The highest private investor in Delta state and top Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, governorship aspirant, Olorogun Kenneth Gbagi, has said he would run a state where local governments, monarchs, clerics and leaders go all-out to pull companies and businesses to their respective areas if voted in 2023.
Gbagi, who paid a consultative visit to the Orosuen of Okere Urhobo Warri Kingdom, Warri South local government area, His Royal Majesty, HRM Emmanuel Okumagba, weekend, said without industries to employ the youths and take them off the streets, the state was wasting its time.
The industrialist and former Minister of State for Education told the monarch that under his watch, it would be anathema for government to hand over staff of office to a traditional ruler and he stays put in his kingdom with no viable economic development.
He entreated monarchs and religious leaders to take ownership of their areas, adding,”I will assign you officers that will ask you what business you are doing. It is the business that I want to see. Local governments in Lagos state compete with each other and it is difficult to notice when one enters another council area. That is the kind of state that I want to run.”
“The whole idea of having just staff of office and you sit down there and you fizzle out as a person will not work for me. I will do what is called complete engagement of our traditional rulers”, the largest private employer of labour in the state,” the lawyer and criminologist asserted.
Maintaining that he would be governor of the entire state, he charged monarchs to use their relationship and contact to ensure their locality was turned around, stressing that Delta must be taken to enviable height.
“Before now, every local government has an economy that was running. Today, out of our own shallowness and not wanting to do anything, we say it is well and then church people will start praying for us, nothing is happening and everything has gone back.
“Seventy -two percent of all our children are no more in the state, they have gone to look for greener pastures and some of them are dying while some live worthless lives because we have failed as a people to put our house together,” he bemoaned.
His words: “I am here to inform you that I am in the race by the grace of God to assume the office of the Governor of Delta State come 2023. We have done everything we know, the situation is narrowing down and I want to plead with you, we need to industrialize this state.”
“Over 20 years ago when I came to this Okumagba Avenue to create what is now known as the biggest commercial plaza on this road, this place was better. It is going down, all that we have now to replace the oil companies are now small shops, that cannot give us money and that cannot develop the place.
“I intend to engage traditional rulers and religious leaders very seriously. Unless you have industries, employ your youths, unless these youths are out of the street and that they can earn a meaningful living, we are wasting our time. We have a duty, God does not, will not, can never and have not made mistakes before. It is us that are making mistakes.
“What God has divided to you, for you to be the overlord is Okere Urhobo, The way I am going to judge you as governor is how many companies you bring here every month, that will make me increase your allocation as a king because if you bring in more companies, you are giving employment to the people, you are solving the problems of government.
“I plead with you sir, it is a very trying time. If you have 10 children as you obviously will always have giving your vantage position, you want to ask yourself, among these children, who can do it for us? You owe yourself a duty to first and foremost return this place back to what it was when your father left it for you. It is a decisive moment for us to lift our children yet unborn from poverty,” the leading governorship hopeful said.
He described the Okere Urhobo Warri monarch as a man of character just like the state governor, Dr. Ifeanyi Okowa, saying, “Senator Okowa has character and it is that character that is the savior of the state, today.”
Responding, HRN Okumagba, said: “May God give you the position you are seeking, may God pick you, when God picks you and I am in support.”
“It is what God says something should be, that is how it is. And because God has a hand in it, it will work.If you are interested in anything, come out, say it and you must believe in yourself.
“Let your resolve be strengthened by looking up to God just as I did mine and God will do it for you. I have my attitude towards you and I can tell you today that it changed towards you this moment”, Orosuen declared.
