By Daud Olatunji

ABEOKUTA—Governor  Ibikunle Amosun of Ogun State  has explained why he planned to create Local Council Development Areas, LCDAs in the state, saying it was to open up the state to greater opportunities.

Amosun stated this after a meeting with the chairmen of 20 local government areas in his Oke-Mosan office,claiming that machinery has been set in motion to make the LCDA creation a reality.

“We want to open up our state to greater opportunity with our proposed local council development areas. Our unique borders with other states would  foster development. For instance,two of our local government areas harbour about 760,000 people,most of whom work in Lagos.

“We are  putting procedures and processes in place.We would go to the House of Assembly and do a referendum on the creation of local council development areas.The committee we have put in place would do the annoucement,”he said.

The governor   expressed appreciation to the state’s workers for their patience and understanding over the present economic reality.

He further assured that the   government would offset all deduction arrears by end of July as earlier promised.

“We are bothered about the prevailing economic circumstance in the country.But imagine if we had not debarred of our internally generated revenue which was N730m when we came on board.

“It is the money we generate that we use to resue the situation and ensure we don’t owe salary since the crisis began.

“But as we earlier promised during campaign ,all   deduction arrears would be offset by the end of July,”Amosun emphasised.

While lamenting the bad implementation of contributory pensions in the Gateway State by the previous administration,the State’s helmsman affirmed that there was need to inject huge funds to rescue the system from collapse.

According to Governor Amosun, “contributory pensions is a good system but badly implemented in this state. Before its take-off, it is better you have enough funds.We now need a huge injection of funds to save the system from collapse.