Kogi Governorship Election Is Not Good For Democracy – Seyi Makinde

Posted by: Folamidavid in Politics, News Nov 19, 2019

Oyo State governor, Seyi Makinde is not happy with the way the recently concluded Kogi governorship election went down.

He said this as he began work on the Moniya-Iseyin road project, just 2 months after withdrawing it from the initial contractor.

According to Gov Seyi, Nigeria is still nowhere near how an election should be conducted and the present democracy being practiced in Nigeria is nowhere close to what Nigerians want.

His words, “My reaction is that I think that our aspiration as a country is still very far apart from our effective reality. That is the summary of my reaction.”

“All of us need to work really hard to ensure that our effective reality is as close as possible to our aspiration.”

“This is not the kind of election that we want to have in our democracy, so all of us as stakeholders including INEC, politicians and the people, we all have to come together and ensure that we get the kind of democracy that will respect the wishes and will of the people.”

“My hotel was truly attacked but it was repelled and I am here now. There is no scratch on my body and I thank God for that.”

On the road, “We are doing a total reconstruction of the road. We are scrapping everything on that road because that road economically is one that will help improve our economy, so it is a road that is targeting our economy, it is linking the capital city to Oke-Ogun and just less than one kilometres radius of the dry port. So, we want our infrastructure around that area to be really economically viable.”

“We are paying 60 per cent of the project cost upfront as mobilisation so that there won’t be any escalation of the project and so that the contractors can have everything that is required to move forward.”

“I also charged the youths to cooperate with the contractors and the contractors to employ our youths for this one year span of the project. We want to see the positive engagement of our youths in that axis.”

“And in terms of the designs for the road, we want to use it as a flagship of roads for Oyo state and a standard template. We asked that the asphalt thickness should be 50mm in the stead of 40mm so that it can take articulated vehicles and others in that axis.”