Governor scores rural programme high

[Defender]

Osun State Governor  Rauf Aregbesola, has said his rural transformation agenda cannot be compared with the moribund Directorate of Foods Roads and Rural Infrastructure  set up during the military  administration of General Ibrahim Babangida (rtd.)

At a meeting with officials of the World Bank and representatives of the National Planning Commission at the Government House, Aregbesola cautioned the officials never to use DFFRI as a basis to examine his administration's development plan for the rural communities.

Reacting to comparison of DFFRI with his administration's  rural development programmes, the governor said that  DFFRI at inception and execution was a scam that had no interest of the people at heart.

The governor told the Joint World Bank French Development Agency Mission on Rural Access and Mobility Project that because his administration is poised to use agriculture as a catalyst for rapid transformation of the state's economy, DFRRI cannot be a yardstick.

He said: "Don't use DFFRI as a standard for my rural development plan. DFFRI was ill-conceived and badly implemented. It was an avenue to rip off our people. It was a scam; a disaster which left people poorer than it met them. You cannot then use such a scam to measure our own rural development plan in Osun."

The governor also explained that it was for this determination that his government had embarked on opening up of roads that lead to vast areas of farmlands in the state, adding that with such projects, farmers would be able to transport their farm produce to ready markets in urban areas of the state.

He listed some of the farm settlements where his administration had acquired about 30,000 hectares of land for agricultural purposes as Mokore, Patara, Oyere-Aborisade, Oke Osun, Esa –Oke and Iwo farm settlements.

 

CULLED FROM THE NATION.

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