*Photo: Governor Usman Ahmed Ododo of Kogi State*
My dear Kogities,
I am writing you this open letter to appreciate and commend you for your support for the present administration led by our leader and governor, Alhaji Usman Ahmed Ododo. I know you would agree with me that his performances so far has justified our resolve during the last election in our dear state to vote him into office as the preferred candidate to take our state to the promise Land.
Indeed his administration of the state so far has shown all that his tenure is really signifying the beginning of the end of the dispensation where our people has been left to wander in the wilderness searching for developments in all its physicality.
We have collectively shown the world that we are now politically matured and sophisticated because of our resolve to know a good leader when we see one. The arbitrary partition of our dear state in times past by politicians and godfather’s in times past using tribal, sectional and religious considerations as a basis for choosing the man to govern our state without the consent of the people, I can now say we have collectively dismantled by the overwhelming victory of the present governor in the gubernatorial election.
We have decided by our support for Governor Usman Ahmed Ododo that we are tired of running around a circle without moving forward to a people with a resolve to have shared ideal and a people bound together. I commend our true consensus.
I thank you for the elimination of this tendencies which was our bane because as a result of ethnicity the best hands were not recruited to lead us forward and as a result of not getting the best result means jeopardizing development and mortgaging the future of the state.
The fact that in the past such a practice seems to have been institutionalized in the misconception and bad implementation of policy of our ideals means the state will always lack the services of her most competent hands at every turn when it comes to leadership recruitments. This has never translated to the rendering of services that are efficient. I congratulated you all.
Governor Usman Ahmed Ododo is today rendering our state the type of leadership it deserved. Today salaries of workers are paid between 23 and 24 as at when due and especially during the last sallah celebration where the state workforce received their full salary on the 13th day of the month in preparation for salary with a full bag of rice which everybody acknowledges as unprecedented. The local governments employees were not left out in this direction as the got 95 percent of the salary too.
The present administration is also on record to have initiated many development projects scattered through out the state that are presently ongoing that if completed will bring development in all its physicality to the state. Our present governor have shown beyond all reasonable doubt that he is indeed an apostle of the new type of politics dispensation we have for so long seek for in the state.
What we need going forward is to continue to support him and his administration inorder for our state to achieve the lasting peace, prosperity and make it one of the most powerful state in the country and I assure you we shall get there.
It is on record that Governor Ahmed Ododo is one of the foremost governor in Nigeria who have paid palliatives four times to the citizens of the state most expecially the common man to cushion the effects of the present economic situation in the country brought about by the removal of the fuel subsidy and this has gone a long way in ameriorating the effects of the present economic predicament in the country on the common man in Kogi state.
This is a deliberate step by the governor because his government’ is about the people and this is because of its conviction that throughout history no state in the country has achieved substantial leap without a leader with vision, strategic plan and a systematic effort to lessen the burden of the harsh economic realities on his people and that is why the security situation in Kogi state is far better now than ever before.
Governor Usman Ododo in his efforts to bring Development to the people do not temper with local government fund because he deliberately believe that as a transactional leader, it is his responsibility to fight the symmetric and asymetric warfare of the people he has deliberately make sure that a revolving loans is in place to cater for the immediate needs of the citizenry and this has gone a long way in assuaging the fears of the common man that the government will not carry it’s a long in terms of needs as we are today.
We must also eternally thank our leader, mentor and former governor, Alhaji Yahaya Adoza Bello, the white lion for making this administration possible. He really did his job right by recruiting for us the best man to lead us forward.I commend him for his support for the present governor by not like others before him muscling him into submission by allowing him to governed the state without any crisis whatsoever.
Yahaya Bello must also be liked and commended for giving the governor a free hand to work.The new direction policies of his administration is still in place because we have his disciple in place to lead the state forward.
My dear kogites, our state is indeed in good hands and our potentials to make our people better is enhanced by the type of leader we now have in place, full of compassion and the urge to make the state a place of pride to its people.
I want to also use the opportunity of using this open letter to salute the courage of our state APC chairman, Hon Bello Dollar, for standing behind our transactional leader governor in making sure that he works for all Kogites and making sure that the policies and manifestoes of the party is implemented to the later. His leadership of the party so far is an assurance that the sky is the limit of the party in Kogi state.
Thank you sir. In peace, unity of purpose, collective aspirations and submission to the will of God I believe we can achieve more and thanks for your support to our governor, Alhaji Usman Ahmed Ododo.
Long live our Governor
Long live Kogi state
Long live the Federal republic of Nigeria.
*Barr Halima Alfa Gaya Phd
Abuja