Paul Osuyi, Asaba
GOVERNOR Ifeanyi Okowa of Delta State on Tuesday directed his commissioners to present their hand over notes to the various permanent secretaries in their ministries and directorates before the close of work on Friday, May 24.
The governor gave the order during a valedictory session with members of the State Executive Council in Asaba, ahead of his swearing-in for a second term on May 29.
Okowa who thanked his cabinet members for their contributions to the overall success of his first tenure, promised to run an all-inclusive government in his second term, saying that such was instrumental to the success recorded so far in the delivery of policies and programs by his administration.
“In the last four years, I have had a working team, an Exco that realized that we are together and that our success story will be told together and I am proud to say that it is the collective efforts of each and every one of us that has given us our success stories which also resulted in the resounding victory we recorded at the elections.
“God’s grace was obviously with us but I believe that if each and every one of us had our own different beliefs, working in different ways, I believe that we will not have been able to achieve what we have achieved thus far. So, I will, first of all, want to thank each and every one of you (members of the state executive council) for the wonderful comments that you have made this afternoon and appreciate you more for the commitment of each and every one of you in your previous offices in the last four years, because, there is no doubt that you have all been very loyal to the deputy governor and myself and that loyalty has kept the team together; I want to thank each and every one of you; I can rightfully say that none of you betrayed the confidence that I have in you.
“I must thank you all for agreeing that as an EXCO we will run a realistic budget; I thank God that we have tried to stay within the limit, so, when I looked at our papers and I saw that in the year, 2018 that our performance rate was at 98 per cent, I was very pleased, because realistic budget is important so that when we explain to the people that with this budget this is what we are expected to do and the people at the end of the day see you doing nearly all the things that you said you will do, it is better than to raise the hopes of our people and then dash their hopes at the end of the day,” he said.
The governor said there is still a lot to be done in his second tenure, even as he seized the opportunity to the people of the state “for the support given to us as a government; the love they have shown to us and to urge and pray that they will continue to guarantee us the peace and the support that they gave us this first tenure and as we look forward to next week as the deputy governor and myself take the oath of office we want to reassure them that we will be there for them, we will continue to strive to improve on the things that we have done and we will looking forward to having the cooperation of the people because working together as a people will make us excel.”