Okowa with his Exco members. |
Ahead
of May 29th commencement of his second term in office, Delta State Governor,
Senator Dr. Ifeanyi Okowa today held a valedictory executive council
meeting, promising to run an all-inclusive government in his second term as
such was instrumental to the success recorded so far in the delivery of
policies and programmes by his administration.
The
governor who thanked members of the state executive council for their
collective efforts and determination which ensured the execution of government
programmes and policies to the satisfaction of Deltans, urged them to handover
to their Permanent Secretaries before the close of work on Friday, May 24,
2019.
“In
the last four years, I have had a working team; an Exco that realized
that we are together and that our success story will be told together and
I am proud to say that it is the collective efforts of each and every one
of us that has given us our success stories which also resulted in the
resounding victory we recorded at the elections,” Governor Okowa said, adding,
“God's grace was obviously with us but I believe that if each and every one of
us had our own different beliefs, working in different ways , I believe that we
will not have been able to achieve what we have achieved thus far; so, I will
first of all want to thank each and every one of you (members of the state
executive council) for the wonderful comments that you have made this
afternoon and appreciate you more for the commitment of each and every one of
you in your previous offices in the last four years, because, there is no doubt
that you have all been very loyal to the deputy governor and myself and that
loyalty has kept the team together; i want to thank each and every one of you;
I can rightfully say that none of you betrayed the confidence that I have in
you.”
He
continued, “in our EXCO meetings, we have had discussions and debates and
I want to thank each one of you for being very frank, I have learnt a lot
from individual comments, from ideas that people have which I may not have
thought of and I am proud that there was room for us to debate issues; we
talk about an open-door policy and I have had at a point in time to learn that
if you are well tutored as a politician, you will have no choice than to run an
open-door government ; I also realized that my Commissioners never abused that
opportunity and I am glad to say that you all handled your duties with
integrity and decorum.”
“I
must thank you all for agreeing that as an EXCO we will run a realistic budget;
I thank God that we have tried to stay within the limit, so, when I looked at
our papers and I saw that in the year, 2018 that our performance rate was at 98
per cent, I was very pleased, because realistic budget is important so that
when we explain to the people that with this budget this is what we are
expected to do and the people at the end of the day see you doing nearly all
the things that you said you will do, it is better than to raise the hopes of
our people and then dash their hopes at the end of the day; so, I thank you as
an EXCO for not allowing our budget to go beyond what was realizable for that
year,” Governor Okowa disclosed, and used the occasion to call for internal
democracy within the political parties to ensure well qualified candidates
contest for elections.
“We
give all the glory to God who gave us the grace to take certain steps in our
administration and looking at the second tenure there is still a lot to be done
and that can only come from God and we thank Him for His grace in our lives and
as a government; I want to use this opportunity too to thank all Deltans for
the support given to us as a government; the love they have shown to us and to
urge and pray that they will continue to guarantee us the peace and the support
that they gave us this first tenure and as we look forward to next week as the
deputy governor and myself take the oath of office we want to reassure them
that we will be there for them, we will continue to strive to improve on the
things that we have done and we will looking forward to having the cooperation of
the people because working together as a people will make us excel,” the
governor said.
Governor
Okowa’s Deputy, Barr. Kingsley Otuaro in his comments, thanked members of the
EXCO for their commendations and prayers, stating, “I am very honoured to be part
of this privileged team; I am very proud of the success stories and I thank our
Governor and everybody for the success stories.”
At
the session, Commissioner for Local Government Affairs, Hon. Joyce Overah who
is the Chairman of College of Commissioners thanked Governor Okowa for giving
them the opportunity to serve the government and people of the state as
Commissioners, stating, “working with you (Governor Okowa), working with your
Deputy, we learnt a lot of lessons and we are very grateful; the crew you
assembled as Commissioners are very understanding and we pray that as you
enter second term, God will guide you and your Deputy to continue to do it
right for our people, the people of Delta State.”
Other
Commissioners who spoke at the session include, Chief Fidelis Tilije, Mrs Mary
Iyasere, Barr. Newworld Safugha, Dr. Mordi Ononye, and Mrs. Omatsola
Williams while the Secretary to the State Government, Hon. Festus Agas and the
Head of Service, Mr Reginald Bayoko and Prof. Sylvester Monye also, joined the
Commissioners to list their experiences working with the Governor and his
Deputy and at the end, they profusely, thanked Governor Okowa for giving them
the opportunity to contribute to the development of the state.
0 Comments
DISCLAIMER
The views and opinions expressed on this platform as comments were freely made by each person under his or her own volition or responsibility and were neither suggested nor dictated by the owners of Precious Eze's Blog or any of their contracted staff. So we take no liability whatsoever for such comments.
Please take note!