MIMIKO: HOW MY NEW EXCO WILL EMERGE

Governor of Ondo State, Dr. Olusegun Mimiko, has given an insight into the features of  personalities that will form his cabinet for a second term in office, describing them as a crack team of dynamic people who share his vision to lift the state to greater height. 

Members of the yet-to-be assembled team, the governor also mentioned, would be people who are capable of learning new things and breaking new grounds to accomplish the tasks ahead.

Speaking  in Washington DC in the United State of America yesterday at a media round table with journalists, Mimiko said aside ensuring  his new Cabinet comprises people of like passion, efforts would also be made to re-orientate the Civil Service in the State for optimum performance to drive his government’s policies during the Second Term.

The governor, who is one of the dignitaries from around the world that would be gracing the Second Term Inauguration of President Barack Obama in Washington DC tomorrow, stated that it was traditional and expected that somewhere soon, the Cabinet had to be dissolved to give room for a new government that would be sworn-in on February 24.

Mimiko, however, revealed that the type of people that would be in the Cabinet would “be people who share my vision, people who are capable of learning new things and breaking new grounds and of course, I will leverage on my experience in the last four years about my interactions; about people, to get the work done.”

“Our Civil Service must be vibrant and capable of delivering on our programmes. The new Head of Service in Ondo State has been mandated to ensure a more proactive and vibrant Civil Service where every Ministry, Agency and Departments of government (MDAs) must live up to its responsibilities.

“There is the need for a lot of improvement in the Service. We have to shift from celebrating success to the celebration of outcome. Let those who sit on files in MDAs know that ultimately people’s lives would be affected by their actions and inactions. We are trying to change the mindset of our Civil Servants that if a file is before you, you should be able to see the outcome and effect,” he said.

“For instance, if a file on drug procurement is on your table on Friday and you think you can wait till Monday or Tuesday to treat it, you must think about the patients that would be affected by that delay. That is the type of things we want now.

“The machinery, the platform that will drive the vision is as important as those who will be in the Cabinet itself. But I can assure you that by the time we come up with our Cabinet, you will know the kind of people who will drive our vision, people who are dynamic; who are daring and rearing to go; people who are angry with the status quo and who strongly feel they have a legacy to bequeath to the generation after them and am happy that these people abound in our state in their numbers,” he stated.

Mimiko, who equally assured of the continuity of the innovative health sector programmes for which accolades have come from far and wide after his tenure of office noted that safety valves have been put in place that would ensure the continuity of the programme even after his tenure of office.

The governor, who last Thursday made a presentation on the success of his health programme in the state to world health experts as a guest of the Centre for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) noted that never again would pregnancy be allowed to be a death sentence for our mothers in the state.

He equally assured that he would partner with the Federal Government to ensure that the success of the programme is replicated at the federal level to meet the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) in the Health sector in Nigeria.