YAYTarCent2015-19

THANK YOU, TARABA CENTRAL

My fellow citizens,
With much gratitude to God, Almighty, and great pleasure in this great times and events of our dear country, let me first start by congratulating the Nigerian citizenry on the successful conduct of our Presidential and National Assembly elections, even after the anxiety that followed their postponement for one week. I shall also have to heartily congratulate President Muhammadu Buhari, the father of our current democracy and democratisation processes, the great icon of our anti-corruption drive, and who is also a great figure in the largest socio-political mobilisation of our citizenry yearning for honest, clean and transparent democracy. President Muhammadu Buhari has not only led this country to the conduct of a well-statured election, and he has not only won the hearts and votes of the majority of our citizens, but our dear President has also saved this country from drifting into the hands of socio-economic mismanagement. CONGRATULATIONS our President, our leader.

With great humility and love, I am indebted to the love, efforts and self-determination of my constituents, who have defied all pressure and blackmail against the structure and followership of our great Party, the APC, and came out in great mass to vote for me and my other colleagues positioned for the House of Representatives. I thank you all that your powerful and honourable votes have again mandated me to be a Distinguished Senator of the Federal Republic of Nigeria representing our great Taraba Central Senatorial District. As your votes have measurably counted, so shall your dreams and aspirations count in my own representation of our collective interests.

In the 9th Assembly of the Senate of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, I shall strive to complete all drives we started and measurably reached advanced stages. In particular, our treasured Bills on Tea and Coffee, on Weights and Measures, and on Corporate Data Card will be vigorously pursued to their logical conclusions. All of them are already at their advanced stages of realisations. Our Constituency Projects shall be redesigned to meet the yearnings of a robust and dynamic future. In particular, I have already deployed a structure for registering my constituents at the various Local Government Headquarters, for the purpose of positioning them for strategic employments and opportunities in the on-coming Mambilla Hydro Electricity Dam project. We have laid a plan to command a large chunk of the Dam project’s Local Content to benefit our people. You are advised to reach out to our Constituency offices and staff for further information and action.

My statement of Thank-You will not be complete without me mentioning our present electioneering processes and drive. We cannot ignore the fact that Taraba State, as a whole, has lost its focus and drive owing to avoidable recklessness in governance. Our educational system is in tatters, the dysfunctional realities in our public institutions have reached embarrassing and unacceptable proportions, and we are drifting towards a Statehood that is below the average national threshold of our development indices and realities. This catastrophic unfolding of events must stop. We must come out with all our hearts and strengths on Saturday, 9th March 2019 to vote-in an APC government that must be supported with our own very State Legislators.

In the coming elections of State Governors and members of States Houses of Assembly, we must understand the peculiarities of our own Taraba State. We must understand that our opponents are ready to go to any length to perpetuate incapacity, corruption and underdevelopment. From the last elections, we have evidences of election rigging, votes padding, and even outright theft and manipulations of election processes and results. We have to stand up and call the bluff off these notorious gangsters and their agents. I wish to categorically state here that, despite having won our mandate, we are still focused on exploring legal and judicial means of putting the records straight and also bringing to book agents of destruction in our democratic experience.

In this regard, I have detailed my legal team to study our election results and outcomes with a view to instituting legal proceedings in the Elections Petitions Tribunal, so that we can reclaim our votes stolen by our opponents. In particular, we are geared towards reaching out to the Elections Petitions Tribunal to challenge the results of Titong, Mbamnga, Kabri and Kakara Wards in Sardauna Local Government Area, including certain Polling Units in some other Wards. Also, for the purpose of our Senatorial Election results, we have to challenge the action that led to producing over 19,000 votes from an accreditation of some 4,000 voters in Suntai, Bali LGA. Votes padding to the tune of some 5,000 votes in favour of the PDP in Gassol LGA is also a major concern for the sanity of our electioneering process. I have the will and intention of setting a precedence of an election winner going to court to set records straight and fine-tune the developments of our election democracy.

Finally, I thank all my supporters, lovers and well-wishers, and assure them of open an access representation through my respective offices and assistants. I especially thank my aides, my assistants and my Stakeholders who all have worked wonderfully to bring this joy of ours to fruition. The All Progressives Congress, APC, at all levels simply did the best it could, and we are happy with all its efforts. I also wish us all of four years of good governance, advancing democracy and development. God Bless Taraba Central. God Bless Taraba State. God Bless Federal Republic of Nigeria.

We are working together...

Alhamdu Lillah. Glory be to God. We have presented just another Bill from our works on Bills for the development of our dear Country. We have presented a Senate Bill to Establish Federal College of Education, Mutum Biyu, Taraba State, Bill 2018 (SB. 638).

This is another milestone in our pursuit for development. We pray that we get a speedy, hitch-free and successful passage and ex*****on.

LEAD DEBATE, AND SECOND READING
FOR THE BILL FOR AN ACT FOR THE ESTABLISHMENT OF
THE NATIONAL TEA AND COFFEE DEVELOPMENT COUNCIL

We thank God, Almighty, that we have reached this crucial stage in working towards improving the lives of our people as well as developing the other socio-economic sectors of our National life. I first presented The Bill for an Act for the Establishment of The Tea and Coffee Development Council on 25th April 2017. It is our great pleasure that this 2nd November 2017 is witnessing the Second Reading of this Bill, and as well presenting the Lead Debate towards realising the passage and consequent ascent of the Bill.

The National Tea and Coffee Development Council Bill will, among other things, help to realise the following:
1. It will provide employment opportunities for our teaming youths and entrepreneurial individuals with great attendant wealth creation for the nation.
2. It will harness agricultural potentials of the Nigerian nation and then reduce our over-dependence on the mono economic structure of earnings from crude oil and its derivatives
3. It will conserve our foreign exchange earnings which will be efficiently channelled to other uses other than the importation of tea and coffee products.
4. It will help in developing our technical and administrative procedures of government as regards import and export activities.
5. It will develop our potentials for food and beverages production, and then widen the scope for the sector to move together with global standards and challenges.
6. It will cure the restiveness in local communities, with an attendant improvement in security issues, thus reducing and even eliminating mutual mistrust and violence between divergent understandings in communities.

I am asking you all to assist in whatever form available and possible to bring this Bill to success and reality. Thank you, and God Bless us all.

Senator Yusuf Abubakar Yusuf.
(Taraba Central Senatorial District)