• Roll out welfare programmes for youths, women
• Akeredolu’s ex-CPS tackles Aiyedatiwa’s aide over attack on APC elders

Ondo State Commissioner for Local Government and Chieftaincy Affairs, Amidu Takuro, has said that the 18 local councils of the state have commenced a welfare and development initiative, including monthly stipends for at least 5,400 elderly residents across the state.

Takuro, who disclosed this while reeling off the achievements and ongoing programmes of local councils under the current administration in the state, said each council had identified a minimum of 300 elderly persons, aged 70 years and above, who are being supported with N20,000 monthly.

According to the commissioner, the initiative represented one of the most extensive local council-led social welfare interventions in the state’s recent history.

He also revealed that local councils had embarked on youth and women empowerment programmes designed to reduce poverty and create economic opportunities for residents.

Takuro, who stated that the youth empowerment scheme is being implemented monthly, with local councils identifying young people who could make productive use of the financial assistance provided to them, said the programmes were designed to enable residents to become economically productive and financially independent.

Takuro also revealed that local councils had been strengthening support for farmers, with some of them already providing agricultural inputs, such as cocoa seedlings, palm seedlings, and fertilisers, to farmers.

He said that the state would work towards making the agricultural support programme uniform across the 18 councils through a coordinated system.

The commissioner further disclosed that the councils had intensified efforts to tackle flooding through the clearing and channelisation of waterways and drainage systems, stressing that the interventions were being undertaken proactively rather than waiting for disasters to occur, with projects continuing throughout the dry season.

IN another development, Chief Press Secretary to former Governor of Ondo State, the late Oluwarotimi Akeredolu, Richard Olatunde, has stated that the All Progressives Congress (APC) elders who recently advised Governor Lucky Aiyedatiwa to reconcile with the Minister of Interior, Olubunmi Tunji-Ojo, are independent voices who cannot be manipulated.

Olatunde’s stance comes amid the diatribes within the Ondo State chapter of the APC, as well as between the camps of Aiyedatiwa and Tunji-Ojo, over who is best positioned to lead the party’s mobilisation for President Bola Tinubu’s re-election in 2027.

The former aide was, however, responding to an article by Debo Akinbami, the governor’s Senior Special Assistant on Public Communication, who had accused Tunji-Ojo of backing the elders of the party in the state.

Akinbami had described the PBAT Elders Mandate Forum, which met in Akure last week, as a “vanguard of old guys” commissioned by the minister to fight Aiyedatiwa and alleged that the elders were “financially strained” and in need of the minister’s “seldom stipends to stay afloat.”

Olatunde, who rejected the position of Akinbami, insisted that the elders had paid their dues in the APC in Ondo State.