A governorship aspirant under the platform of the All Progressives Congress (APC), in Ondo State, Olamide Ohunyeye, said his military experience would give him an edge over contenders in the race for the seat.
Ohunyeye, a retired Brigadier General, who stated this during an interaction with newsmen in Akure, Ondo State capital, promised to leverage his 35 years as a military officer to turn around every sector in the state if elected as governor.
According to him, with his exposure to various classes of command, leadership, administrative, human, and financial resource management training, priority will be given to the security of lives and property in the state
He said; “when there is no security, there can never be any development and we have a lot to do again towards improving the security architecture of the state.
“What I intend to do is to leverage my 35 years in military service to ensure that we have absolute security.
“We are going to develop blueprints for Amotekun, we are going to improve on their mode of operations, we are going to ensure that Amotekun is better equipped”
He disclosed that ”we are going to enhance their collaboration with other security services, especially the DSS, Army and we have planned to deepen our collaborations with our neighbouring states and to ensure that not even one element of criminals and bandits infiltrates into Ondo State.
“We want to see the performance and functionality of the Amotekun Corps. There are plans to improve on the blueprints to ensure that Amotekun Corps is more potent, mobile, agile, and intelligently driven to perform within the state.
Speaking On his plans for the state in other sectors, he said ”I will take a look at education, I will urgently review the infrastructure that supports the entire educational structure in Ondo State, we will bring on board a very simple affordable online platforms that can aides the improvement in technology and learning.
“The same goes for healthcare services. There will be deliberate and conscious efforts to improve all health facilities, from the tertiary to the intermediate and primary levels.
“We will have a high-capacity hospital with maximum capability in terms of equipment and human resources that can manage all manners of medical care and this is very important and we are going to achieve it.”
He said the state economy will experience unprecedented development, saying “Ondo state as it is now is purely consuming state and we need to improve on our productive capacity. Companies established by past administrations in the state are not alive. So there is that urgency to look back at these entities to revive them.
“If we cannot revive them, we will bring partners, and collaborators with strategic investment so that we can either revive these companies or set up new ones and we have the capacity and resources to achieve it.
“We need the right capacity, competent to come in to take Ondo state to another level and I believe if am found worthy to do that I believe we can push these ideas to the people of the state to let them know that I’m here to take the state to the next level and this same goes for other sectors in the state.
“The task of building Ondo state is not one person’s job, it is a collective and cooperative job and I want to tell us that if I’m elected as governor, it will be our collective responsibility to move the state forward.”
He, however, promised to key in into and champion the Renewed Hope Agenda of President Bola Tinubu towards developing agriculture in the state, noting that the state is known for agriculture and food security.
Ohunyeye said “If we bring in the performance measurements criteria, we will see that there is a lot to do within the agriculture sector, do we have organisations that guide the performance of our farmers, do we have government support in terms of equipment to the farmers? This and others issues calls for critical examination.
“We want to align our agenda with the current programmes of President Bola Ahmed Tinubu, about developing agriculture towards exports and improving local food consumption in the state.
“This is a clear avenue for Ondo state to be able to improve on its generated revenue capacity especially, on foreign exchange that is currently scarce within the nation and I know that if we pursue this vigorously, we are going to create massive employment for our teeming youths in the state.
“Youths in the state, aged parents, women in the villages will be fully engaged, we will achieve a lot towards reducing unemployment, poverty in the state.”
