EX-SUPER EAGLES CAPTAIN, ‘JAY JAY’ OKOCHA GETS APPOINTMENT IN ENUGU

Former Super Eagles captain, Austin ‘Jay Jay’ Okocha, and former Director-General of the Nigerian Broadcasting Commission (NBC), Emeka Mbah, are among professionals, technocrats and experts, inaugurated on Monday by Governor Ifeanyi Ugwuanyi of Enugu State as members of the last batch of the sectoral ad-hoc committees to review various sectors of the state government and design roadmaps for optimised service delivery and advancement of good governance in the state.

It would be recalled that Mr Ugwuanyi recently inaugurated the first batch of seven ad-hoc committees in the sectors of education, health, public service reform, security, justice, water and chieftaincy community matters.

Inaugurating the remaining five sectoral committees, namely agriculture and rural development; finance, review of Internally Generated Revenue and international development partners’ funding; lands, housing and transport; sustainable environmental and urban management; and youths and sports development, Mr Ugwuanyi listed ‘Jay Jay’ Okocha as the technical adviser of youths and sports committee and Mr. Mbah as the Chairman.

Presenting the committees’ terms of reference, the governor, who expressed the desire of his administration to perform better in its IGR growth and other economic indices to improve the socio-economic wellbeing of the people of Enugu State, stated that the finance committee shall assist in designing “a roadmap to further boost positive returns on our assets, increase our IGR and optimize outcomes of development partner support.”

According to him, “although Enugu State is currently ranked as the 7th most economically viable state in Nigeria, we seek to perform better for the sake of improving the lives of our people and fulfilling our electoral promises.”

On youths and sports development, the governor who described the youth as the engine of economic growth, pointed out that Enugu State has sports talents who have won laurels within and outside the shores of the country, stressing that programmes and sponsorship are required to continue discovering and developing these youthful talents.

“The committee on youths and sports development will proffer strategies for achieving this, and for engaging the youth in sports development, character building, entrepreneurship, skills acquisition and participation in good governance,” he added.

Emphasising the need to articulate a sustainable environmental management strategy that will deploy different initiatives to address various ecological issues affecting the state and forestall ecological disasters and environmental crisis, Mr Ugwuanyi disclosed that the committee on the sector “is expected to dutifully look at the totality of our interaction with terrestrial, aquatic and atmospheric environment for sustainable development, having due regard to biodiversity conservation and ecosystem balance”.