BENIN CITY – Edo State Governor, Godwin Obaseki weekend assured the people of the state that his government would neither indulge in frivolities nor play to the gallery in the implementation of government policies and programmes.
He gave the assurance in a remark at the end of the three-day strategy dialogue with permanent secretaries, political class, members of the civil society among others in Benin- City.
Governor Obaseki said he would in the next six weeks, priortise the implementation of each of the recommendation made by the various thematic groups of the strategy dialogue workshop.
While saying “what we are doing here now is very deliberate”, Governor Obaseki reechoed that “I want to make it abundantly clear that your government under my leadership, will not indulge in frivolities neither will we play to the gallery”.
Obaseki assured the participants that the reports of the six thematic groups would be comprehensively looked into, studied with actionable projects and programs extracted for implementations.
He also promised to evaluate those that would be fortunate to be appointed into state executive council and other government ministries, department and agencies no matter how highly placed such person would be.
“Just as i will be evaluated and assessed by the people of the state at the end of his first tenure in office.
“I will cut wastefulness and unwarranted expenditure through efforts at running a transparent, accountable and prudent government to free up resources to enable the implementation of most of the projects identified by the participants at the workshop”.
He also promised to intensify efforts in revenue collection but which strategy and implementation would be with a human face to make the tax liability friendly.
The governor added that all the recommendations would be comprehensively looked into and studied with actionable programmes and implementation plan.
According to him, “Our promise from the beginning was that we are going to stop and desist from a situation where contractors and service providers will be the one defining government agenda and policies”.
He said, “The plan was to build consensus. So we have built general consensus at high level across six thematic areas. Over the next six weeks we will prioritize each of those thematic areas.
He then reeled out four critical consensus of the resource persons at the workshop to include the need to invest in data collections, planning, enforcement of established government laws and implementation and execution of government policies and programmes.
According to Obaseki, “Over the next six weeks, we now need to galvanize each of those thematic areas. So, we will have sessions like this, focusing on specific things and bringing them down to actionable steps.
“So, we will now decide which programmes, what do we have the money for, when do we get what done, the timelines and who will be responsible.
“And this will be done before commissioners and other political appointees are made. We will know the requirements before we appoint people, and after appointing them, we will have specific deliverables for them to achieve.”
He, however, commended all the participants for sparing their time to participate in the seminar and to contribute their knowledge and experience for the development of the state.
