ENVIRONMENT: Osun Govt. Spent N2BN On Dredging – Commissioner

Mrs Olubukola Oyawoye, the Osun Commissioner for Environment and Sanitation, said on Tuesday in Osogbo that the state government spent N2 billion in the last three years on dredging. Oyawoye stated this while fielding questions from journalists at a programme tagged News-Point, organised by the correspondents’ chapel of the Nigeria Union of Journalists in Osun.
The commissioner said the dredging was part of the Six-Point Integral Action Plan of Gov. Rauf Aregbesola’s administration. The aim of the plan is to banish poverty, unemployment and hunger from the state, as well as restore healthy living, enhance communal peace and promote functional education.
Oyawoye recalled how at the inception of Aregbesola’s administration in 2010, the government introduced measures to curtail flooding in all flood-prone areas. The commissioner said that as at 2012, the dredging covered 123 kilometres in more than 100 communities. The dredging of streams and rivers was carried out in Ipetu-Ijesa, Ife-Ilesa, Ejigbo, Iragbiji, Ode-Omu, Iwo, Ila-Orangun, and Osogbo.
In Osogbo alone, no fewer than 15 rivers, streams and canals, which include Okooko, Ogbaagba, Akepe, Odigun, Arungbo, Alekuwodo, are being dredged and de-silted on a continuous basis, according to the commissioner. “What we have spent in three years cannot equal what can be lost to flood disaster in one day. But since the inception of Aregbesola’s administration, we have not lost lives or property to flooding,” she said.
Oyawoye listed regular sanitation exercise, beautification project which involves tree planting in nine major cities, building of comfort stations as parks and public toilets as some of the achievements of the government.
(NAN)