An aspirant of the Kogi state governorship election on the platform of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), former governor Idris Wada has described the November 16th election as critical for the survival of the state.
Wada who stated this shortly after obtaining his expression of interest and nomination forms Monday, at the PDP national secretariat, Abuja, said he is in the race again to pull the people of Kogi state out of poverty and “the present mess”.
The former governor who served as governor from 2012 to 2016 also lamented that “unfortunately, since I left even projects that I have done to 90 percent completion, have been abandoned by the succeeding administration. The projects that were at 60 percent are still where they were when I left office. And the prevailing hunger and poverty, you can feel it when you enter Kogi state, the booming live of our people have disappeared.”
He explained that during his tenure, he did everything he could to bring semblance of calm security to the state, people were sleeping with their two eyes closed. Now people are sleeping with one eye closed, or even both eyes opened, promising that they will bring back a situation where the people can sleep and go about their businesses peacefully if PDP comes back to power in the state.
On how they were defeated by the incumbent governor Yahaya Bello in 2016, Wada said: “They brought violence during the 2016 election, this time around if they try it we will respond with like, if not more than what they throw at us. We are not going to watch people steal an election from us this time around, we are going to fight for it, we are going to unite the people of our party, we are going to organize our own young and active people to come up a very clear response strategy to any violence tendency on the part of the ruling party or anyone in the state.
“Let me say that this next election of November 16 is critical to the survival of Kogi state. Kogi was on a part of progress at the time I left, and if I had spent four more years with the kind of money that is coming into the hand of the present governor, Kogi state would have become a state that we will all be proud of.
On reducing the poverty level in the state he said, “If I come in, I have a very robust agricultural transformation program. So I assure you we are going to empower people through agricultural programs, we will bring in young people, we will have extension farmers fielding into a larger farm with processing industry that will lift all the people out of poverty. And of course, on the solid mineral resources, we will work with the federal government to work towards reactivating the Ajaokuta Itapke operations to employ more people”.
