One year anniversary: We are progressing–Kogi gov

As the Kogi state governor, Alhaji Yahaya Bello, marked one year in office on Friday, he said his administration is making progress in his efforts at developing the state.

The governor in his address to the people noted that the challenges facing the state were numerous, pledging to surmount the challenges.

The governor said he had assembled a formidable team that had been coming up with policies and programmes that are capable of lifting the state from the shackles of poverty.

Bello added that his administration had embarked on massive infrastructural development with the aim of improving the standard of living and the economic base of the state.

The governor said, “Kogi State, we too have met our challenges with courage. Faced with crumbling social and economic infrastructure, the New Direction administration which I lead has folded its sleeves and gotten down to the job of rebuilding our state and improving the lives of our citizens.

“We have had to take decisions that are hard, and we have had to follow through despite the consequences, because we believe in the outcomes. The process has been painful – for both Government and governed alike, but slowly and steadily, we are making progress”.

On the ongoing staff verification exercise, he said, “No doubt, my Administration has come to be known more for the lengthy Staff Screening and Verification Exercise than for anything else. It is true that this Exercise has disrupted the status quo on many levels and impacted harshly on some of our workers, but it has also ensured that for the first time in many years, the Kogi State payroll is not bleeding scarce finances through servicing of ghost-workers and unintended beneficiaries.

“The Administration has been able to develop creative financial and social engineering practices designed to get the most mileage out of available financial resources. By a complex combination of cost-cutting, prioritization and elimination of wastage, we have been able to stretch our purse to pay salaries, provide social services and execute the very visible infrastructural projects we have ongoing all over Kogi State.

“These are tough times for sure, but they are by no means impossible times. We will continue to confront them with courage and creativity. Our Internally Generated Revenue (IGR) base has grown from the average of N400m monthly we met on assumption of office to an average of N1bn monthly during the year under review.

“In December 2016, we achieved over N1.9bn in IGR collected due to a special receipt which comes in once a year. In 2017 we project that Internal Generated Revenue should add about N32bn to funding the year’s budget”.