Cross River State Governor Senator Bassey Otu has credited the successes of his administration to the effective sealing of leakages in the state’s Internally Generated Revenue.
He stated that once all ongoing efforts come to full fruition, the state will achieve self-sufficiency and reduce its dependence on federal allocations.
The governor made these remarks during a visit by a team of Vanguard editors to Calabar, where they presented him with a notification letter for the Good Governance Award.
Otu highlighted that the primary challenge facing the state involves certain legal entanglements concerning revenues that ought to accrue to it.
His words: “I will say that there’s been divine intervention, and allocations are quite low.
“But I’m a banker by profession, also a farmer, so I know how to manage resources prudently, to make the best out of it. We’ve made sure that in terms of our IGR, we seal all the leakages. There are many people who are not very happy.
“But I believe that one has to acquit himself before man and God. And if you want to follow the kind of pressures that come with the seat, you might derail completely. I’ve been in politics for long, I’ve been in the House of Representatives, and I’ve been in the Senate, and I cannot change my colour now.
“Mine has been people first, and it’s people first. Like I said, there’s been a lot of regrets about why I was put in office. But it can’t be business as usual.
“I have to do what will benefit the people. If not, we just allow only a few people to enjoy, and then the real populace that are to enjoy the empowerment, the upgrading, the upscaling, then there’s a big problem there, big problem.
“Here, we try to make sure that we take the whole society, omnibus. We go to the very poor, the middle class, the high class. At some point, the high class couldn’t survive, because when you don’t deal with the other classes of people, even if you build concrete, they will break that concrete.
“When I try to explain to some people, you are already rich, what do you want to do with the money? You won’t have peace if other people don’t have that peace. So, in our approach to security, we try to make sure that we are making provision.
“Except the very hardened people who don’t want to change at all, we allow them to face the music, face the full weight of the law. But for others who are ready to do something, we encourage them in diverse ways, many ways, so that they will be able to do other things like energy security, food security. We operate an integrated economy, which is making us one of the places to watch.
“Not too long, we’ll be so independent, that we may not even need federal allocation for any of those things. We’ve already added indices to our GDP, we’ve created some ventilations in almost all areas. The area we have issues with is some legal entanglement, which we are trying to clear, so that people can actually be free.
“That’s why we have people from your state who come here and don’t go back again. Even if you try to drag them down, they won’t come back, because there’s no segregation here. If you run away, the kids you have here will ask you to come back.
“And even the people, they won’t like you to come back.”
