Akwa Ibom State Governor, Mr. Udom Emmanuel, yesterday declared that governors elected on the platform of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) have no option but to support President Muhammadu Buhari to succeed.
After meeting with Buhari at the Presidential Villa, the governor expressed delight with the way the president has been relating with governors irrespective of their political affiliations. Speaking with State House correspondents after a closed-door meeting with the president, the governor said: “The day you are elected, you are no more a PDP governor; you are a governor of a state in Nigeria. There is nothing like PDP or APC any longer.
“People come out to elect you; party is just a platform in which you get to actually serve your people. The day you are elected and sworn in, you are sworn in as the governor of the whole state. In the case of the president, the day you are sworn in, you become the President of Nigeria. “He (President) welcomes all of us as the father of the whole nation. It has nothing to do with partisanship here; it has to do with the people.
The nation is about the people. “Governance is about the people we are just focusing on. Like me, I have only one project at the back of my mind and that is the Akwa Ibom people project; issues of partisanship do not occur here.”
The governor explained that he was at the Presidential Villa to discuss with the president the problem of gully erosion being faced by the state which needed urgent intervention.
According to him, the state government had intervened in the problem while expecting a refund from the Federal Government. He said on few occasions, major commercial activities almost got to a halt because a major federal road linking both the South-South and the South-East collapsed due to gully erosion.
Emmanuel said: “We have problem of gully erosion. On few occasions, major commercial activities almost got to a halt because a major federal road linking both the South- South and the South-East collapsed due to gully erosion and the state government had to intervene and these things cost a lot of money.
Even with that you still need to carry on your own duty because those things exist within your state and as a state governor, you can’t just ignore some of these issues,” he added.
The governor said that the fact that his predecessor intervened in the problem of gully erosion in the state and never got refund would not deter him from attending to issues that affect the people of the state.
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