Governor Seyi Makinde of Oyo State has said his administration completed a total of 307 projects in the education sector, with 236 other on-going projects within its first year in office.
The governor, in a statewide address aired on the Broadcasting Corporation of Oyo State, expressed the hope that going by the performance of his administration in its first year in office, the future is bright for the state.
Expressing appreciation to the residents of the state for the trust reposed in him, he urged them to keep the faith with him in an effort to take the state to an enviable height.
He said in line with his promise to build on the good programmes of past administrations in the state, his administration completed 239 projects awarded by the previous administration in the education sector and 68 others awarded by his government.
According to him, despite the ravaging COVID-19 pandemic, the administration remained focused as it improve the health care system. He implored residents of the state to keep following the directives of the Oyo State COVID-19 Task Force on social distancing, wearing of face masks and proper hygiene practices.
He said, “It has been one year since we took over office as administrators of the Oyo State Government. There is a time for acting, and a time for accounting. Ultimately, we will be rendering a full account of our stewardship by 2023.
“I especially thank every one of you, good citizens of Oyo State, for your trust and support in the past year. I have always said that our COVID-19 response in Oyo State will be backed by data, science and logic. So far, these parameters have not failed us.
“Instead of seeing COVID-19 as a setback, we chose to leverage it to improve our healthcare system. Oyo State collaborated with the Virology Department of the College of Medicine, University of Ibadan, to set up a Diagnostic Centre which was approved by the Nigeria Centre for Disease Control to test for COVID-19. We have renovated and equipped General Hospitals and Primary Healthcare facilities.”
On the economy, Governor Makinde said there had been incremental changes in the state’s Internally Generated Revenue, saying between December 2019 and February 2020, the state’s IGR was between N2.43billion and N2.7billion.
He said, “We have started the Park Management System to bring sanity and order to the transportation sector. It also generates funds for the government. We are working towards ensuring that the process runs seamlessly.
“We have renovated roads and started a Zero Pothole Policy first in Ibadan, and this will be expanded to other towns. We paid counterpart funding of N350million so that we can benefit from the Rural Access and Agricultural Marketing Project. This will enable us to rehabilitate 1,000 kilometres of rural roads.
“In Land and Housing, we built a digitised platform with geo-referencing for electronic Certificate of Occupancy. You can now get your C of O within 60 days of payment.”
The governor said the administration was building a security architecture that the people of the state would be proud of, adding, “Just two days ago, I commissioned a new mobile police force squadron, Mopol 72 at Ago-Are in Oke Ogun zone. We have provided vehicles and state-of-the-art communication equipment to facilitate their response to crime. We have also operationalised the Emergency Contact Number, 615.”
