Kogi State Governor-elect, Alhaji Yahaya Bello, has promised to embark on rapid industrialization of the state as soon as he is sworn into office in 2016.
Alhaji Bello, who made the pledge in a statement issued yesterday by his Media Assistant, Suleiman Abdulmalik, said only a well-coordinated industrial programme could solve the twin problems of poverty and underdevelopment that currently confront the state.
The Governor-elect said he was pained that a state like Kogi that is sitting on a vast deposit of variety of raw materials and blessed with enormous human capital, had remained a shadow of its capacity, 24 years after its creation.
He, however, promised that efforts would be made to channel the state’s resources to productive sectors with a view to bringing the desired meaningful growth and development for the benefit of the greater majority of the people of Kogi State.
Alhaji Bello, who noted that government could not provide all the jobs, promised to use his wide network of contacts to attract private sector participation so as to provide gainful employment for the youth in the state.
The statement said that the Governor-elect would build bridges across the state and discourage negative tendencies that widened the gulf of ethnic and religious differences.
It also urged the good people of the state to support the incoming governor to enable him touch the lives of everyone in the areas of security, good roads, education and standard medical care and other critical sectors of the state’s economy.
Alhaji Bello stressed that gone were the days when those saddled with the responsibility of ensuring the security of lives and property would be allowed to sacrifice peace and unity of purpose on the altar of ethnicity and inflated ego.
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