By Lucky Isibor,
A chieftain of the Edo State chapter of the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, Engr. Gideon Ikhine on Wednesday, 18th December said that Edo State needs a total restoration to bring it out of what he called, “the present predicament” to give the citizens life and decent living.
He was speaking in an interactive session to submit his vision, mission, goals, core values etc, with journalists at his campaign office in Benin City, the state capital where he outlined his restoration programme for the state.
He said, “through consultations with the grassroot, case studies and research, we came to the conclusion from our findings that Edo state needs a total restoration to bring us out of the present predicament and give every Edo citizen hope for a better life and living”.
A fellow of the Nigeria Society of Engineers, Ikhine who is a PDP gubernatorial aspirant for the Edo 2020 polls also said that he will be submitting himself to serve Edo state when INEC blows the whistle because he has professional private experience and skill for business building from the scratch which he can deploy to create a sustainable economy for the state.
He said he will be actualizing the vision of his restoration plan in respect of the core values of the PDP which he will respect and build his programmes on because that is what defines the party.
The gubernatorial hopeful claimed he has visited 191 wards of the 192 political wards in the state to consult with the people and to acquaint himself with the state of affairs and the state of the people pointing out that what he saw was quite revealing.
“If you want to lead a people, nobody writes the programme for you because it is your vision that you’re getting. You can’t sit down in your house to write the programme without going round to know the state of affairs and the state of the people.
“I know we have Ojirami dam in Edo State. So many people have contested election severally and they don’t even know the state of Ojirami dam.
“There are some places you go to they have only two teachers in the school. There are some places you go to, they have only one physics teacher in the whole of the local government area.
“If you don’t build institutions, but you allow them to decay and you don’t complain about it, you continue to live with the decay.
“Growing up we used to have ministry of education, we used to have inspectors, they are all gone. These are the values we want to bring back. So, you’ll all agree with me there is the need to change the existing government and put a government in place that can build values and institutions”, he said.
