Governor Seyi Makinde of Oyo State has promised to split Ministry of Information, Culture and Tourism into two viable ministries.
The two proposed ministries will be Information and Tourism with each commissioner.
Makinde disclosed this in his monthly news letter being prepared to give hints of his next line of actions.
According to the news letter, “we still have a few hours to enjoy the Ileya celebrations, after which it is back to work for all of us. For me, having sent the first batch of commissioner nominees to the Oyo State House of Assembly, I know I now have just about two weeks to send the names of the rest of the nominees and have my cabinet in place. This promise will be kept just as all other promises we have made to the good people of Oyo State”.
“You may have noticed that the street lights are coming back on as promised. We will continue to use the diesel generators to power the street lights for now so that our people can get the benefits of this infrastructure while we work on finally moving them to the tribrid power system – the 11MW Independent Power Project (IPP, which is ongoing) as the main source of power with gas generators and inverters as a backup”.
“One of the other things we are going to do is to ensure that all our ministries function optimally. As you already know, Tourism is one of the sectors that we will be focusing on during this tenure to drive our economy. And so, we will be decoupling the Ministry of Information, Culture and Tourism. So, we will have the Ministry of Information headed by one commissioner, while another will head the Ministry of Culture and Tourism”.
“This means that under Omituntun 2.0, Oyo State will have eighteen and not seventeen commissioners. Some may think that we should be reducing rather than increasing the number of ministries, departments and agencies at this time in order to reduce the cost of governance. But, after due consideration, we believe that the benefits of these adjustments far outweigh the costs, and Oyo State will be the better for it”.
“With this, the Commissioner for Culture and Tourism will be better able to oversee the Tourism Board and extract the value trapped in that agency, while the Commissioner for Information will focus on communicating the activities of government to the people through the various channels we have made available”.
“I must say that the next few weeks are going to be exciting for governance in Oyo State. By the time I write you again, we should have some commissioners sworn in and most of the Executive Advisers, Assistants and Special Advisers and Assistants in place”.
“Do not forget to keep praying for us and for the entire country. These are trying times, but I believe that with our Nigerian can-do spirit and trust in God, we shall overcome”, Makinde ended
