Members of the Nigeria Governors’ Forum, comprising governors of the All Progressives Congress and the Peoples Democratic Party, on Wednesday, accepted into their fold the Bayelsa State Governor, Senator Douye Diri.
Diri upstaged the 2019 Bayelsa State governorship candidate of the APC, Mr David Lyon, through legal process as the Supreme Court, on February 13, nullified the election of Lyon and also, on Wednesday, dismissed Lyon’s appeal for a reversal of the judgment.
The Chairman, NGF, Dr Kayode Fayemi, read the communiqué of the forum after its meeting in Abuja.
He said, “The Forum welcomes its newest member, Senator Douye Diri, the Governor of Bayelsa State, who was attending the meeting for the first time.”
Fayemi, who is also the Ekiti State Governor, also said the NGF also embraced the Geo-Referenced Infrastructure and Demographic data for Development programme in Nigeria.
He stated that the Minister of Finance, Budget and National Planning Hajia Zainab Ahmed, who made the presentation to the governors, highlighted several applications of the programme in priority areas of government, including food security, health coverage, financial inclusion, survey, demographics and education.
The NGF chairman said the governors pledged to work with the ministry by providing the right institutional arrangements in all states to ensure that each state supports the generation and management of geospatial data.
Fayemi also said the governors were committed to the planting of 25 million trees as pledged by the President, Major General Muhammadu Buhari (retd.).
He said members pledged to work with the Ministry of Environment by ensuring that the right institutional arrangements were in place in all states to ensure that each state supports the tree planting initiative.
Governors who attended the meeting included those of Ekiti, Kogi, Lagos, Borno, Nassarawa, Bayelsa, Kebbi, Delta, Kaduna, Abia, Osun, Sokoto, Adamawa, Edo and Bauchi.
The deputy governors also in attendance included those of Gombe, Platuea, Oyo, Yobe, Kano, Enugu and Zamfara states.
Success Nwogu,
The Punch Newspaper