Businessman cum
politician and newly sworn-in governor of Kogi State, Yahaya Bello, sobs
ceaselessly on Wednesday as he read his inaugural speech after he took the oath
of office as the fourth executive governor of the state.
The oath was administered
by Justice Nasiru Ajanah, the state Chief Judge and witnessed by a filled
stadium which had top politicians, state governors and businessmen in
attendance.
Yahaya, who swore an oath
of office at exactly 12pm, wept when he recalled how he suffered as a young
fatherless boy under a very poor mother and what he passed through growing up.
The governor said he had
to make do with his elder brother who assumed the position of his father taking
care of him.
The governor said despite
the anguish of young widowhood, his mother continued to trudge on with keeping
him and his siblings.
The governor, the
youngest in the country at 41, thanked President Muhammadu Buhari, Asiwaju Bola
Tinubu and other top members of the All Progressives Congress, APC, who played
major roles in his emergence as governor.
He told the people of
Kogi State that he remains responsible to them because they gave him their
mandate.
He also said he stood on principle
in the celebrated statement of President Buhari: “I belong to everybody and I
belong to nobody”, adding that this would henceforth be his guiding principle.
“I hereby declare and
affirm that Yahaya Bello administration will have zero tolerance for
corruption,” he announced to a cheering audience at the event held in the Lokoja,
the state capital.
He also promised that his
government would use technology to fight corruption and block all leakages that
had existed in the state.
While praising the late
Prince Abubakar Audu, former candidate of the APC who died just hours after
casting his votes, Governor Bello said: “the sudden death of Prince Abubakar
Audu remains a great mystery and this administration will liaise with the State
House of Assembly to immortalise him in different ways.”
The governor noted that
the statistics of poverty in Kogi is not rosy and that as a result, his
administration would take positive and decisive actions to rescue Kogi state.
He also promised that his
administration would not fail because he has a blue-print, which is a sort of
“marshall plan” to rebuild the state.
He mentioned various
sectors of the state including education and infrastructure with the aim of
making the state a major destination.
On security, he said he
knew the state was facing serious challenges of armed robbery and kidnapping, but
that these would be tackled since he would soon be meeting with security chiefs
in the state to come out with plans to stem insecurity in the state.
Though successive
administrations, according to Bello, have not done well and as a result, the
people of Kogi state do not trust the government, he would do his best to win
back the trust.
He promised to begin to
pay staff of the state civil service who are currently being owed salaries for
months.
“Change has come to Kogi
State,” he declared.
In speech earlier, the
National Chairman of the APC, Chief John Odigie-Oyegun, said the governor’s
emergence was God’s doing and that as humans, they had no choice than to accept
it.
He described the new
governor as ebullient, young and innovative adding that Bello was a gift to the
people of the state.
He said he could vouch
for Bello because he worked closely with him in the last weeks leading to his
inauguration.
He said the governor
would return Kogi to its former pride and that the APC would give him all the
needed support to be successful.
In their speeches,
Governor Samuel Ortom of Benue State and Governor Tanko Al-Makura of Nasarawa
State, pleaded with politicians in the state to cooperate and move the state
forward since the election was over.
No comments:
Post a Comment