A Former Senator and Minister
of State for Niger Delta Affairs, Tayo Alasoadura says, he went through rough patches in life before rising to stardom attributing the success to self determination and perseverance.
Senator Alasoadura, who made this known while speaking on Orange 94.5 FM’s flagship programme ‘Your Stewardship,’ reminisced about how he went to school without shoes, pocket money, and even failed to proceed on his overseas scholarship due to a lack of funds, particularly to cater for his travel allowances, but yet succeeded.
“Self-determination made me succeed in life. Whenever I returned home for holidays, I wore my mum’s shoes because there was no money to buy one, and no pocket money during school days, but yet I succeeded despite all odds.”
The former Minister of State for Niger Delta Affairs traced his achievements and how he navigated numerous challenges as the Commissioner for Finance in Ondo State, including the decentralisation of payments to contractors from the parent ministry to other ministries, parastatals, and agencies for the ease of doing business and good governance
“The most unpopular decisions I ever took were with the civil servants. It took me three months to persuade workers in my office that we must decentralise payment. I was being accused of wanting to create a mini-ministry of finance in ministries and parastatals in Ondo State. That was the greatest challenge I had as a commissioner, but we surmounted it. In fact, to let you know, Mr. Governor asked me to go prepare the memo for the decentralisation outside the civil service so that it wouldn’t leak and people wouldn’t go against it.”
The former senator further explained that during Governor Olusegun Agagu’s administration, no gratuity was owed, and no contractors were owed a kobo before the judiciary abruptly sent the administration packing through the court.
According to him, “despite the sudden change of government, the Agagu-led administration left a whopping sum of 41.3 billion naira in the bank and 2.7 billion naira in the local government accounts, with the omission of 4 billion naira, which was later discovered by Governor Rotimi Akeredolu’s government.”
“When another administration came on board and alleged that Agagu’s administration was indebted to the people and contractors to the tune of 177 billion naira, I went to publish the amount we left before as a government, and it has not faltered up till today. We had no time to prepare our handover note in detail because the administration was sacked through the court.”
He also listed his scorecards while in the Senate to include numerous scholarships and empowerment initiatives for his constituents, the preparation of the Petroleum Industry Act, which was later reviewed and passed by the 9th Senate, noting that the only change made to the Act was the reduction of the 5 percent initially recommended for the host communities to 3 percent.
The former Minister of Niger Delta Affairs also praised President Bola Tinubu’s reform agenda aimed at taking the country to greater heights while pledging to work for the re-election of the president for a second term.
He stressed that leaders must always strive to serve the people conscientiously and diligently, with a view to promoting good governance and uplifting the downtrodden in society.
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