As the saying goes, “When you are traveling on a road which you believe will take you to a destination, 23 years down the road, it appears to be getting longer and longer, only a fool will continue to travel on that road.”
This is the sole purpose the largest private investor in Delta State, with businesses spread across Nigeria and beyond, Olorogun Barr. Kenneth Gbagi, FNIM, former minister of State for education, is coming to do, to liberate Delta State come 2023.
Gbagi, a former Chairman of the Legal Aid Council of Nigeria, who is the gubernatorial candidate of the Social Democratic Party (SDP), said his intent to run for office was to rescue the people living in the state from a fate “worse than death”
Gbagi, who was also a former Chairman, Delta Development Property Authority (DDPA), is a renowned businessman, Criminologist cum security expert.
He spoke on a life interview with Arise TV News on why he wants to be governor of Delta State.
Hear him: “As you will know where things in Delta State and part of the country took the dimension as it is expected of any proper nation, I would have been the last person to want to go run for governorship.
“But unfortunately, all the trail and all the support that we have had as a state, is one that have leaved us with more sorrow, more backwardness, lack of opportunities and hopelessness.
“The singular reason why I have decided to put myself forward to govern the people come 2023”.
The leading industrialist and frontrunner in the governorship race, disclosed that he would industrialize the state within one year as governor.
Asked how possible, the educationist said: “the honest truth about that is that it is achievable. What is lacking largely in Delta State before now is honesty. People do not believe anymore in governance.
“The issue is this, take what I have done in the state as an individual private investor, I have removed people from poverty to at least source of livelihood, been able to fend for themselves and do business.
“I have over 6, 000 people gainfully engaged in their day-to-day source of livelihood. If you take Sapele, for instance, Sapele, has major industries that are synonymous to them. We have the Flour Mill, we have a Shoe Factory in Sapele, we have bitumen in Sapele, we have booming Cement factory in Sapele.
“All of these businesses have died and what you need to do, is to bring partners. I resonant as the first black man in the entire world to become an AKS member of Rotary and just the fact that everybody knows that Kenneth Gbagi is honest, Kenneth Gbagi will not play wrong and do it wrong, that is hope and that is what you need.
“Just the fact that everybody knows that I will bring security about within the first one week of my been a governor, things will change. It is the personality that is involved. It is what you have done before and not what you want to do.
“I have done it in my private life and I believe very strongly, giving the opportunity Delta State has had or confronted with, it will be a win-win situation.
“I have about six seaports in Delta, were I to put these six seaports to use. Take the issue of Cucumber, if I were to take just one local government and give cucumber to them to produce, we will produce cucumber in millions.
“And then we will sell to our people, sell to our country and we will export. Take Koko, Koko port is rotting away, where we have as one of the best in the country.
“The entire port business when ports were being created it was divided that things that are supposed to come to the southern part of Nigeria, will come through the Warri Port.
“The reason Lagos seaports and the roads are all destroyed is because the volume of traffic. It is knowing what to do, having an entrepreneurial mind”, he said.
