Invest in competitive areas, Osinbajo charges governors

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Invest in competitive areas, Osinbajo charges governors

Fayemi, Obaseki, Sanwo-Olu, El-Rufai insist on state police

• Ekiti gov flays NSA for stopping procurement of drones to fight security

Vice President Yemi Osinbajo has urged the 36 state governors to start making huge investments in areas where they have comparative advantages to shore up their internally-generated revenues and stop reliance on federal allocations for survival.

Osinbajo stated this in Ado-Ekiti, yesterday, during an Ekiti Economic and Investment Summit tagged: “Fountain Summit 2021” organised by Ekiti State Government to proffer solution to some socio-economic issues rattling the state.

Osinbajo’s suggestion came to fore, as Governors Kayode Fayemi (Ekiti), Babajide Sanwo-Olu (Lagos), Godwin Obaseki (Edo) and Nasir El-Rufai (Kaduna), canvassed robust multi-layers policing system in the country to protect the citizens and investments that can drive development.

They said that preventing the governors from taking charge of security in their states was affecting investments, development and well-being of the people adversely.

The Vice President, who was one of the panelists, said time had come for the chief executives of the states to start thinking about how to grow the economy like a nation by investing in most appropriate ways in areas of their economic strength.

Fayemi, who spoke on the lingering security crisis that is gradually crippling the economy, insisted that multi-level policing system remains the best way out of the present conundrum.

He narrated to the astounded audience how the National Security Adviser (NSA) stopped Ekiti and Kaduna states from procuring drones to fight insecurity despite President Muhammadu Buhari’s support and approval.

He said the NSA refused them access to end-user certificate.

Corroborating the call for state policing, Obaseki said police should be removed from the Exclusive List for state chief executives to be in firm control.

ALSO, Sanwo-Olu said: “When you have investments, you would have to protect them and take also responsibility for whatever happens. The investors will rely on the governors for protection and it is sad that we are not in charge. This is the area where the Federal Government must look into the issue of state police.”

Sanwo-Olu promised that Lagos State would digitalise its revenue collection process and give workers in the state’s Internal Revenue Service (IRS) incentives to do their jobs without perpetrating corruption.

The Kaduna State governor described security as a big problem that every Nigerian should be concerned about.

He said the country must decentralise the power of National Judicial Council to determine number of judges a state can have.