Deputy Governorship Candidate of the Social Democratic Party (SDP) in Benue State, Amb. (Dr.) Dickson Akoh, has lauded former President of the Senate, Dr. David Mark, for his statesmanship effort at uniting candidates of all political parties in Benue state.
Mark had organised a unity dinner in his Otukpo residence, where governorship and deputy governorship candidates of various parties in Benue were invited and charged on peaceful electioneering processes.
Addressing newsmen in his residence at Ogoli Ugboju, Akoh described Senator Mark as a trailblazer for bringing all contestants under one roof, for the utmost reason of peaceful elections, pledging to ensure his party (SDP) runs issues-based campaigns.
Akoh, who is the National Commandant of Peace Corps of Nigeria also called on the people of the state to judge him and his principal, Dr. Stephen Hwande, by their antecedents as community development agents.
According to him, his partnership with the SDP guber candidate, Hwande, would spur more rural developments as they would replicate what he (Akoh) has done in his community in Benue as a state.
“You can’t promise development when you have not developed yourself or your environment.
“Those who are promising development should tell us what they have been able to achieve, even in their own little way.
“In an ideal democracy, leadership is all about packaging. Those who must access power must have something to show for it”.
Akoh, while giving a little account of his community interventions as a private individual, highlighted the police station he single-handedly built for Ugboju, with the state of arts furnishings, security gadgets and operational vehicle.
He added that he personally constructed and tarred almost all the streets in Ogoli-Ugboju and its environs, as well as an ongoing worship edifice for the Catholic faithful, while also constructing primary school blocks with a motorized borehole and furniture at Ogoli.
He also caried out rural electrification, donating 500KVA transformers to Ogoli, donations of electric concrete poles, and also computers to Ugboju Community secondary school with furniture, as well as construction of 14-km rural road from Ogoli-barracks to Onaje.
