We will transform Kogi into world economic hub-KEDA boss
The Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer, Kogi Enterprise Development Agency, (KEDA), Hon. Kadiri Mohammed Okeji says the present administration under Alhaji Ahmed Usman Ododo is committed to transform the State into an economic hub in the world.
Okeji disclosed this in Lokoja shortly after presenting the 2025 budget for KEDA before lawmakers in the Kogi State House of Assembly.
According to him, “It is about transforming human being entirely to entrepreneur. Entrepreneur runs in my blood because I have never worked since I graduated from the University, did Masters. I have been an entrepreneur all my life. Coming to Kogi State to develop entrepreneur is something I can do even though you wake me up from my sleep. I have done so much since I resume this office in March 2024. As I speak, we already have a fashion factory running in Okene, Kogi Central. It is operational.
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“We are turning the place to be an industrial hub. So many skill acquisition centre is coming in there. The fashion center is already up and running. Catering acquisition, metal, energy innovation, all we come in there. We are going to push the GSM village to that location, so that we can have clusters of businesses, including agriculture.
“We are coming up with cluster agricultural programs. We have synergize with bank of industry and some commercial banks that has beautiful programmes in entrepreneur. Something like soft loan, which will go a long way to help our entrepreneur and have a direct impact to the economic eco system of the State.
When asked about information that made the round that he illegally disengage some staff despite they were not paid salaries for months, he said ” When I resume work as the MD CEO of KEDA, I discovered that there were People who were being owned 11 months backlog of salaries. I was struggling to pay them. By the time there was funds, I was able to pay them all their backlogs of salaries.
“After paying them, I don’t want to repeat what the old management did. Initially, I gave them temporarily disengagement but I have to disengage them so that when the program comes back again, they will now be the first to benefit.
” We are expecting the second phase of the program to kick off soon. When it surface, we will also call them because they are already experienced before we can employ fresh one’s”.
