…Flags-off vocational centre
By: Emmanuel Nlewedum
Stakeholders of Tai local government area of Rivers State have continued to commend the giant strides of the Council Chairman, Hon. Mbakpone Friday Okpe on his first one hundred days in office.
Rivers State Commissioner for Energy and Natural Resources, Dr. Peter Medee said the chairman has surpassed the expectation of Tai people in the last three and half months in office following his human capital and infrastructural developments in the area.
Medee stated this while flagging-off the Tai Vocational/ICT centre in Koroma as part of activities to mark the chairman’s 100 days in office.
The commissioner who hailed Mbakpone for replicating the developmental strides of Governor Nyesom Wike in Tai, said his performance so far shows that he will do far beyond the expectations of Tai people before leaving office.
According to him, “When Mbakpone Okpe took over the leadership of Tai, I was afraid because to me, he was stepping into a shoe that I thought was very big for him, but with what we have seen in his first one hundred days in office, he has proven to us that he can conveniently wear that shoe and that it will not only be a size to him but an undersized with the level of performance he has in mind.
“The vocational centre flagged-off today is a centre that we are expecting a high human capacity development, centre for high entrepreneurial training and we are very confident and hopeful that this centre when completed and put into use, will deliver value to Tai in terms of employment generation, youth empowerment, job and wealth creation”.
He congratulated the council boss on his numerous achievements in just one hundred days in office, describing it as “Uncommon Feat”.
In their separate speeches, member, representing Tai Constituency in the Rivers State House of Assembly, Matthew Dike and Sylver Ngbar, Special Assistant to Governor Nyesom Wike on Infrastructure urged the chairman to continue with his good works while pledging their total support.
They charged the people of the area to give the chairman all the needed support to ensure the reason why he embarked on these projects are achieved.
Earlier in his address, Chairman of Tai local government area, Mbakpone Okpe expressed appreciation to the people for voting him, stressing that his decision to embark on projects that has direct bearing on the people within the first hundred days of his administration was in fulfillment of his electioneering campaign promises to serve them well and transform the LGA for the benefit of all.
The chairman, who attributed the successes recorded so far to team work, also thanked Tai stakeholders and the people for the support accorded them.
“There is no way we would have succeeded within this first hundred days without the support of the team, both the elected and appointed members working with me, especially the principal officers, they have given me enormous support.
“During our campaign, I made certain promises. I told my people that if I am voted for, I will represent them well and provide certain services that would be beneficial to them.
“We understand the direction and needs of the people that’s why we are going out of our way to make sure we put some things on ground to justify why we were elected,” he said.
The council chairman disclosed that the commitment of his administration to lift the people of Tai especially youths, from unnecessary frustration, crime and perpetual begging for survival, to being self employed, entrepreneurs, and employers of labour made him embark on building a vocational and skills acquisition centre in Tai.
He said, “One may ask what informed me of this programme? During the stakeholders meeting, I mentioned that I engaged 118 persons on vocational and skills acquisition programmes on; Alcon Welding, ICT, Data processing, oil and gas, hair dressing, fashion and design, among others, outside Tai. But after the initial inauguration, I spent money to partner with the NGO and made all necessary payments, and our people were posted to various centers for learning, because of the classified nature all these skills are domiciled in Port Harcourt.
“Most of our children declined and withdrew from this training due to inability to afford either transportation or maybe accommodation and my money was wasted.
“Today, only about fifty of them are still on that training programme while the rest out of the 118 came back to the council begging me to fix them on a stipend of five, ten and twenty thousand naira.
“We want to lift our people beyond this petty begging that add no value to them. We are also talking about tackling youth restiveness, how do we achieve it when we push them out and they are coming back? Having been acquainted with some of these challenges, we decided to invest in human capital development”, he said.
