Obaseki Scores Govt High On Socio -economic, Infrastructure Development

Governor Godwin Obaseki of Edo State at the weekend scored his administration high on socio-economic and infrastructure growth in the state, saying his administration had put the state on solid footing on those two parameters to compete with any state economy globally.

Obaseki, who spoke  during the  7th Alaghodaro Summit held in Benin City, said the process of shared opportunity that  led Edo State into the future started seven years ago during his first Alaghodaro Summit.

“In laying the foundation for the future, we identified seven areas which are education, institutional reforms, economic, investment, agriculture, manufacturing and production. All the things we set for ourselves in our first summit have been achieved,” the governor said.

“We are lucky that we took this step seven years ago in our first Alaghodaro Summit. What the country is facing now means we must go back to redesign and re-engineer the country for growth. We have 200 million people yearning for goods and services every day, but we don’t have the foreign exchange earnings to support the level of imports we have seen over the years. We are paying the price of not being able to hold the value of our local currency,” he said.

Governor Obaseki added that the key to changing the narrative as a country or state is to encourage production, saying, 70 percent of what is imported into the country can be produced in Edo State.

“So, if the government is redesigned to work with the private sector to have more productions going on in the country, we would reduce the pressure on the foreign exchange, whether in educational or health service among other services,” Obaseki added.

He said there was no reason paying two to three billion dollars annually on school fees abroad, adding that that was the reason he and his predecessor in collaboration with the private sector established an excellent university affiliated with schools in Europe and America, so that parents would not send their children out of the country for quality education.