By Editor
The Ekiti State Commissioner for Infrastructure and Public Utilities, Prof Bolaji Aluko has highlighted the relative successes recorded by the Ekiti State government in the critical areas of agriculture, rural access roads and power generation.
The Professor of Chemical Engineering made the revelation as a special guest on a national television in Abuja at the weekend.
He explained that the difficulties encountered by farmers in moving their produce to the market has led the Ministry of Agriculture to conduct a big agro logistics research to identify what it calls Rural Access Mobility Project which identified and took inventory of those areas, the farm produce and the nearest markets.
According to him, the findings eventually led to aggressive construction of access roads to those identified farm hubs.
“We now have a RAAMP plan to do 1000 kilometers of rural roads and that is huge especially when you consider Ekiti with 80km by 80km sq. So a 1000 kilometers RAAMP road, if it is properly done, is transformation. The work is ongoing as we speak indicating the state commitment to the project. So this project links the roads with Agriculture” he said
Speaking further, the Commissioner added that Special Agric Processing Zone SAPZ in conjunction with AFDB. are correctly working in Ekiti.
He advised the Federal Government to work closely with state governments not only in the areas of RAAMP, SAPZ and what he described as staple food policy to ensure that every citizen of Nigeria is able to eat three square meal a day.
On the power sector reform, Prof Aluko spoke on the state government’s efforts at independent power generation.
“Before Buhari left, he did this electricity constitutional amendment that devolved power from Federal to the states incidentally it was the first Bill signed into law by President Tinubu and many of the states latched on to it including Ekiti State” he said.
He hinted that Ekiti State was at forefront of generating her own IPP even before the expiration of last administration having successfully generated a 2.625 megawatts that is providing 24- hour electricity the Secretariat, Government House and the Teaching Hospital since November 14, 2023 till date saying that efforts are ongoing to expand the scope through constant engagement with REA and developers to talk to communities on cost effective pricing while government has done a lot in metering of many households.
On the political front the former diasporan made a strong agitation for diasporan vote saying, “The only thing I’m interested about is if they can vote because if they can vote, nobody will take them seriously. So diasporan vote is of greatest concern” he concludes
