Roles of newly-appointed SA and SSA in Edo

Sir: In the last few weeks, the PDP government in Edo State led by Governor Godwin Obaseki has been inaugurating/ swearing in Special Assistants, SA, Senior Special Assistants, SSA and Special Advisers. The appointees were nominated by the members of the party in their wards and local governments of origin. It was the most transparent form of political nominations ever witnessed in Edo State.

The roles and responsibilities of the SA and SSA are clearly spelt out unlike what transpired in the past. The SA is the eye and ear of the government in the ward. He will give information that will help us fulfill all our electioneering promises. The SA reports to government what is going on in Education, Healthcare, Infrastructure and other areas in their ward. “Politics that doesn’t change the lives of our people for the better is bad politics. We want to use our party to deliver services to our people as Edo must be great again,” Obaseki emphasised at a swearing in ceremony in Auchi, Etsako West Local Council.

The structure and our process as laid out is that Special Assistants report to the office of the governor through the Senior Special Assistants to give update on activities from the constituencies and wards that they serve. One Senior Special Assistant shall be assigned to work with security agencies such as the Police, State Security Services and Civil Defence. Their duties would be to report the security situation in their environment.

The APC’s statement against the appointments is to gain cheap political point. They said: “Furthermore, the bloated list of appointments, designed to compensate political jobbers, sycophants and opportunists has further exposed the underbelly of Obaseki and PDP’s insensitivity and disdain for Edo people, as it does not in any way reflect their hope and eagerness for a greater Edo State. And by the appointments, the government has left no one in doubt that they have no vision to make our state great again. If, indeed, Obaseki and the PDP mean well for Edo people and are interested in making the state great again, like they erroneously claim, they would have ended up prioritising the employment of badly needed civil servants and teachers.”

Edo people know that our government is the first government in over 20 years that has identified vacancies in the state civil service, advertised vacancies and began the process of employing and training over 2000 Edo people in the civil service. The first set of these persons have been trained and are already in the system.

As our government is employing people into the civil service, the same thing is happening in Education with teachers. Education in Edo State is not suffering as alleged by APC. On the contrary, government investment is yielding bountiful results and it is the envy of many states who are adopting our model.

Chris Osa Nehikhare, SPS, PDP, Edo State.