According to the popular saying by the People of Communist Republic of China, it reads: “may we live in an Interesting times”. This is indeed an interesting time for those of us that populated this north central geo political zone called kwara state.
Before now, the state and the collective destiny of her people had been in the hands of elements one can consider as bad managers for a very long time.
It would be recalled kwara state was among the first generation of states created in 1967 under the military administration of General Yakubu Gowon,with the approval of the then supreme military council he announced the scrapping of regional system of government and replaced it with 12 states namely Kano, Kaduna, Kwara, Northwestern, Northeastern, Benue-Plateau, Western State, Bendel, Rivers, Cross rivers, Eastcentral and Lagos.
Although, with the passage of time some of the above mentioned names have been changed to reflects what we are having today.
A cursory look at all the states created more than five decades ago, it appears Kwara is lagging behind, so, we need to ask ourselves why was it so?
Majority of Kwarans have attested to the fact that early military administrators did their best especially in the areas of infrastructural developments until when the country returned to civil rule in 1979, but, our returned to civil rule can not be said to be responsible for the underdevelopment of the state, because other states still made headway. I want to believe that peculiarity of our political arrangements in the state can never be excuse from helpless situations we found ourselves before the political zsunami that took place last year.
A lot have been said and written about those who are responsible for the mismanagement of our collective resources, there is no need to bothers readers of this article as it would amount to giving out information that is already in the public domain, as a matter of fact even anyone with elementary understanding of kwara political journey must be aware of unproductive leadership style of the old order.
In response to our popular yearling our Maker gave us victory and the victory produces Mallam AbdulRahman AbdulRazaq as the seventh democratically elected governor. Since he was swore in 29th May 2019, he has never derailed from what he promised kwara populace during the electioneering campaign, his numerous achievements can not be truly faulted by any doubting Thomas but while we should be happy we have this kind of leader piloting the affairs of our beloved state, some elements have chosen to be engaging in planting the seed of pull him down syndrome, their seeds needs water grow but as they are planting, water refuses to cooperate with them.
The articulate governor have this to say: “what kwarans voted for was change, they were tired of how things have been done before. They needed a new beginning for us to chart a new course. We are changing the narrative and taking development to areas like kpada in patigi where teachers would not want to go before. We want to curb rural urban migration, but we can’t do this overnight because of scarce resources. The question they are asking us is how we are funding projects? The answer is because we are prudent in the management of public resources”.
Governor AbdulRazaq went further, ” I thank members of the state house of assembly, they are entitled to a vehicle each. So far they have sacrificed that. That possibly runs to over a billion. Our commissioners are also entitled to vehicles. That also runs to over a billion. The Governor and the Deputy Governor and their aides are also entitled to vehicles which also runs to over a billion. We all have sacrificed such in order to make invest in critical infrastructure for the state. We abandoned the renovation of Government House, which is over N 100m. That is not important to us now. We need to focus on the essential things. We believe that there should be a change in the way things are done.
” Yes, some (persons) will complain that we are not sharing money, we are not doing this we are not doing that. We are not here to share money, we are here to share projects and infrastructure. We expect people to stay with us and stay focused.
” in the last lap of the last administration, what we received was N4.8billion. The EFCC made sure nobody touched that money. As I speak, the money is still in the bank. It is part of our reserve for rainy day. We got another call from EFCC that there is another N100m they want give us. After Covid-19, we will go and collect it”.
Chief Press Secretary to the Governor, Rafiu Ajakaiye, in a press release made it known that the sum of N243m contributed by well meaning individuals and corporate organisations to the State Government towards cushion the effect of Covid-19 still remain intact. The Governor have refused to spend a kobo from it because it has not been appropriated by the State House Of Assembly.
Just few days ago, the Governor invited the EFCC to come and conduct independent investigation on financial dealings of all the 16 local governments of the state in other to unravel the truth about the rumoured diversion of N300m local governments money.
I think for a Governor to come out publicly very clean in his administration’s financial dealings should be enough for any well meaning Kwarans that the state is now in safe hands.
But, it is indeed an interesting times for us in the state that some people are still engaging in destructive criticism of a man who has brought sanity, transparency and simplicity to the art of governance never seen before.
In fact, there is no better time for us to decide what we really want for Kwara than now, but the good news is that those of us who are in support of purposeful administration of Mallam AbdulRahman AbdulRazaq are in majority, while those on the other side of the bridge who want the state to be return to the era of locusts appears very tiny in numbers.
God bless Kwara state