ALLOCATION OF KEY MINISTERIAL PORTFOLIOS TO YORUBA EXTRACTION: A KEY CHALLENGE

Former Governor of Ogun State,  Aremo Olusegun Osoba, has described President Muhammadu Buhari’s allocation of key ministerial portfolios  to Yoruba extraction as a big challenge, insisting that highest level of performance is expected from them.

Osoba, in an interview with Vanguard in Lagos, said President Buhari was a leader known for delegating duties on trust, and contended that the performance of the Yoruba ministers in the Buhari’s regime would be used to measure the future of South-West and Yoruba race in the politics of Nigeria.

The veteran journalist was optimistic that the President’s concentration of three major ministries central to infrastructural development and economic growth in the hands of former Lagos State Governor Babatunde Fashola indicated that Nigeria was now serious about real and visible governance.

Osoba, however, advocated for collaboration between Fashola as Minister of Power, Works and Housing, and former Rivers State Governor, Rotimi Amaechi, the Minister of Transportation, overseeing the railways, maritime, and aviation, for Nigeria to get the best.

According to him, “as one of the leaders of Yoruba race, and as an elder statesman of Yoruba extraction, I will say that President Buhari has thrown a big challenge, a gargantuan one, to the Yoruba nation by the appointment of ministers.  I do not want to be sectional.  I will only analyze those who are party members.

“The success of Fashola will be a measure for the future of South-West and Yoruba in the politics of this nation.  I believe that we must all rally round party members who are now in the cabinet, especially from the South-West of the country.  This is because it is a big challenge that Buhari has thrown to us and the onus lies in us to perform.

“The economy of this country is heavily dependent on the old Western Region, starting from the old Mid-West that is Edo and Delta states, down to Lagos. Fashola is in the position now to revive the economy of this country, revive the middle class, the industrial base of this country is around this South Western area, his performance and that of Amaechi, combined will score enormous goals.

“My simple advice for Fashola is to, like he did in Lagos, pick some few essential network of roads and just get going on them and that will change the whole economic situation in the country.  By this I mean, he should pick the major link with the rest of the country.

“For example, Lagos-Ibadan-Ilorin-Jebba road to the North; Ibadan-Akure-Okene-Lokoja-Abuja road to Kaduna, Kano’ Shagamu-Ore-Benin road to the East, and Port Harcourt-Aba-Enugu road.  If Fashola can fix these networks of roads, they will change the whole of the economic life of the country.”