Bello Tasks Successive Governments On Project Continuity

• Gov. Abubakar Bello

Gov. Abubakar Bello of Niger has said that completion of projects by successive governments was imperative in engendering sustainable development in the country.

Bello, in an interview with the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) in Abuja on Sunday, also urged all politicians to consider completion of projects as service to the people and not the administration that initiated them.

“If an administration starts a project which is beneficial to the people, complete it; because completing it is what matters the most to the people.

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“I hate not to complete projects by previous administrations. When we came in, there were many abandoned projects we completed irrespective of our political differences.

“My position is that my predecessors used public fund to finance such project. So when we came, there were projects right from former Governor, Late Abdulkadir Kure’s administration that were abandoned.

“When we took over, like water project in Lambata we have completed it, remaining reticulation and commissioning. We have water projects started in Katcha and Lapai, started by late Kure’s administration.

”We have also completed some projects by other previous administrations,” he said.

The governor decried the level of development in the country which he attributed to the many abandoned projects for political reasons.

Bello said that any leader driven by urge to succeed must imbibe the culture of continuity and make completion of projects a priority since these projects are for the benefit of the citizens.

“If all the projects started in Nigeria since 1960 were to be completed, Nigeria would have been very developed by today,” he said.

The Niger governor, who reiterated the commitment of his administration towards development, restated his interest in technical and skills acquisition for the state’s teeming graduates.

”We have taken a data collation of graduates in the state and discovered that many are unemployed. So we need to revive our technical schools to equip them.

“Instead of building new technical schools, I have about five that are almost dead. So, I have to revive them because if I abandon them, another administration will come and build more,” he said.

He, however, called on leaders to eschew political differences in order to provide democratic dividends to the people.