Opinion

Who endorsed President Buhari ‘s “APER” Forms? Part 2

Published

2 years ago

October 27, 2022

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By Tunde Olusunle

At no time in Nigeria’s socioeconomic evolution has the economy been on the free fall and downward slide, as has been witnessed under Buhari’s watch. Nigeria survived two recessions under the incumbent administration, and was in the throes of a third affliction. One of these was evidently self-inflicted, while the second was a fallout of the global COVID-19 economic meltdown. Buhari’s tardy handling of his assumption of office processes in 2015, which held up the appointment of ministers and similar functionaries for six months, instigated the first experience. It meant there were no ready-to-run drivers of policy and governance, following Buhari’s May 29, 2015 inauguration, which adversely impacted socioeconomic growth. The Nigerian Chambers of Commerce, Industries, Mines and Agriculture, (NACCIMA), earlier this year, raised fears of a possible third recession in the outgoing year, on account of the economy’s poor performance indexes.

The nation’s inflation rate ascended the highest in nearly 20 years, posting a record 21%. Nigeria’s computational ombudsman, the Nigeria Bureau of Statistics, (NBS) in its most recent report, observed that increases in the food index emanated from the rise in the prices of consumer items like bread, cereals, potatoes, yams, oil and fat. The NBS equally noted that increases in the prices of gas, liquid fuel, air transport, road travel and solid fuel, accentuated the inflationary figures. The NBS observed further, that soaring food prices, disruptions in food supply chain, rise in import cost due to currency depreciation, and increase in the cost of production, collectively account for the galloping inflationary trend. All of these are playing out, when salaries and earnings of Nigerians have remained static for several years now, purchasing power eroded by skyrocketing inflation.

Arising from the above, it is no surprise that Nigeria presently ranks number 103, out of 121 countries in the “Global Hunger Ranking Index.” This position, according to the survey, signifies that Nigeria “has a level of hunger that is serious.” The report which ranks countries by “severity,” ascribed a score of 27.3, a hunger level which places Nigeria in the category of “serious” cases. Sadly, the current assessment is the second consecutive year in which Nigeria’s position has remained the same. Hitherto, Nigeria had been decorated with the ignominious medal of the “poverty capital of the world.”

Nigeria of the Buhari milieu is a curious socioeconomic paradox, against the backdrop of the country’s robust earnings from crude oil sales within the period under review. According to the Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries, (OPEC), Nigeria realised $206 Billion, between 2015 and 2019. This works out at an average of $50 Billion per financial year. Yet, the country has been a serial borrower from several global lenders, piling up debts and commitments for generations unborn. As at June 2022, Nigeria’s foreign debt was $40.1.3 Billion. Elsewhere, the Debt Management Office, (DMO), has suggested that domestic debt was $63.24 Billion, as at September 2022.

Under Buhari, Nigeria has recorded its worst ever unemployment rates which has witnessed the addition of 17 million more people, to the unemployment market. The World Bank has noted the sharp upward swing of out-of-job people since the 2015-2016 economic recession. According to the report, the unemployment rate in Nigeria was at least 33.3% in the last quarter of 2020. Tied to this according to the report, is the rate of Nigerian asylum seekers in other countries, including professional and skilled people, questing for better opportunities, elsewhere. The report estimates that as at 2019, migrants from Nigeria had risen to about 1.5 million people, from about a third of the number 30 years earlier.

Conflicting figures suggest that Nigeria has lost between 6000 and 9000 medical doctors and paramedics, to the USA, United Kingdom, Canada and the United Arab Emirates, (UAE), under Buhari’s superintendence. The Kaduna State chapter of the Nigeria Medical Association, (NMA), has put the figure at over 10,000 in the last seven years. Information technology experts are also moving out in droves. The “brain regain” which democratic governance offered during the Olusegun Obasanjo regime and which witnessed the homecoming of many Nigerians, has been reversed under Buhari, into a biting brain drain. People are fleeing harsh economic circumstances at home, where desperation has driven many to explore dangerous routes like stowaway travel on the seas and oceans.

Mental health disorders have become more rampant under this government. Suicides in various forms have become more rampant than ever before. The social media is replete with instances of distraught and despairing Nigerians jumping into rivers or lagoons as the case may be. In other cases, people put a rope around their necks and hang themselves, while others wilfully consume poisonous substances, desiring to punctuate their earthly traumas. The Association of Psychiatrists in Nigeria, (APN) had reason in the immediate past, to exhort President Buhari to give assent to the “Mental Health Bill,” as passed by the National Assembly.

Buhari must have posted a new record in the length of industrial action, by university lecturers in Nigeria. Under the aegis of the Academic Staff Union of Universities, (ASUU), university lecturers embarked on a strike on February 14, 2022, to press for better working conditions. They sought a review of their remuneration and advocated better teaching facilities. A typically reticent and introverted Buhari could not as much as engage the scholars himself, leaving floundering members of his cabinet to dialogue with the university teachers. The subsequent intervention of the federal parliament brokered a truce which witnessed the reopening of universities, eight full months after they were shut. This is the kind of non-committal leadership Buhari has availed Nigeria.

Nepotism and cronyism have never been as obscene and pronounced over the years like we’ve witnessed in the past seven and half years. A disturbing slant to this practice is the blatant privileging of people who subscribe to the same religion as the outgoing helmsman, in consideration for appointments, deployments, even patronage in business dealings with MDAs. References have been made to appointments to the headship and critical hubs of the intelligence and security system for instance. The figures read like 80% to the North, and 20% to the South. Vacancies in the public service are almost always filled by candidates from the President’s geocultural catchment. It is that bad.

The battle against corruption was one of Buhari’s cardinal campaign pledges, but the malaise has very evidently prospered under his watch. Several so-called poverty alleviation programmes and initiatives of the Buhari regime have been virtual cesspools of graft. From the dubious “school feeding programme,” through the fictitious poverty mitigation “palliatives,” humongous quantums of our commonwealth have ended up in private pockets. What has become of the tradermoni programme for instance? Open-ended, freestyle initiatives by ministries like that of Disaster Management and Humanitarian Affairs meant to reach the poor and needy, have made billionaires of many government officials and their fronts.

Last year, Buhari’s regime declared wanted a certain “Aboubakar Hima” from Niger Republic, who “defrauded” Nigeria of $400 Million, N400 Million and €10 Million, respectively. This adds up to about N200 Billion supposedly frittered by officials of the Buhari government. The said Aboubakar Hima, was allegedly availed the sums, for the procurement of armaments for the military. Despite this singular heist which is larger than the annual budgets of many states, Buhari, the Commander-in-Chief, has not moved against his intelligence and security apparatus. Till date, not one head has rolled. Rather, those who were directly involved, have been decorated with national honours and rewarded with ambassadorial appointments. Should we allude to the ding-dong in the Niger Delta Development Commission, (NDDC), an organisation which has been deployed as an “automated teller machine,” (ATM), by successive interim managements?

The reward system under this government leaves much to be desired. The list of honorees at the recent National Awards event, was a decoration of aides and allies of the President in most instances. The real contributions of several awardees to national development, or indeed their professional callings, is best imagined. How do we explain the beatification of the Education Minister, Adamu Adamu for instance, when he could not resolve a strike by university lecturers, over a stretch of eight months? Residents of the Federal Capital Territory, (FCT) in some districts were bearing protest placards berating zero governance, when the Minister, Mohammed Musa Bello was being honoured. Buhari’s family members and personal aides, featured prominently on the list, underlining the wholesale bastardisation of the process. The question therefore should be asked: What parameters were deployed in the consideration of beneficiaries of the awards?

Buhari’s insensitivity to topical issues bothering on national angst, is legendary. Within the last one month, floods have overrun several states in the country. Six hundred and thirty lives have been lost, property valued at billions of naira have also been washed away by the deluge. Over one million Buhari constituents have been displaced and herded into camps for internally displaced persons, (IDPs). The new King of England, Charles III among other foreign dignitaries, has sympathised with Nigeria. While commissioning a “flood prevention plan” to be articulated within 90 days, however, Buhari travelled to South Korea for the first edition of the “World Bio Summit!”

Directly linked to this is his record for impulsive foreign travel and gross absenteeism since his inauguration on May 29, 2015. Not even Obasanjo, an acknowledged global statesman, came any close to Buhari’s achievements in worldwide excursions. And they are mostly wrong-headed, without concomitant accruals to the nation’s socioeconomy. As at the first week of August 2021, Buhari had spent 200 days in the UK for medical reasons. Indeed, a few weeks to the expiration of his first term in office, he had grossed 404 days, (one calendar year and 39 days), on intercontinental voyeurism, to 33 countries on four continents! Not even the biker- journalist, Moshood Olabisi Adisa Ajala, celebrated in the song with the title Ajala, by the revered juju music exponent, Ebenezer Obey, came any close.

More recently, the President grossed 12 foreign trips within the first six months of this year, raising concerns about the looming inadequacy of the budgetary provision for foreign travel, for the year. This was followed by the September jamboree to the US by Buhari in the guise of participation in the 2022 United Nations General Assembly, (UNGA). Government offices in Abuja emptied into the streets of New York, as hundreds of public servants floated around the iconic city, bearing bulging shopping bags. Instructively, Buhari’s trips almost always, coincide with moments of national challenges requiring minimum concern and empathy from a leader. But he has consecutively failed on this score, underscoring his trademark nonchalance and chronic insensitivity.

For all his pre-election pretences as a “newborn democrat,” Buhari has failed in the development of democratic institutions. The homes of senior judges were invaded in the dead of night by agents of the state supposedly tracking phantom proceeds of corruption. In the same vein, Buhari watched with arms akimbo, as a sitting Chief Justice of the Federation, (CJN), Walter Onnoghen, was framed and disgracefully ousted from office. His successor, Ibrahim Muhammad Tanko, would voluntarily retire, in a hail of accusations and allegations of corruption. The parliament remains attached to the apron-strings of the executive, rarely dissenting, customarily conceding to the bidding and demands of its “benefactors.” While the incumbent legislature has self-adulated as a “performing” one, vis-a-vis the number of bills it has passed, the same assembly has been fingered in “budget padding” and collusion with ministries, departments and agencies, (MDAs). BudgIT Nigeria, a civic-tech organisation early this year announced its discovery of about 460 duplicated projects valued at N378.9 Billion.

It is not in the place of Buhari to festoon himself with medals and accolades celebrating his perceived achievements and successes. No. It is indeed most uncharitable, wrong and absolutely presumptuous for him to be both the student and the examiner, the prosecutor and the adjudicator in a matter which directly concerns him. With the benefit of hindsight, Nigerians have been practically robbed by a President and the platform which granted him leverage. He was elected to serve Nigeria and Nigerians. The responsibility for how his appraisal and acquittal as the case may pan out therefore, lies squarely with the people, the electorate, who put him in office. Our scientific isolation of various strands of governance and administration and their interrogation thereof, unfortunately situates the President in the negative column of the assessment model.

An annual template could well have been applied as the research instrument as with the well known “APER” form, in checking out the President’s endeavours. A more broad-based analytical device in the mould of an Aggregate Performance Evaluation Report, also shortened by the APER acronym, could also have been deployed. Either way, Buhari’s performance is small comfort. His APER forms have not been endorsed both by his immediate supervisors, nor does it have the imprimatur of higher authorities, metaphorically. Nigerians have never wished for a faster denouement to their lachrymose of several years, like they wish for February 2023. They wish for that day like yesterday.

CONCLUDED

Tunde Olusunle, PhD, poet, journalist, scholar and author is a Member of the Nigerian Guild of Editors, (NGE).

Opinion

BENUE 2027:The Apa/Agatu Quest for Equity

Published

5 days ago

January 14, 2025

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By Tunde Olusunle

It may be well over two years to the next cycle of general elections in Nigeria. For the people of Apa/Agatu federal constituency in *Benue South, however, the measure of their participation and integration into the governance scheme will be defined in the run-up to the general polls that year. Nine local government areas make up the predominantly Idoma country of Benue State also labelled Zone C in the senatorial tripod of the geo-polity. The zone is also home to the Igede ethnic stock and the Etulo. Local government areas in “Benue Zone C” include: Apa, Agatu, Oju, Obi, Ado, Ogbadibo, Okpokwu, Otukpo and Ohimini. The other zones, Benue North East and Benue North West, are wholly dominated by the Tiv nationality, striding across 14 local government areas. They are christened Zone A and Zone B in the local political scheme of the state. Federal constituencies in Benue South are: Apa/Agatu, Oju/Obi; Ado/Ogbadibo/Opokwu and Otukpo/Ohimini.

The subjugation of groups and ethnicities considered demographically smaller, by the larger groups which has dominated Nigeria’s politics over time, has not been any different for the Idoma of Benue State. Until the circumstantial emergence of a Yahaya Bello from the Ebira ethnicity in Kogi State in 2015, the Igala had the relay baton of governorship of Kogi State, in rounds and succession. The Ebiras and the Okun-Yoruba zones in the state could only aspire to be serial deputies or Secretaries to the State Government. This political template was virtually cast in stone. The Ilorin people of Kwara State have similarly wholly warehoused the gubernatorial office, sparingly conceding the position to other sociocultural groups in the state. The only exception was the concession of the seat to a candidate from Kwara South, in the person of Abdulfatah Ahmed, by his predecessor, Bukola Saraki in 2011. Even at that, there were murmurs and dissent from those who believed Ahmed came from a community too close to the Ilorin emirate to be of genuine Igbomina stock, which prides itself as the pure Yoruba species in Kwara State.
Twenty-six years into the Fourth Republic, the maximum proximity of the Idoma to Government House, Makurdi, has been by the customary allocation of the Deputy Governor’s slot to its people. Ogirri Ajene from Oju/Obi, the charismatic blue-blood of blessed memory, was deputy to George Akume, incumbent Secretary to the Government of the Federation, (SGF), from 1999 to 2007. Akume it was reported, genuinely desired to be succeeded by Ajene who exhibited competence and loyalty and could build on their legacies. The Tiv nation we understand, shot down the proposal. Gabriel Suswam succeeded Akume and had the urbane multipreneur, Stephen Lawani from Ogbadibo as deputy. Samuel Ortom, a Minister in the Goodluck Jonathan presidency who took over from Suswam opted for Benson Abounu, an engineer from Otukpo as running mate, while Hyacinth Alia, the Catholic priest who succeeded Ortom, also chose as deputy, Samuel Ode, who was also a Minister in the Jonathan government, from Otukpo. Arising from this precedence, Apa/Agatu has not for once, been considered for a place in Government House, Makurdi.
In similar fashion, the position of Senator representing Benue South, has repeatedly precluded Apa/Agatu federal constituency. David Alechenu Bonaventure Mark a former army General from Otukpo, took the first shot at the office in 1999. He was to remain in the position for five consecutive times, a distinctive record by Nigerian standards. Mark would subsequently become President of the Senate and the third most senior political office holder in the nation’s governance scheme for a string of two terms between 2007 and 2015. He was replaced by Patrick Abba Moro, who hails from Okpokwu and was a former teacher, in 2019. Abba Moro who previously served as Minister of Interior in the Jonathan government from 2011 to 2015, won a second term at the 2023 general elections and remains substantive Senator for “Benue Zone C.” He is indeed incumbent Minority Leader of the Senate, and thus a principal officer in the leadership scheme of the “red chambers.”
While Moro is barely two years into his second term, there are suggestions that he is interested in a third term which should run from 2027 to 2031! This is the core issue which has dominated contemporary political discourse in Benue South, especially from the Apa/Agatu bloc. For Apa/Agatu, it is bad enough that they are repeatedly bypassed in the nomination of deputy governors in the scheme of state politics. It is worse that they are equally subjugated by their own kinsmen within the context of politics in *Idoma and Igede land.* This is particularly worrying when both local government areas constituting the Apa/Agatu federal constituency, Apa and Agatu, are not in anyway deficient in human resources to represent Benue South. Names like John Elaigwu Odogbo, the incumbent *Och’Idoma* and respected clergy; Isa Innocent Ekoja, renowned Professor and Librarian; Sonny Togo Echono, FNIA, OON, Executive Secretary, Tertiary Education Trust Fund, (TETFUND), and John Mgbede, Emeritus State Chairman of the Peoples Democratic Party, (PDP), Benue State, readily come to mind.
Major General R.I. Adoba, (rtd), a former Chief Training and Operations in the Nigerian Army; Professor Emmanuel Adanu, former Director of the Kaduna-based National Water Resources Institute, (NWRI) and the US-based specialist in internal medicine, Dr Raymond Audu, are eminent Apa/Agatu constituents. There are also Ada Egahi, long-serving technocrat who retired from the National Primary Healthcare Development Agency, (NPHDA), and Super Eagles forward, Moses Simon, (why not, hasn’t the retired soccer star, George Opong Weah just completed his term as President of Liberia)? The Member Representing Apa/Agatu in the House of Representatives, Godday Samuel Odagboyi, an office previously held by Solomon Agidani, as well as Adamu Ochepo Entonu, is, like his predecessors, a prominent figure from the resourceful Apa/Agatu federal constituency.
The Olofu brothers, Tony Adejoh, a retired Assistant Inspector General of Police, (AIG), and David, PhD, a renowned management and financial strategist, who is also an Emeritus Member of the Benue State Executive Council during the Ortom dispensation, are from the same federal constituency. So is Abu Umoru, a serial entrepreneur who represents Apa State Constituency in the Benue State House of Assembly. The continuing intra-zonal alienation of Apa-Agatu from the politics of Benue Zone C, remains a sore thumb which must be clinically diagnosed and intentionally treated in the run-up to 2027.
If previous top level political office holders from Idomaland in general and Apa/Agatu in particular, had diligently applied themselves to tangible, multisectoral development of the zone and constituency, the present clamour for inclusiveness would probably been less vociferous. *River Agatu* which flows from Kogi State, and runs through Agatu before emptying into *River Benue,* is a potential game changer in the socioeconomy of Apa/Agatu, Benue South and Benue State in general. Properly harnessed, it can revolutionise agriculture and aquaculture in the state, beyond subsistence levels which are the primary vocations of the indigenous people. Rice, yam, guinea corn, millet and similar grains, thrive in the fertile soils of the area. These can support “first level” processing of produce and guarantee value addition beneficial to the primary producers, before being shipped to other markets. River Agatu can indeed be dammed to provide hydro-electricity to power the entire gamut of Idomaland.
The infrastructure deficit in Benue South with specific reference to Apa/Agatu is equally very concerning. A notable pattern in Nigerian politics is its self-centeredness, the penchant for political players to prioritise their personal wellbeing and the development of their immediate space. This has accentuated the ever recurring desire of people to ascend the political pedestals of their predecessors if that is the principal window by which they can also privilege their own primary constituents. Motorable roads are non-existent, seamless travel between communities therefore encumbered. Expectedly this has been a major impediment to subsistent trade and social engagements between constituents and their kinsmen. Primary health facilities are almost non-existent, compelling people to flock to Otukpo, headquarters of Benue South, for the minutest of medical advice and treatment.
Apa/Agatu pitiably bleeds from the relentless and condemnable activities of vagrants and bandits who have reduced the constituency into a killing field. Reports suggest that in the past 15 years, no less than 2500 lives were lost to the vicious attacks of marauders and trespassers in the area under reference. This unnerving situation has compelled engagements between concerned Apa/Agatu leaders, and the leadership of the Nigeria Police Force, (NPF). The prayer is for the swift establishment of a mobile police outpost in the troubled sub-zone to contain bloodletting. The proposal, anchored by AIG Tony Olofu, NPOM, (rtd), and Echono, has received the blessings of the police high command. At the last update, a commander for the outfit had been named, while the deployment of personnel had begun in earnest.
It is very clear that in the march towards 2027, Apa/Agatu will refuse, very vehemently, to be sidelined and trampled upon in the political scheme of their senatorial zone. Abba Moro may desire a third term in the Senate, but the people of Apa/Agatu are quick to remind him that his curriculum vitae as a politician is sufficiently sumptuous for him to yield the seat in the “red chambers” and sit back like an elder statesman. They remind you that for a man who began his working life modestly as a lecturer in the Federal Polytechnic, Ugbokolo in 1991, Abba Moro has done extremely well for himself in Nigerian politics. For reminders, Abba Moro was elected Chairman of Okpokwu local government in the state as far back as 1998. Ever since, he has remained a permanent fixture in Nigeria’s national politics.
The people of Apa/Agatu will put up a determined fight for the Benue South senatorial seat in 2027, and no one should begrudge them. They are the proverbial ram which was pushed to the wall, which must of necessity push back with angered horns to liberate itself. They are already engaging with their kith across “Benue Zone C” to ensure that intra-zonal equity, fairness and justice, prevails in communal politics.

Tunde Olusunle, PhD, Fellow of the Association of Nigerian Authors, (FANA), teaches Creative Writing at the University of Abuja

Opinion

The Prince Adebayo prescriptions for ease of doing Business: 15 Take-Aways

Published

5 days ago

January 14, 2025

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By Dr. Ag Zaki

On Thursday, 9 January 2025, Prince Adewole Adebayo presented a keynote address at the Radisson Blu Hotel, Ikeja, Lagos. The occasion was the annual conference of a group of professionals, business executives and experts codenamed J9C for January 9 Collective. The theme of the Conference was “Business and Policy Strategy: Examining the Role of Reform in enhancing the ease of doing business in Nigeria.” Prince Adebayo is a versatile cerebral man of many parts, a lawyer, a multimedia practitioner, a real estate investor, a large-scale miner, a philanthropist, a community developer, and the 2023 Presidential Candidate of the Social Democratic Party (SDP). The organisers of the J9C conference introduced him as an intercontinental lawyer because he currently practices law in over sixteen countries.

The full speech of Prince Adebayo at the occasion is available online and can be accessed by clicking at this url: https://youtu.be/SsHkcJbVNRg?si=ebvoOVqGh0zVOsnt or by scanning the QR code above. However, we are presenting the salient take-aways from this most incisive keynote address below for the convenience of interested persons and for the public good.

THE TAKE-AWAYS
Preamble
1. Not every change of policy or programme is a reform. A reform is a fundamental change in the activities, programmes, and policies structured to cause improvement. Genuine government reforms are people oriented and so citizens can interject, comment or contribute.
2. Reform may be internally motivated, externally forced or imposed, or technological driven.
3. The government of Nigeria must first reform itself to be able to implement development-oriented reforms to improve the country’s economic performance.

In general terms
4. Fiscal and monetary reforms are critical and are urgently required in Nigeria. While government can freely control its fiscal reforms, it must be bound by market forces for realistic and realisable monetary reforms.
5. Economic reforms must positively affect developmental policies, programmes and projects to engender economic growth, increase in efficiency, and lead to stability. Economic and political reforms must be implemented pari-passu for untainted policies and programmes.
6. Urgent structural reforms are required in areas of legal reforms, laws on banking controls and regulations, lending and borrowing as well as land matters.

In specific terms
7. Reforms which are aimed at targeting ease of doing business must be aligned with the Malam Aminu Kano maxim that “all civil servants should abstain from contracts or business”.
8. Nigeria must break the current odious and unwholesome conspiracies between policy makers, civil servants, and contractors, which can lead to irreversible endemic corruption, long foreseen by the revered Malam Aminu Kano, and which can permanently damage the economy.
9. Structural reforms must ensure that land laws open up maximum benefits and potentials of the land, encourage labour productivity and efficient and transparent entrepreneurship rules including registration, capital and lending matters.
10. Tax reforms should be broad-based, not about sharing of revenue but promoting productivity and competitiveness in all aspects of endeavours and infrastructure reforms should make transportation of people and goods safe and cost effective.
11. Monitoring economic crimes must be thorough and should go beyond arresting of “Yahoo boys” and those spraying Naira notes, but those devaluing the Naira and abusing economic rules and regulations.

Warnings
12. Adebayo left some stern terse warnings for the business sector and for the government of Nigeria.
13. Business executives and professionals should not ask or encourage government for specific reforms but for general broad-based reforms as firm-specific reforms can enhance operations of specific firms or business in the short term but will ultimately kill the industry.
14. Government should not meddle into business or be guided by partisan businessmen; government should meet business only at the junction of regulatory framework.
15. Government should be selfless and honest in carrying out reforms, incorporate measurable performance indices and ensure that reforms are implemented in a way not to inflict pains or punishment on the people.

# DrZaki25, 903 Tafawa Balewa Way, Abuja

Opinion

Governor Monday Okpebholo: A Blessing to Edo State

Published

6 days ago

January 13, 2025

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Monday Okpebholo

By Eigbefo Felix

His Excellency, Senator Monday Okpebholo, the Executive Governor of Edo State, has demonstrated that he is a blessing to the state through his policies, appointments, initiation of road construction across the three senatorial districts, and his deep love for the people of Edo State.

Governor Monday Okpebholo has begun fulfilling the five-point agenda he promised the good people of the state since his inauguration.

In the area of security, he has shown total commitment. He assured the people of Edo State that he would ensure their safety, and true to his word, the state remains peaceful, which has brought joy to its residents. He has provided the necessary support to security personnel.

The governor increased the subvention for Ambrose Alli University (AAU) from ₦40 million to ₦500 million. He also promised to address the issues facing AAU medical students. Additionally, he has started renovating primary and secondary schools across the state, underscoring his understanding of the importance of education.

The agricultural sector has taken a positive turn as Governor Okpebholo has allocated ₦70 billion to the sector. Recognizing agriculture’s importance to both the state and the nation, he is positioning Edo State to become the food basket of the nation with his investments in the sector.

During the electioneering period, Senator Okpebholo promised to create 5,000 jobs within his first 100 days in office. He has already begun the process, and soon, the people of Edo State will benefit from these employment opportunities. Unlike in the past, he will not rely on MOUs before making appointments. Furthermore, he has started appointing Edo State indigenes, rather than outsiders, to various positions.

Governor Okpebholo has commenced road projects across the state, from Edo South to Edo Central and Edo North. He believes that when roads are motorable, the prices of goods in the market will automatically reduce.

He has also begun investing in the health sector, understanding its critical importance to the people of Edo State.

Governor Monday Okpebholo’s initiatives and actions affirm his dedication to transforming Edo State for the better.