Akpabio visits Buhari, promises to team with new government on reforms

Former Minister of Niger Delta, Godswill Akpabio, yesterday, expressed readiness to team up with the incoming administration to churn out legislation aimed at infrastructural, social and educational reforms to tackle the menace of youth restiveness in the country.

Akpabio fielded questions from State House Correspondents after he met with President Muhammadu Buhari at the Presidential Villa, Abuja.

The former governor, who is vying for the office of the Senate President in the 10th National Assembly, said he would work with the new government to, particularly, facilitate legislations that would bring about policies aimed at empowering the youths.

He said: “The youths are in for a very good time, in terms of empowerment. There will be no time for slacking and we’ll restrict a lot of them from being lured into criminality, into brigandage and all that. So, we’ll get them working. And I believe that with the help of the Almighty, both the National Assembly and the executive will do a lot for the youths of this country.”

Akpabio who resigned as a minister on May 11, 2022, on the directive of Buhari to contest in the presidential primaries of the All Progressives Congress, said: “I intend to bring a lot of reforms into the Senate, in the ways and manners we do business, to assist the next administration to succeed. We will be very thorough in doing everything; we’ll bring about loyalty to the Constitution, we’ll bring about loyalty to Nigerians.

“We will tackle issues through legislations to empower Nigerians and, particularly, the youth. The restiveness that we are seeing across the nation…we’ll do our best to make good laws and assist the administration to bring about policies that will empower the youths of the country.

“I made that promise even on the convention day, that being a man who used to turn boys into men and who still does, I will like to work with the in-coming president, who has also shown that example in Lagos State as a governor and, thereafter, as a leader of the APC in Nigeria. He has continued to turn boys into men and as the President of the country, after his swearing-in, I expect that he continue to do so.”

He said his visit was to “pay respect to my boss as his former minister and also, he’s the father of the nation. I came to inform him that elections are over and after all the hullabaloo, I was elected a senator of the Federal Republic, so I’m now a senator-elect and I’ve also shown him my Certificate of Return.”