Okowa slams critics of administration, toasts Delta’s infrastructural development

The Delta State Governor, Ifeanyi Okowa, on Friday blasted the critics of his administration and invited them to visit the state to assess its infrastructural development.

Okowa made the call while inspecting the ongoing work at the Dennis Osadebey University in Asaba, the state capital.

He said: “When people in Lagos and Abuja say that they are not seeing what we are doing, it is either that they don’t come home or that they just want to be wicked in their ways.

“There is a lot going on in our three new universities and we are proud that we took this decision because the new universities have admitted no fewer than 5,000 students within one year of their approval.

“We have also commenced the construction of two hostel projects in the university to accommodate students and it will be useful to us during the National Sports Festival holding in Asaba in November.”

He declared that only eight states are still operating the contributory pension scheme in the country while 16 others had stopped.

READ ALSO: Atiku reveals Okowa’s value to PDP’s 2023 presidential team

He claimed that the pension plan left the state government with a sizable backlog of past services.

“When we came into government in 2015, we were owing about N100 billion as past services or accrual services.

“We were able to investigate the sum and it eventually came down to about N88 billion and since then we have been paying N500 million monthly and we have paid over N36 billion over time.

“We have also made a provision of N20 billion from the proposed bridging finance to see what we can pay down for the past services,” the governor added.

Join the conversation

Opinions

Support Ripples Nigeria, hold up solutions journalism

Balanced, fearless journalism driven by data comes at huge financial costs.

As a media platform, we hold leadership accountable and will not trade the right to press freedom and free speech for a piece of cake.

If you like what we do, and are ready to uphold solutions journalism, kindly donate to the Ripples Nigeria cause.

Your support would help to ensure that citizens and institutions continue to have free access to credible and reliable information for societal development.

Donate Now