A retired Brigadier General in the Nigerian Army, Olumide Felix Ohunyeye, has joined the race for the November 16, governorship election in Ondo State under the platform of the All Progressives Congress (APC) with a promise to move the state from a consumption to production state if elected.
This is just as he vowed to key into the Renewed Hope Agenda of President Bola Tinubu towards developing agriculture for exports and growth of foods consumption and export.
General Ohunyeye, a PhD holder, who stated these while speaking with journalists over his governorship ambition on Monday in Akure, the state capital said that with his 36 years of military background experience, he is poised to clinch the ticket of the party ahead of the governorship election in the state.
His words: “For several reasons, I want to become the governor of Ondo State. It boarders on previous work experience, professional experience and my academic pursuit. Like you know, Ondo is a state of giants when it comes to academics and reeling out my qualifications which includes a PhD., I believe that it’s nothing to celebrate as such.
“The call or clamour for development in Ondo State continues to resonate as citizens, we are desirous, the populace are desirous of improving their lots. Improving their standards of living, improving in emancipating the critical mass of people from underemployment, poverty, joblessness and several others”.
Ohunyeye who hails from Ilu -titun, in Okitipupa local government area of the state revealed that education, economic development, healthcare, infrastructure will be the cardinal pillars that will form the bedrock for developmental efforts for his administration.
“It has become very imperative and compelling that we change the paradigm shift and to ensure that the story is changed, to ensure that the previous achievements of our leaders are consolidated on, to ensure that we move Ondo State to the next level in all ramifications, I have come out a unique agenda, which I refer to as New “AGE”. The ‘A’ stands for Absolute Security; ‘G’ stands for Good Governance and ‘E’ stands for Empowerment, Poverty Alleviation and other indices.”
“To achieve the new age, it becomes compelling that we thinker with some indices of development which I will refer to as cardinal pillars that will form the bedrock for developmental efforts in the state. To achieve this, we are going to look at education, economic development, healthcare, infrastructure.”
According to him, it is necessary to build the infrastructures within the state, saying “Infrastructural development underscores all other areas that are discussed. We have infrastructure of road network, improvement in health facilities, agriculture amongst others.
“We know that the critical mass of our people basically leave agregarian lives and they basically dwell in rural areas. How far have they progress in their day to day activities? I am sure that if we bring in performance measurements criteria, you will see that there is still lot of things that needs to be done within the sector.
“Do we have feeder roads that link the farmlands and settlements? Do we have an organise cooperative that guides the performance of the farmers? Do we have government support in terms of equipment? Government support in terms of extension services to provide quality seedling and advice to the farmers? These call for critical examination.
“Today, what is the state of our agricultural development? It is completely below reportable level. We know that Ondo State got involved extensively in agriculture in the early 60s and it’s on record that the proceeds from our farmlands in Cocoa, rubber and oil palm production were the strength for the establishment of Oodua Group of Companies where you have Wema bank and Sterling bank today”, he stressed.
Ohunyeye noted that, “It is on record that the Cocoa house in Ibadan was built predominantly from proceeds of our cocoa but unfortunately, today, nobody is talking about proceeds of agriculture from Ondo State.
“We want to align our agenda with the current programmes of President Bola Ahmed Tinubu about developing agriculture towards exports and generating foods for local consumption, this, we are going to pursue. This is a clear avenue for Ondo state to be able to improve on its revenue generating capacity especially, earnings on foreign exchange that is currently scarce within the nation. We know that if we pursue this vigorously, we are going to create massive employment for our teeming youths in the urban areas seeking white collar jobs.
“Our parents, women and youths in the villages will be fully engaged and with counseling, we will achieve a lot towards reducing unemployment, poverty, towards empowering our growing population.”
On security, he said, “Security is synonyms with development. In other words, when there is no security, there can never be any development and we have a lot to do again towards improving the security architecture of the state. Let me recognize that Ondo State has been relatively peaceful among committee of states within Nigeria and the credit for this will go to our late brother, Oluwarotimi Akeredolu who championed the establishment of Amotekun, ensuring that the state is very peaceful and secured.
“Having said these, there is still a lot to be done in the area of security. So, what I intend to do is to leverage on my 35 years in military service to ensure that we have absolute security.
“We are going to develop a blueprints for Amotekun, we are going to improve on their mode of operations, we are going to ensure that Amotekun is better equipped, we are going look at their mobility, communication and enhance their collaboration with other security services, especially the Police, DSS, Army and we have planned to deepen our collaborations with our neighbouring states to prevent infiltration of bandits and criminals from other states to Ondo.
“We want to see the performance and functionality of the Amotekun Corps. There are plans to improve on the blueprints to ensure that Amotekun Corps is more potent, mobile, agile, and intelligently driven to perform within the state”, he added.
Fidelis David
