Kogi State Governor, Yahaya Bello has given insight into the selection of his former Auditor General for Local Government, Ahmed Usman Ododo as the governorship candidate of the All Progressives Congress (APC) for the November 11th election in the state.
Bello, explained his choice of successor in an address to celebrate the 32nd creation anniversary of the state, as he winds up his time in office.
He stated his decision was to ensure that the state transitions into the hands of a successor that will consolidate his legacies, and Ododo presented the qualities.
He extolled the candidate as humble, humane and possessing strong leadership skills.
“In this regard, and as I round off my time in Office, I aim to ensure that Kogi State transitions into the hands of a successor that is committed to Continuity and Consolidation of the far-reaching legacies of our Administration and is able to keep providing our people with the empathetic, practical and transformational leadership that is so crucial the next stage of our development.
“Alhaji Ahmed Usman Ododo is the candidate that we have selected and presented to Kogi State as the candidate for the 2023 Gubernatorial Elections and our preferred successor to the GYB years. He is well known for his humility and humanness, underlined by professionalism and strong leadership skills.
“I am confident in his ability to continue the upward trend in our growth graph established by our New Direction Administration and I solicit your support for him in the November 11 Kogi State Governorship Elections,” Bello said.
The Governor, on the anniversary of the state, said that Kogi has come a long way overcoming challenges and becoming stronger and more vibrant.
He noted that the strides and failures of his predecessors while in office, contributed to what the land and people have become
“Throughout my tenure as Governor, my commitment to the New Direction Blueprint has been the major driver of our actions and decisions. This policy plan has served us well as our guiding light, leading us towards the accelerated and proportional development we envisaged from inception across all constituencies in our State.
“In education, health, infrastructure, youth empowerment, civil service reform, security, agriculture, and more, we have taken remarkable strides that are both visible and impactful today – even to the worst naysayer or skeptic. We have been able to do so much irrespective of the back to back years of financial underdelivery which has characterized our tenure from start to finish.
“Our advances have been made possible because of our determination to display both astuteness and probity in Public Financial Management. We have diligently reformed our budgeting, procurement, debt management, revenue generation systems, and more. It is no longer news that our commitment to financial transparency and accountability has earned us the top position among Nigerian states in the World Bank’s States’ Financial Transparency, Accountability, and Sustainability (SFTAS) index, time and again.”
The Governor said his administration has created the Kogi State 32-Year Development Plan earlier in the year.
“This plan will project our developmental aspirations for the next three decades, outlining both the short-term objectives that will derive from it and the longer term aspirations that we must pursue. Just as Alan Lakein once said, ‘Planning is bringing the future into the present so that you can do something about it now.”
He reiterated his support for what he described as “harsh-decisions” taken by President Bola Ahmed Tinubu to free Nigeria from “institutionalised practices with which ordinary Nigerians have been forced, for far too long, to subside their own despoliation at the hands of a rapacious few among the elite. I refer, of course, to the removal of the agelong fuel subsidy regime and the floating of the Naira.”
