Governor Sheriff Oborevwori has been commended for being in the saddle for two years, with giant strides to show, without borrowing a dime.
A former Speaker of the Delta State House of Assembly, Rt. Hon. Victor Ochei, gave the commendation while speaking with Journalists on the second anniversary of the Oborevwori administration.
Hon Ochei noted that Governor Oborevwori had remained committed to delivering the dividends of democracy to Deltans without plunging the state into internal debt, adding that as a former Presiding Officer of the State Assembly, the Governor was abreast of the dynamics of government.
He praised the Governor for encouraging the people to voluntarily pay tax by judiciously applying the resources of the state to infrastructural upgrade and other developmental initiatives, which had led to a significant increase in the Internally Generated Revenue of the state within the past two years.
The former Speaker said at the inception of the Oborevwori administration he never believed that the Governor would do well due to the complexity of the state’s finances, but expressed delight that he was able to bring some measure of credibility to the table, which had helped to improve the state’s risk rating.
Hon. Ochei, a former Executive Director of Maritime Labour and Cabotage Services of NIMASA, also scored the Governor high for engaging a world – class construction company, Julius Berger, to give the oil city of Warri the facelift that would restore its lost glory.
According to him, the cost element of the three flyovers was nothing compared to the benefit of having projects that would stand the test of time, stressing that by paying heavily for the projects, the Governor was taking off the pains of many years to come if the jobs were to be substandard.
On the recent defection of the Governor, the majority of critical stakeholders and members of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) to the All Progressives Congress (APC), and the collapse of the entire State PDP structure into the ruling party, Hon Ochei said it was a bold step only a courageous politician could take.
He maintained that nothing could be better for a state in the opposition than to align with the ruling party at the centre, expressing confidence that the state would be more progressive for it.
