By Marufh Bello
Governor of Oyo State, South West Nigeria, Engr. Seyi Makinde, says that his government has blocked the loopholes through which public funds were siphoned.
He said he had also asked his entire government team to shelve gratification till the state’s Internally Generated Revenue (IGR) improved in order to achieve good governance and all-round development promised the people of the state.
Governor Makinde stated this in Ibadan during his statewide quarterly media chat with the people of the state, when he was asked how he would get funds for the humongous projects he had in the pipeline for Oyo State people.
The governor said, in a bid to get funds to execute the projects cutting across all sectors, he had blocked leakages and avoided waste of resources revealing that all the 60 different accounts operated by the last regime had been put in control under a single account.
Governor Makinde stated that, apart from the state hospitals, his government was trying to revitalise the primary health care centres across the state so as to make access to medical attention easier for the common people, while stressing that all the 600 centres were ghosts of themselves.
As part of effort to re-engineer the primary health care system in the state, the governor said that government would rehabilitate and put in a functional order about 351 of the centres while the remaining would be concessioned to private operators who were willing to take up the task, adding that the health insurance scheme would also be re-energised as we were trying to get accurate data on the operations of the scheme so as to know how to position it for the benefits of the people.
The governor stated further that there were no facilities such as drugs, medical equipment and electricity in the centres as many of them still made use of paraffin lanterns, adding that there would be an independent power station in the state before the end of this tenure.
Regarding agric sector, the governor stated that his administration would key in and make use of the research findings and recommendations of the research institutes in Ibadan to complement his agricultural programmes as captured in his roadmap for the state.
The governor said, “We will complete the remaining 3-kilometer stretch of the Akala expressway” along New Garage-Apata axis as part of his administration’s plans to decongest the metropolitan roads in the state while “we’ll do more of such projects to ease transport congestions”, adding that alternatives had to be provided if we were to discourage street trading, “which I quite agree is dangerous.”
On the implementation and payment of the #30,000 minimum wage to workers, Governor Makinde informed that a committee had been set up to resume negotiation on the matter, while stating that all reinstated workers sacked by the immediate past administration would duly return to their duty posts as soon as they picked up their letters of reinstatement.
