other preferences are
no less patriotic. Before long their anxieties will be addressed,
realistically. All of us will be involved in the reconstruction project.
The collective interest of the state must be our paramount focus.
Consequently,we stand before you to pledge, with the guidance of God and
our resolve not to renege on our promise, that your welfare shall form
the basis of all our activities.
To achieve this, the main mission of our administration is
therefore to lead a patriotic, highly inspired and competent team to
rescue the ship of our state. We intend to help rebuild our economy,
resuscitate damaged infrastructure, restore hope and return our state to
a prosperous land. We are determined as an administration to break down
the barriers that have made stagnation possible. We will break down the
barriers to honest leadership, to comprehensive development, to
physical growth and social security. These we intend to do through the
promotion of transparent leadership, rule of law, extensive
consultation, quality and accessible public utilities and social
security; all in a sustainable manner.
We acknowledge the enormous challenges faced by the state and the
severely limited resources available to meet these ever-increasing and
compelling demands. In readiness for this enormous task ahead, I have
two months ago inaugurated a Strategic Development and Policy
Implementation Committee comprising of eminent and very knowledgeable
Nigerians to produce and articulate a compressive change policy and
programme blueprint. They have since submitted their preliminary report.
This blueprint is anchored on five cardinal programmes,
which are popularly known as our Platforms for Change (JMPPR). These
are:
1. Job creation through Agriculture, Entrepreneurship and Industrialisation.
2. Massive Infrastructural development and maintenance.
3. Provision of functional Education and Technological growth.
4. Provision of Accessible and Qualitative Health care and social service delivery.
5. Rural Development and Community Extension services.
This platform for Change is erected on strong pillars, which
consist of the core sectors of government activities that our blueprint
lays emphasis on. These are Finance and Management of state resources,
Health and Social Services, Infrastructure and Public utilities,
Agriculture and Natural resources, Commerce and Industrial development,
Education and Technology, Land, Housing and Environment, Women Affairs
and Social Development, Youth and Sports development, Culture and
Tourism as well as Information, Civic orientation and Mobilisation among
others.
Our blueprint when unveiled shall explain in details our
philosophy, vision, sectoral policies and comprehensive Programmes of
action clearly calendared over a period of a tenure of four years. With
this document our pact with the people will be clear, our path well
defined and expectations clearly understood.
In building the structure to deliver on our campaign promises, I
come to you with a clear mind and an honest heart, to serve and give the
very best of my ability to restore Hope and Happiness to our people. I
urge you to see hope the way I see it. I see hope with limitless
boundaries for endless opportunities for all of us. I see hope for
progress, stability and prosperity for all people of goodwill who are
willing to contribute their quota to developing our state to a land of
honourable, contented, smart, honest, diligent and patriotic people. I
see hope for self-confidence, job security and increased commerce and
economic production. I see hope for redemption and renewal of our broken
infrastructure, and social values.
But make no mistake about it; our journey to redemption will not be
without stress and undulating curves. There are mountains before us to
climb. As we climb up these steep mountains. Sometimes we may trip or
slip, we will get back up. We will focus on the journey. We will never
stop. We will never stop. We will never stop. In the end we will reach
our goal, which is to bring back jobs to our youths, food to families,
safety, confidence and prosperity to this land.
For all these to happen, I am humbly going to ask ONLY one thing
from you, good people of Ondo state. What I ask for is Attitude. We need
to come with an attitude of belief and transformation. Indeed, in all
successful cultures and societies, attitude is the spirit and driver of
victory.
Ladies and gentlemen, for us to see the change we all desire, we
must be ready to constitute ourselves into change evangelists with
exceptional missionary zeal to succeed. We must know that the man in the
mirror is you and I. We need to have faith and find courage in the
words of the good scripture thatsays, “Those who hope in the Lord will
renew their strength. They will soar on wings like eagles. They will run
and not grow weary. They will walk and not be faint.”
I believe if we combine these abilities with the force of
Providence, a lot of great deeds will happen. We shall not subject
ourselves to any specious and unproductive stereotypes, which find
expression in the usual egregious celebration of the passage of time
spent in office as achievement. We will be too busy to notice the pace
of the itinerary of the administration.
Our state is particularly lucky. We have men and women of quality.
We set the pace for others in the not too distant past. The country
depended, to a very great extent, on our resourcefulness. We
contributed, immensely, to the GDP of the country at a time when
agriculture was the mainstay of the country’s economy. Our people were
exemplars in virtually all fields of human endeavour. The story is,
painfully, different today.
The fault, as the saying goes, is not in our stars but in ourselves
that our fortunes have dwindled, considerably, and we have become
underlings. We have transited, regrettably, from a producing economy to a
basically consumptive society, which depends, almost solely, on
handouts to survive. The resultant effect of this unproductive attitude
is grinding poverty, desperation and hopelessness among our people.
It is a cruel irony that a state, richly endowed in material and
human resources, wallows in inexplicable privation. Our unproductive
taste has sustained the dichotomy between the rural areas and the urban
centres. All attempts at improving infrastructural deficits seem
concentrated at the capital of the state. Government intervention, where
available, has been grossly inadequate in addressing the socio-economic
challenges faced by the masses. Our administration shall, decidedly,
try to close the gap between the hinterland and urban centres. Real
development can only be actualized and accentuated through an active
symbiosis between the two, an understanding predicated on collaboration
and co-existence designed for amity and progress. Our people will be
encouraged to participate in the massive reconstruction contemplated by
our administration in this regard.
Any honest indigene of the state must be disturbed by the crisis in
the educational sector at present. The philosophy of education,
conceived on the idea of functionality for improved living by our
forbears, has been reduced to a routine certification ritual, the
culmination of which is the award of certificates, diplomas and degrees
to graduates who are left more confused than when they enrolled in
school. The unemployment crisis, apart from being a global
socio-economic phenomenon, is self-inflicted.
If education is the nurturing, training and mobilization of those
who live in a society to confront the challenges of development, faced,
primarily, by the people in that environment, the current situation
confirms that we have since departed from that well-trodden path for a
very long time now.It is a big shame that a state, which was a clear
leader in education in the country, now lags behind. It appears that our
curricula at all levels of training have failed to produce experts
whose contributions to the growth of the economy are needed. Our
administration will strive to reverse this unfortunate trend by
promoting functional education aimed at real development. We shall also
revisit the issue of vocational training with a view to improving the
skills of our artisans.
We recognize that the issue of unemployment is endemic. We equally
understand that the greatest employer of labour, at a time such as this
challenging period, is the private sector. The government will ensure
that the environment remains peaceful and conducive for economic
activities. In addition, we shall deploy considerable energy into
agriculture. Through this, we hope to generate employment for the
teeming youths. This administration will do everything possible to
encourage investment in agriculture. Our youths must be ready for
training necessary to kick-start this mission.
We must begin to deemphasize white-collar jobs. The era of
unproductive civil service is winding to a close, gradually. The current
economic realities make the deployment of the unemployed to other
sectors, other than agriculture and rural development, unsustainable. We
must train our youths to acquire entrepreneurial skills as a corollary
to our programme on agriculture.
The health care delivery system currently operating in the state
will be sustained and improved upon. We shall adopt a deliberate policy
to ensure that our people have access to health care regardless of their
social status. We intend, within the available resources, to provide
qualitative primary health care delivery system to the rural populace.
Health care centres in the rural areas will be accessible and
functional.
Our policy on massive infrastructural development will seek to open
up the hinterland through our roads and waterways. Our state has the
longest coastline in the country. It is unthinkable that all economic
activities are restricted to land while our waterways are abandoned.
Opening up the hinterland will reduce, drastically, the perennial
rural-urban drift and encourage our sons and daughters who live outside
the state to consider returning home to contribute their own quota. The
economic propensities of such a venture will be, unimaginably,
exponential.
We are all witnesses to the negative impact that our local economy
has been subjected to as a result of over-reliance on federally
allocated funds for even the most basic recurrent expenditure items. It
is high time that we looked inwards and come up with a solution that
ensures we are sustainable and viable as a collective entity.
We shall develop a comprehensive Development Plan that focuses on
leveraging our collective resources and areas of comparative advantage
for the benefit of our people. The plan will detail our philosophy and
response to surviving in this harsh economic climate. In addition to
this, it will also take a medium term view to our economic development
on an overall basis, and more importantly ensure that we remain
consistently above board during economic booms and bursts.
We will adopt a collaborative approach to get this done by ensuring
that we engage with the other segments of the public sector, as well as
the private sector in developing and implementing our ideas of
transforming the economy of our great State within the shortest possible
period.
All these lofty aspirations will remain a mirage if those saddled
with the responsibility of implementing the decisions of the government
do not support with dedication, honesty and patriotism.
I acknowledge the very important role that the Civil Service has
played, and continues to play in the development of our beloved State. I
understand the challenges, and these are quite apparent to those within
and outside the system. We will work towards addressing these
challenges in delivering on our mandate to our people. We particularly
seek the support and cooperation of the Civil Service and all organs of
labour. We will drive efficiency through capacity building and training
needs assessment targeted at retooling our civil servants. Be rest
assured that your welfare, training, capacity building and the overall
interests of our people will be one of the highest pillars of our
mandate.
We acknowledge the constraints that our current financial situation
will place on our ability to deliver on our mandate. We however,
believe that an adequate focus on transforming the current
socio-economic status of our State will lead to substantial internally
generated revenue for our State. We believe that Ondo State has the
required resources – human and material to ensure our sustainability in
the short, medium and long term.
We are looking at building on our existing relationships with local
and international development partners. Many of them have been there
for us in the time past, and we reach out to them, especially at the new
dawn in the administration of our State.I am therefore using this
opportunity to reach out to businesses, manufacturers, private investors
as well as potential international partners. You are welcome to Ondo
State. We commit to partner with you in developing the economic
potentials of our State for the benefit of all our stakeholders.
The collective deployment of our resources, combined with those of
our neighboring and sister States cannot be over-emphasized. Our
administration believes that we can achieve a lot more if we work with a
number of our sister State Governments to ensure that certain
development efforts (infrastructure or otherwise) are channeled in such a
way as to deliver maximum benefits for the participating States. We
believe we don’t have to build or develop everything ourselves. There is
a lot we can gain if we harmonise efforts and resources to build
enduring assets that can cater for the needs of every one of us.
Security of lives and property shall be guaranteed. Our
administration will protect all and sundry. We will act in the interest
of everyone. We will be there for all. All those who will add value to
governance in the state shall be engaged. We believe that the inputs and
participation of every stakeholder is required for us to succeed and
deliver our mandate. We will provide numerous avenues for direct
engagement with our people. Whether you are civil servants, market
women, students, vulnerable groups, artisans, professionals, we will
have specific means of reaching out to you to feel your pulse, and more
importantly to seek inputs into programs and policies that will directly
impact your lives.
Ladies and gentlemen, it is indeed a brand new day! With the
assistance of the Almighty God and the good people of Ondo State, we
hope to take the state out of the morass of privation, hopelessness and
desperation. The welfare of our people shall be the fundamental
objective and directive principle of governance in Ondo State.
Your Excellencies, My lords, ladies and gentlemen and my good
people of Ondo state, the hour is here and our Journey to
Redemptioncommences now. And to God Almighty, the creator of heaven and
earth, the author and finisher of all things perfect and excellent I
say:
“Forth in thy name oh Lord I go,
my daily labour to pursue,
thee only thee resolved to know,
in all I think or speak or do.
The task thy wisdom has assigned
o’ let me cheerfully fulfil
in all my works thy presence find
and prove thy acceptable will”.
Long live Ondo State,
Long Federal Republic of Nigeria.
I thank you very much for listening. God bless.
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