Ahead of the next October governorship election in Ondo State, the National President of the Nigeria Medical Association (NMA), Prof Adedayo Faduyile, on Sunday promised to offset the accumulated electricity bill of the people of the Southern Senatorial District of the state, if elected as the state governor in the forthcoming governorship election in the state.
Faduyile who is contesting under the platform of the All Progressives Congress (APC) noted that subsequent government in the state has failed to address the challenges of the power outage in the last eight years.
He promised to pay the debt owed the Benin Electricity Distribution Company (BEDC), by consumers in the four local government areas of the state within his first two months in office.
The debt, which is estimated over N300 million by the electricity distribution company, remained one of the major reasons for complete power outage and supply to the entire local governments in the area for about 10 years.
However, residents of the district said the debt calculated by the BEDC was based on an estimated billing system that made many of them unable to pay while the actual debt being owed was about N70 million.
He promised that the debt would be liquidated by the government first to restore power to the area while arrangement would be made on how the debtors would payback.
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Faduyile, however, described the situation in the state as disappointing, noting that the socio-economic lives of the people in the old Okitipupa Division were paralysed for years while the successive government in the state looked helpless.
He noted that all the industries established in the area had gone moribund with no plans to revive any of the industries or established new ones.
The NMA President criticised some of the policies and projects of the incumbent Governor Oluwarotimi Akeredolu, saying the state needs a well-equipped aspirant like him to rescue the state from “incompetent” administration.
The Professor of Forensic Pathology, expressed deep worries on the state of health and education in the state, saying the state cannot be ranked among the best ten in Nigeria.
Faduyile also declared the N5billion Ore flyover constructed by Akeredolu’s administration as a mere waste of public funds, noting that the project is just a single lane instead of the double lane and needs dual carriage flyover since industries were springing up in the area.
“It is disheartening that somebody should at this age waste state money on a one-lane flyover when the area is expected to host many many big industrial projects.
“What the government has done showed that it was not projecting into the future which is one of the causes of problems we have in the country,” Faduyile said.