The Kogi State House of Assembly has not taken any inducement from the executive arm of government to pass the bill to empower the governor to access a N20 billion bond for infrastructural development as being speculated in some quarters.
The House Majority Leader, Hon. Yakubu Yunusa, told journalists at the weekend in Lokoja, the state capital, that the lawmakers would not support any move that would make life difficult for the people.
Yunusa said the House was only preoccupied with making laws that have direct bearing on the people’s lives.
He described as total fallacy and far from the truth the insinuation that the House connived with the executive after taking monetary inducement to hurriedly pass the bill to empower the governor to borrow the money.
Yunusa said when the bill was presented on the floor of the Assembly, it was subjected to rigorous debate by the 25 members of the House.
He said after the lawmakers realised the importance of the bill to the development of the state in term of infrastructure, they have no choice than to pass it.
According to him, before the passage of the bill, the House organised a public hearing where stakeholders contributed before the House passed the bill for the governor’s assent.
Yunusa added that the House considered expansion and reticulation of Lokoja Greater Water Scheme; rural development, opening up of more roads in Lokoja and other infrastructural development as the principal reasons for which the bond was sought.
He recalled that states like Lagos, Ekiti and others had taken such bond and the states are working progressively, stressing that the Lagos State Government went for bond for five years and had been able to pay back in two years.
On the youth restiveness in Ofu Local Government Area of the state, the lawmaker pointed out that he and other stakeholders are not relenting in their oars to tackle the spate of insecurity in that local government.
He, therefore, described as a source of concern the recent development in which some hoodlums kidnapped a monarch for ransom and killed a 17-year-old girl, Ugere Ogbadu, for ritual purpose.
The lawmaker, however, appealed to the state government to write to the Federal Government to establish a military base in Ofu Local Government Area as part of the major strategy to check the activities of the hoodlums.
He also commended the state governor, Capt. Idris Wada, for his zero tolerance to violence.
