Ekiti State Governor, Dr Kayode Fayemi has said that his administration has repositioned the State and put it in limelight in the last four years
Governor Fayemi who stated this during on Friday at the launch of the Youth Employment and Social Support Operation (YESSO) in Ado Ekiti added that the efforts of the present administration in transforming the State have paid off with the State taking the lead in virtually all indices of human development as attested to by local and international bodies and in tangible changes in the lives of the citizens.
The Governor stressed that the State has been rated highly in terms of efficiency, transparency and competitiveness among the States of Nigeria even as the World Bank’s ‘Ease of Doing Business’ report puts Ekiti among the five leading States that have made remarkable progress on all indices of doing business with ease.
Noting that Ekiti had been ranked 34th before the advent of the administration, Fayemi said it was heart warming seeing the state progress to the first five.
The Governor added that Ekiti State has benefitted from at least six World Bank projects to the tune of $150 million in Agriculture, Health, Education, Governance and Infrastructure.
He asserted that the plethora of development initiatives especially the Social Security Scheme and the Youth Volunteer Programmes among others introduced by his administration attracted the World Bank to the Ekiti as pilot State for its Youth Employment and Social Support Operation (YESSO).
This, he said, has put paid to those who have continued to “spread falsehood that we have paid attention to infrastructural development at the expense of human development”.
Fayemi added that the focus of his government on infrastructural development is not unconnected to the fact that good infrastructure is a catalyst for sustainable human development.
The Governor who donated four vehicles to the YESSO programme in the State urged the World Bank to continue its partnership with Ekiti State Government regardless of which political party is in government.
In his remarks, the World Bank representative, Prof. foluso Okunmadewa commended the Fayemi-led administration for pursuing programmes that are aimed at transforming the lives of the people.
Okunmadewa explained that the YESSO programme is a welfarist intervention programme of the World Bank aimed at reducing poverty by permitting the poor people to access increased opportunities for youth employment and social service delivery.
The World Bank’s representative who noted that Nigerian youths hold the key to actualising the vision 2020 but youth unemployment is a major challenge to actualising it.
Okunmadewa who disclosed that $50 million has been approved for Ekiti to undertake a water project affirmed that the State represents the Bank’s model of development partnership.
Last modified: October 3, 2014
