By Simon Ebegbulem, Benin City

There is no doubt that Governor Godwin Obaseki is settling down well as the 5th Governor of Edo state with the appointment of his campaign Director General and former Commissioner for Works in the state, Osarodion Ogie as the Secretary to the State Government. Ogie who is one of the political sons of the immediate past governor of the state, Comrade Adams Oshiomhole, was prevailed upon by Oshiomhole to step down for Obaseki before the governorship primaries of the APC.

Governor Elect of Edo State, Mr Godwin Obaseki

Ogie is from Edo South senatorial district like Obaseki and his appointment as SSG was seen as in line with the tradition in the state where all the democratically elected governors have picked their SSG from their senatorial district. Ogie’s appointment was widely applauded owing to the fact that unlike Governor Obaseki,who is not a politician, Ogie will hold the political front strong for Obaseki.

The governor also appointed a youth and an activist, Taiwo Akerele as his Chief of Staff. Akerele is from Akoko Edo Local Government Area, in Edo North senatorial district and has worked with Obaseki as a member of the state Economic Team since 2007. Akerele was before his appointment the Project Coordinator of the World Bank in Edo state. These are the major appointments made so far by the governor. It was learnt that he is setting up various committees in different ministries in order to have first hand information as to the requirement of the Ministries and the kind of people needed to man them.

Knowing that he cannot function effectively without the support of the state House of Assembly, Obaseki met with lawmakers last Tuesday at Government House Benin City, where he informed them of his plans to work with them for the development of the state. The lawmakers who were led by the Speaker, Justin Okonoboh, were quite impressed with his enthusiasm to deliver the dividends of democracy to the people and to equally pay attention to the workings of the Assembly as regards their over sight functions.

Addressing the lawmakers during the dinner, Obaseki said “ we are going to run a very transparent government and your duty of over sight is very important. I want to assure you that you have in us, a government that you have yearned for, a listening government. We would rather hear from you before we talk to you. Like we said on several occasions, this is the dawn of a new era. The last eight years of this state witnessed rapid transformation.

Before that transformation, we had to first of all recover our state politically and that created the platform for the rapid transformation you have seen in the past eight years. So the last eight years were basically years of foundation laying. We have laid the right foundation for our socio-economic take off, so the next four to eight years by the special grace of God will be one in which we will now take Edo to much more higher level than we have seen in the last four decades.

“What are the key issues we seek to address? First, we must recover our society. We are likely to lose our society if we do not begin to emphasis those key issues of human development and economic empowerment. We have too many young men and women in our own estimate between half a million to three quarter of a million, between the ages of fifteen to thirty who are doing nothing. We have to engage them, we need to do several things.

In the last two days, you would have noticed that we were trying to understand the issues. We are going to create jobs. We promised a minimum of 200,000 jobs and to do that, we first have to understand our direction and the challenges we face in terms of unemployment. On Monday, we went to Benin Technical College which was established 40 years ago to champion technical and vocational training for young men and women.

The challenges are enormous because what we saw was pitiable and even though we have an obvious task, we are not daunted at all. So, we will use this institution to quickly understand what we need to do and the investments we need to make. To create the platform, we will put a lot of our young people through training so that they can be employed in the businesses that we are attracting.

We also understand that no matter how great, no matter how interesting the policies we pronounced are, no matter the bills we have put forward, if we do not have the institutional framework, if we do not have the bureaucracy that can execute, these policies would just be as good or as nice as they have been pronounced. Therefore, the key priority for us would be to ensure that we revamp and strengthen our civil service. That informed our visit to just have a first hand understanding of how our civil servants work.

Members of the house, we have a lot of work to do. In the last 40 years, not much have been done, particularly, in the physical environment in which our civil servants work, but more critically, even training them and building their skill level. We understand that we have to continue to invest in infrastructure despite very lean resources but we are very clear and resolute that working with you, and with the kind of support we enjoy from you, we will be able to overcome all these challenges we face.”

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Obaseki added that his budget team will start discussing the 2017 budget with the lawmakers next week. He said,“next week, we will be sending our first executive bill to you. It is critical and when the time is right, we will know publicly. I want to thank you because, though we are separate arms of government, you have decided to, on your own, take time out to come and say, we want to work with you, and to assure you that the very step you take, we will first consult with you.

Starting from next week, we will be sending the pre-budget team to come and meet with the budget committee of the house to sit down and begin to discuss the framework for next year’s budget. We believe that if we have this sort of interaction, it will go a long way in facilitating understanding of one another in the process of crafting the bills; it makes it a lot more efficient”. In his response, Speaker of the House, Okonoboh expressed the readiness of the House to work with the governor to take the state to the next level. He assured that “we will continue to formulate laws that will better the lives of our people”.