Governor of Oyo State, Senator Ishaq Abiola Adeyemi Ajimobi on Tuesday disclosed that “Oyo State, especially Ibadan is no more suffering from flood.”
The governor said this while receiving members of the Senate Committee on Environment led by the Chairman of the Committee, Senator Oluremi Tinubu into his office on a courtesy visit as part of the committee’s oversight function to Oyo state.
He maintained that with the situation on ground in Oyo state, it is clear that the state had escaped the annual destructive impact of flooding since 2012 due to the proactive measures taken by his government to forestall flooding.
” It is everything. We lay a lot of emphasis on environment and we believe we have been vindicated for doing so as Oyo State, especially Ibadan is no more suffering from flood.” he said.
Specifically, Governor Ajimobi ruled out the negative effect of flooding on the lives of the people, Ajimobi, saying, Ibadan metropolis had suffered a lot from natural disasters before the emergence of his administration due to low funding for the state Ministry of environment and its agencies by successive administrations.
While lauding the Senate Committee on Environment for legislating on the regulatory acts to ensure that the Ministry and its sister agencies operated without hindrance, the governor maintained that “the new Act enabling the ministry of environment and its agencies to operate with high impact on the society has come at a very good time when the whole world has been waiting for this kind of succour to mitigate effects of flooding, heat and desertification.”
“It is imperative to give our support to the ministry of environment and its agencies because of their impact on our survival. The three tiers of government must make it paramount to fund these institutions for our own sake”.
“Look at our situation in Ibadan we have been able to conquer flooding due to our concentration on funding and monitoring of projects on dredging, construction of bridges and regulations on indiscriminate dumping of refuse. This new Act or regulation book will go a long way to assist these agencies to make our environment and humanity to have sustainable peace. Environment to us is very key.”
Governor Ajimobi while advocating support for the Ministry of environment at the Federal and state levels, as well as their agencies to help them face the challenges of nature noted that there were inter-related opportunities between the ministry of environment and the ministry of agriculture.
He stressed that they both had positive effects on humanity in terms of ameliorating the effects of climate change on the environment, financial empowerment to farmers and job opportunities for the young populace.
