By Sulyman Abd’Rahman
Time flies, you’ll say. And the time at Kwara State is not in any way an exception. And even though time flies, it’s still the time. The same time that has been put to good use by some persons. Few days back, Governor Abdulrahman Abdulrazaq of Kwara State celebrated 2 years in Office for which a planning committee was inaugurated. But to celebrate what?
Is it for doing almost nothing in the health sector? Executing much lower than expected of him in the educational sector and achieving nothing in transport? Are we celebrating the degradation of human capital in Kwara State? Or wrong approach towards poverty alleviation?
Rather than face governance, the administration of Abdulrahman Abdulrazaq has focus it’s resources on politics. And instead of attending to the call to halt several community hardship prompted by the nonchalant attitude of his government, he has pay more attention to the rival between him and his party men.
The governor definitely care more about what comes out of the 2023 election than what could be offered to Kwarans. And that tells for how much his agenda have been much publicity based than impact on Kwarans.
The question is what has he done in the Educational sector that worth songs and drums. The accessibility of school to teachers and students schooling in the countryside of Kwara. The dilapidated status of thousands of schools lying within and beyond the state capital. How many schools did the governor repair, for the purpose of publicity, compare to the number of schools where students are not being provided with amenities needed to learn enough to compete with their mates from other places.
Could there be anything, special, that the government has done to invite ‘Egun Elewe’ from Kwara South and ‘Igunu’ from the Northern part of Kwara in celebration? I find none, but primary health care centres with unqualified staffs and stacked with no resources and medications needed to deliver first hand health care to people in the communities. Rather than publicity, the government has not deem it fit to provide voters, whose votes will be soughted after, and be bidded for in 2023 like he is planning, with facilities and amenities required to provide child-delivery services to persons living in near, and far end of the state, thereby failing to reduce the rate of child-mother mortality rate in the state. Is this what ‘Ramoni’ celebrated? If no, what?
Is it what he has achieved in the transport sector? The bad state of the road linking Kwara to other North Central state? Or the ‘oh god!’ situation of the route through which we journey to Okuta, Yashikira, Kaiama or other parts of our Kwara North? Which road? The road leading the Ekiti LGA? If focus should be place on the capital, the incumbent administration has only been good at nothing but publicity, as there’s nothing to tell of roads quoted will river-sized potholes. Focus was shifted to politics than to making life better for farmers, marketers, and other users of the roads, and today there’s nothing to be counted of the two years as it relates to transport rather than politics and joke-like achievements.
Poverty alleviation? Despite the fact that the world came under an attack of a pandemic while this administration is on, the hardship brought to Kwarans have not been tackled by governmental policies or actions, equally. As rather than focus on lifting people above the poverty line, the politics played was aimed at repaying loyal party men. Is that governance? Is that what we celebrated?
What do we celebrate of Agriculture? What do we celebrate of a government that fails to provide people interested in farming and people that are already in the business with an enabling environment? No incentives to help them recover from the effect of the global pandemic.
The economy of the state has been in decline. And the decline is still being celebrated. Is that? Do we celebrate the payment of part salaries? Or the unaccounted dismissal of innovently recruited teachers from service?
Honestly, the governor needs to be advised that waste some couple of millions in the name of celebrating was not worth it.
*Abd’Rahman, a social critic writes from Ilorin.
