Kayode Fasua in Abeokuta
Ogun State Governor, Prince Dapo Abiodun yesterday disclosed that housing estates developed by his immediate predecessor, Senator Ibikunle Amosun had become hideouts for criminals.
Abiodun made this disclosure at the third session of the 15th Synod of the Church of Nigeria, Anglican Communion, Diocese of Egba, Abeokuta, the Ogun State capital.
At the session, Abiodun accused Amosun of wastefulness, noting that his predecessor wasted the state’s resources building houses that people of the state could not afford.
Abiodun lamented that some of the yet-to-be occupied housing estates built by Amosun have now become hideouts for criminals, miscreants and other charlatans.
He attributed the inability of residents to own the estates to high price tags placed on them by the last administration. He thus berated Amosun “for wasting the resources of the people on projects that have no meaningful impact on their lives”.
He said away from the Amosun culture, his administration had instead, in the last two years, built more affordable houses than what any other administration had done in the state.
“We are doing some housing projects in Kobape, Ilaro, Ota, Sagamu and Ijebu-Ode. Today we have built more houses in two years in office than others have built in four to six years.
“We intend to ensure that these houses are acquired by the people that need them and they are truly affordable.
“When I assumed office, there were houses that were built by my predecessor that nobody bought; they have become dens of miscreants and we said something surely must be wrong.
“If they had good intentions for building these houses and nobody has acquired them, we need to find out what has gone wrong.
“We chose to uphold all the tenets of good governance and part of that is being inclusive and being participatory in governance; meaning that, we take your opinions into consideration when making decisions,” Abiodun told the clerics.
He further informed them that his administration had rehabilitated more than 300 primary healthcare centres and increased the number of ambulances in the state, from three that he inherited from Amosun, to 2,019.
Only recently, the governor and his predecessor engaged in a war of words, as the former accused the latter of leaving behind, over N50bn debts for his new government to inherit.
But the Amosun camp soon hit back, saying Abiodun was cooking up lies to “shield his corruption and inefficiency”.
Only lately too, Abiodun lambasted Amosun for “misleading members of the Senate Committee on Aviation to inspect an unrecognised airport project at Wasinmi, near Abeokuta”.
Same way, Amosun condemned Abiodun’s cargo airport project in Iperu describing it as unrecognised anywhere.
Meanwhile, Abiodun at the Synod, said his government would roll out air-conditioned mass transit buses this month, in which passengers will have access to free internet services.
This assurance came, just as the governor, over the weekend, also won an award of Best Governor in Security 2019 and Agriculture and Economic Empowerment 2020, bestowed on him by the Business Day Media Limited.
On his newly introduced mass transit pilot scheme, Abiodun said it would commence within the state capital, Abeokuta, before the end of May.
He said, “In line with our infrastructural rollout, we met with the United Kingdom’s foreign office and their department called the UK Prosperity Fund: they had a programme called the ‘Future Cities Project’, and we were made to bid, and they had this bid to develop 20 cities all over the world, to turn them into future cities.
“They were going to do urban regeneration and urban renewal; we bided and our bid was Abeokuta. Out of the cities that was shortlisted and accepted, Abeokuta was one of those 20 cities to enjoy their funding.
“They came and sat with our Ministry of Transportation, they began to design the implementation of the urban renewal and regeneration of the Gateway Capital City of Abeokuta.
“The plan is the mass transit system rollout in the whole state, but we have decided to start the pilot scheme, the pilot of a mass transit of a modern city -a mega city mass transport pilot plan, and we are starting in Abeokuta. That plan is not a future plan, we are starting between now and the end of next month.”
Abiodun said residents would begin to see befitting luxurious, air-conditioned, and wifi-enabled buses going from Kobape to Kuto, Lafenwa to Oke-Igbein, beginning this month.
He said the intention of his administration was to ensure that the pilot scheme was implemented across the state after its initial commencement in the state capital.
Earlier in his remarks, the Bishop of Egba Anglican Diocese, Rt. Rev. Emmanuel Adekunle, commended Abiodun for his strides in the education, health and housing sectors, calling on him to support agro-based cottage industries with grants to promote their development.
The Bishop in his admonition at the synod with the theme, “God Our Foundation And Salvation”, charged the people to ensure they take their doses of the COVID-19 vaccine, saying that the vaccine is meant for their overall protection.
