Ministerial appointment, call to greater service – Aregbesola

Minister-designate and former Osun State governor, Ogbeni Rauf Aregbesola has described his appointment as a call to greater service and a challenge to exhibit and deploy his skill for solving difficult tasks to the nation’s benefit.

The former governor said there was a huge task before all minister-designates, in view of the wide gap between current realities and expectations from majority of Nigerians desirous of improvement in their life and a secured environment.

Aregbesola told The Guardian in Ikeja, Lagos, at the weekend, that it heart-warming to note that President Muhammadu Buhari had envisaged these expectations and had captured it in the ‘Next Level Agenda’ of his second term administration.

He also said with the Next Level battle cry, President Buhari had already set the agenda for all minister-designates, and that what is left is for those selected to key into it and come up with achievable ideas and documents suitable for attaining the Agenda’s content.

In his view, the widening gap between the poor and the rich, which has resulted in the falling living standard, was due largely to inequitable distribution of the nation’s wealth, where a tiny minority controls over 90 percent of the wealth, as well as endemic corruption.

He called for urgent redistribution of the nation’s wealth in a manner that would significantly reduce the gap between the poor and the rich; a situation he noted was embarrassing.

The minister-designate urged Nigerians to embrace the culture of hardwork, which he said builds a nation, while feeding on the nation without contributing meaningfully to her resources, depletes it.

He said a situation where some people feed fat on the nation without contributing must be stopped for the country to be able to meaningfully deploy all its resources for results.