Opinion

Buhari’s Logorrhoea and Atiku’s atoicism

Published

2 years ago

May 4, 2023

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By Tunde Olusunle

For my masters degree thesis 36 years ago, I was assigned to Prayag Tripathi, a bespectacled, painstaking and thorough Indian professor of English as my supervisor. His job contract unfortunately expired just before I submitted the last and concluding chapter of the work. Tripathi personally discussed with and reassigned me to Olu Obafemi, Emeritus professor and 2018 recipient of the Nigerian National Order of Merit, (NNOM), Tripathi’s respected colleague. Obafemi was to takeover therefrom, all the way to my defence of the dissertation. I was deploying radical, Marxist discourse and theories in the interrogation of my thesis and the younger Obafemi was an acclaimed leftist scholar, as evidenced by the voluptuous oeuvre of his creative and intellectual endeavours.

The NNOM which Obafemi earned five years ago, is widely regarded as the Nigerian equivalent of the Nobel Prize. It is awarded for outstanding creativity and excellence, in research and scholarship. I am myself a certified Olu Obafemi protege, by the way, having been his student and mentee for over four decades. Scholarship was a lot more serious business those days, beyond the chua, chua, chua, we have today. This is the way Seriake Dickson, former Bayelsa State Governor would describe the reverse intellection we have in place today. Academics was not “outsourced,” “cut and paste” or rub a dub as is prevalent today.

Asides defending the work plan of my proposed research before the departmental board of stern-looking, grey-haired, moustachioed professors and scholars, my supervisor had to vet and approve the drafts of each and every chapter of my long essay. We wrote in long hand in that milieu, so you were compelled to write as legibly as possible. Tripathi reverted the introductory chapter of my dissertation days after I handed it in, and made suggestions to enable me improve on a second draft. There was this comment he made which particularly struck me and stuck in my mind, or head, ever since. On the margins of this specific page, he drew a box around a part of the script and scribbled: “This is logorrhoea.”

The advent of the internet and handheld devices which have largely simplified life for humanity in many ways, was still light years ahead. To the school library therefore I proceeded to check for the meaning of the word. Logorrhoea according to the dictionary, is a tendency to extreme loquacity, loquaciousness or garrulousness. I should quickly add a sentence or two about my erstwhile literature teacher, Tripathi, by the way. It is a measure of the conscientious selflessness of his breed of intellectuals, that Tripathi would go to the university library without any prompting, identify books relevant to my work and loan them on my behalf, in his name. He will subsequently track me to the postgraduate hall, (PG Hall), and hand them over to me! He will typically apologise for barging into my privacy and admonish I return the books to the university book hub when I’m done. Yemi Akinwumi, eminent professor, Vice Chancellor of the Federal University Lokoja, (FUL), my classmate, co-resident in the postgraduate hall and brother, is a phone call away. There was a system, there was a country.

Nigeria’s outgoing president, Muhammadu Buhari, has recently resorted to the manner of triumphalism which is totally unbeffiting of an octogenarian, and his office. Last week, he was recorded as putting down the nation’s political opposition, while celebrating the “victory” of his party, the All Progressives Congress, (APC), during the last polls. A statement by Garba Shehu, Buhari’s spokesperson, my good friend and colleague, put the loss of the 2023 elections down to “overconfidence, complacency and bad tactical moves,” on the part of the opposition. As far as Buhari is concerned, the APC was better organised, more strategic and more desiring of victory. He forgot to add that the election was “snatched, grabbed and run away with,” as publicly simulated on the sidelines of the appearance of his party’s candidate in “Chatham House,” last December.

It would appear that so long as the outcome suits him, Buhari is totally disinterested in postmortems to interrogate the electoral process and put necessary measures in place to drive improvements in future polls. Umaru Musa Yar’Adua even in victory over the same challenger, Buhari in the 2007 presidential election, admitted that the process which produced him as president was flawed. He admonished that the gamut of the electoral process be reviewed, for enhanced credibility as a way of deepening democracy. Yar’Adua unfortunately took ill in the third year of his regime and passed in May 2010. For Buhari, once he won the presidential election in 2015, and was returned in presumably cooked up and crooked circumstances in 2019, in a process which impugned the believability of the contest, it was all well and good.

Buhari will not be bothered if the conduct of the 2023 general elections took Nigeria back practically to the “stone age.” In a society committed to conformation with rule of law, Buhari should indeed have been reprimanded for misconduct during the last election. He publicly advertised his ballot paper against extant regulations. Videos and photographs of this display, instantaneously trended on the internet. As a public figure of his stature, Buhari’s action was capable of influencing some voters to defer to the preference of their president. One of the allegations against Moshood Abiola during the 1993 presidential election, advanced to justify annulment of that process, was that he wore a dress bearing the logo of his party to his polling unit!

But Buhari who personally approved the mega-billions supposedly deployed to ensure that the votes of every Nigerian counts, would not be concerned if the end result was a total waste of our common-wealth. Most of the funds appropriated for the polls almost certainly, ended up in the pockets and vaults of his proxies in the quantum malfeasance which has emblematised the Buhari regime. The officials keep straight faces in public, to conceal the lacerations they have dealt our resources. Under Buhari, the mechanism calculated to ensure real-time electronic transfer of election results was invented on one hand, and brazenly violated, on the other hand. Such violations were perpetrated to serve predetermined ends. Under Buhari, sensitive election materials are still being physically hauled and herded around to collation centres, during which they are susceptible to “snatching, grabbing and fleecing with.”

Much as the jury is out on the underwhelming performance of Buhari’s presidency these past eight years, the octogenarian never misses any opportunity for vainglorious adulation. At the commissioning of a housing project in Zuba on the periphery of Abuja the other day, Buhari sustained his predilection towards self-celebration. According to him, his “administration has fulfilled its election promise of change to Nigerians.” Really? Maybe. Buhari may be deploying instruments of obtuse appraisal, though to arrive at his conclusions. He famously told us before he came into office in 2015, that he will drag Nigeria from “top to bottom.” He has done just that and we are effectively at that basement now. He will be correct therefore to have so positively rated his aggregate endeavours in office. In his revisionist narrative, Buhari wants us to believe he is the best thing that ever happened to Nigeria.

The Human Rights Writers Association of Nigeria, (HURIWA), spontaneously shot down a recently released 91-page book of platitudes extolling Buhari’s achievements as articulated, by his communications office. The publication is consistent with the tendency towards the propagandist logorrhoea which has typified the night before Buhari fades from the nation’s sociopolitical scene. Famous and respected Kenyan professor of law, who is also a good governance advocate, Patrick Loch Otieno Lumumba, popularly known as “PLO Lumumba” made a pertinent observation in one of his characteristically spellbinding public engagements. He theorised that “if a leader has to spend so much time and energy explaining what and what he has done while in office, then that leader has done absolutely nothing.” For Lumumba, “a leader’s achievements should speak for him.” Buhari’s trenchant loquaciousness on the eve of his departure from the presidency therefore is tailored to paper up his serial failings, foibles and fumblings.

Flagbearer of the Peoples’ Democratic Party, (PDP) at the last presidential election, former Vice President Atiku Abubakar who is understandably hurt by the obvious and deliberate figure-tweaking and gross violations which characterised the last polls, has maintained enviable stoicism. His interventions in public discourse are few and measured, even as he pursues a legal cause to unravel the jigsaw. Atiku is doing this not particularly because of himself, but on behalf of every prospective participant in the democratic process. Atiku’s triumphs in his litigations against the president and the state following his persecution by President Olusegun Obasanjo, have profited several modern day political aspirants and candidates. Some of the judgments have mitigated rascality, impunity and lawlessness in the exercise of authority within the executive arm of government and various political platforms. To adapt the title of the civil war memoir written by Chukwuemeka Odimegwu Ojukwu, leader of the defunct Biafran cessation attempt, Atiku’s pursuit is not because he’s involved.

Atiku is neither downcast nor depressed by the magical turn of events proceeding after the February 25, 2023 presidential election. He runs his regular routine, ever hosting guests, solving problems within his capacity, honouring engagements and doing paperwork. He recently made the rounds checking up on his close associate, Raymond Aleogho Dokpesi, owner of Raypower Radio and AIT, arguably one of the pioneer privately-owned broadcasting outfit, who was beneath the weather. He proceeded to commiserate with his protege and former Deputy Speaker of the House of Representatives, Emeka Ihedioha, who lost his mother. He also emphatised with Orji Uzor Kalu, Majority Whip of the Senate, whose wife sadly passed in the US. Atiku took the trouble to travel to Kano, to personally visit the family of Musa Gwadabe, Minister of Labour and Productivity under the Obasanjo/Atiku government. Atiku did all of these, in person.

Beyond the symbolism of these efforts, Atiku is demonstrating the manner of humanity and fellow-feeling which has been totally absent from the Buhari regime. Atiku’s rounds as detailed above, were not driven by partisanship or ethnic considerations. Dokpesi, Ihedioha and Kalu are all southerners and Christians. Gwadabe was a northerner and a Muslim. Even as the nation spiralled into wanton killing fields on several fronts, not once did Buhari excuse himself from the cosy royalty of Aso Villa, to personally and practically assess any incident. Rather, for every calamity that befell his constituents, a mechanistic “Letter of Condolence” was stereotypically the maximum expression of concern by the president. Expected to detour into Zamfara on a visit to Sokoto State last year, the alibi of “bad weather” was propounded to excuse Buhari’s presidential jet from possible attack by bandits domiciled in Zamfara.

Atiku, by the way, is a consummate fan of the very popular, high-flying English Premier League Club, Arsenal. This indeed is one of our mutual intersections. As “Gunners,” we persevere, we are focused, we are committed. We have style, we have flair, we are systematic, we are not given to quick-fixes. We are patient enough to experience trends and developments as they evolve. At a time like this, one is reminded of that timeless Yoruba adage which translates as: “The slowness of the cat is skill, not a lack of will.” It’s game on metaphorically, as legal proceedings get underway Monday May 8, 2023. Please get a vantage seat at the lips of the play field.

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

4 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

4 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

5 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.