Commissioner for Information in Delta, Chief Patrick Ukah, on Tuesday said the state governor, Sen. Ifeanyi Okowa, was not on any vindictive mission against anyone.
He also said that Okowa had been focused on the development of the state, evenly distribution projects across the state as addition to existing infrastructure in the state.
The commissioner stated this at a news conference in Asaba while reacting to the statement credited to the immediate past governor of the state, Dr Emmanuel Uduaghan, in which he said Okowa was on a vindictive mission.
He said that Okowa, who was obsessed with passion to develop the state, had no reason to destroy existing “legacies’’ of previous administrations in the state.
Ukah said that it was not the style of the Okowa-led government to respond to fallacious claims but that it owed the public the duty to set the records straight.
Uduaghan had in the media reports credited to him, which he had not refuted, alleged that Okowa’s administration was on a vindictive mission to bulldoze his legacies as governor.
“Since the recent defection of former Gov. Uduaghan to the All Progressives Congress (APC) from the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) where he was bred and fed, we have been inundated with clandestine and visible plots,” he said.
He said that Uduaghan’s actions and utterances since he defected from the PDP were intended to drag the Okowa’s administration into his (Uduaghan) dwindling political fortune.
Ukah said that people of the state and Nigerians, who visited the state could testify that Uduaghan had no legacies in his eight years in government.
“We challenge Uduaghan to tell the world about the said legacy projects he claimed to have left behind which this Okowa government has destroyed.
“The Uduaghan government’s free healthcare programme had budgeted N700 million yearly to provide free healthcare in urban cities and secondary health facilities only.
“He did not consider primary healthcare facilities in rural communities where the real people that need free healthcare most reside,” he said.
Ukah disclosed that Okowa had since expanded the healthcare programme to cover all the people in urban and the rural communities, “the real poor people’’.
He added that the governor also ensured that all children under five years and pregnant women in the state remained in the programme.
He said that the former governor’s mission to unseat a hardworking Okowa was already a failed one.
“It is indeed amazing that the same Uduaghan, who a few months ago endorsed Okowa for second term on account of his (Okowa) outstanding performance in spite of the downturn in the economy is trying to distract him.
“We hereby assure that Deltans are quite impressed with the development efforts of the PDP in Delta as led by Okowa and are prepared again to return Okowa for a second term in 2019,” Ukah said.
