Benue State Governor Hyacinth Alia has called on people of the state in the Diaspora to collaborate and partner with his administration to develop Benue and make it a better place for all.
The governor made the call at a zoom-in interface with the Benue Diaspora, put together by both the Mutual Union of Tiv in America (MUTA) and the Idoma Association in the United States of America (USA).
The virtual interaction was to enable the state’s indigenes abroad to get firsthand information on the present administration’s general policy direction, security initiatives as well as the government’s drive in sectors such as agriculture, mining, education, health, banking and finance as well as physical and digital infrastructure.
Alia, according to a statement by his chief press secretary, Tersoo Kula, informed the Benue Diasporans that he was on a working visit to the United States, to harness the power of collaboration and partnerships to drive positive change and sustainable development in Benue.
He also told them that together with some Northern Governors, they met with Amina Mohammed, the Deputy Secretary-General of the United Nations, where the agenda of the meeting was centered on tackling insecurity, boosting agriculture, addressing unemployment and enhancing training opportunities for the people of the various states.
While thanking the Diasporans for their support right from the time of campaigns and now as the governor, Alia also appreciated them for being good ambassadors in the foreign land; an act he said, is promoting the image of Benue as a state and Nigeria as a country.
Asked to speak on the overall policy direction of his administration and on how he intends to transition the state from a public driven economy to a private driven economy, embracing accountability and transparency in governance, the Governor explained that before his assumption of office, there was a deviation not just on transparency and accountability, but on deliverability of good governance in the previous years, with the last 8years being the worst.
“We met things on May 29th, 2023, in a very terrible and deplorable state. The civil service was dysfunctional. People were no longer going to work; with most of the local government headquarters overtaken by bushes, and hardly people were going there to work and it went all through the entire system.
“The workers were not paid their salaries and everybody stopped working. Pensioners were dying on a daily basis for they had no funds to get drugs, literally. all the companies that the state had owned became moribund. And in a number of efforts in trying to pull off the puzzle, the present administration discovered that there were litigations on those companies and all of that,” Alia said.
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