‘We Can’t Politicise A Serious Issue Like The Offa Robbery’
Hammed Shittu records highlights of a recent interaction with Governor Abdulfatah Ahmed of Kwara State at Government House, Ilorin
Hammed Shittu records highlights of a recent interaction with Governor Abdulfatah Ahmed of Kwara State at Government House, Ilorin
At the budget formulating process, the legislative arm is carried along. This allows understanding of where the funding and what amount is available. We usually outline our medium term expenditure clearly. The sources of revenues are also well articulated and framed out in such a way that it is clear and seen by all. This gives the passage of budget an easy flow because, if you are part and parcel of a development programme, it makes it easier for you to believe in it and own it
What are the major economic development highlights of your administration in the last seven years? Firstly, we want to give sincere gratitude to God Almighty, for making it possible for us to take the state through these last seven years peacefully under the current economic situation. We came in with a strong desire to meet aspirations of Kwarans. We have modestly met our campaign promises.
During the campaigns, we clearly spelt our plans from the angle of continuity on programmes that were on ground and also adding new ones. The slogan then was ‘Legacy Continues’ through which we hit the ground running by taking programmes we met on ground to completion, jump starting new ones and taking them to completion.
One of the key areas we emphasised was economic development. We noticed that our people were largely in a civil service driven environment and we felt that the only way to change things was to create a small and medium enterprise agency. That agency was designed at inception to begin to change the purchasing power of our people, increasing their capacity to drive the economy and, most importantly, to create wealth. We created a Small and Medium Enterprise Agency with a seed money of about N250 million. We had since increased this on a cumulative basis to about N3.2 billion. Under this agency, we have been able to empower over 2,000 cooperative groups and we have also been able to support over 60,000 small and medium enterprise agencies who hitherto were not getting access to funding. But with the articulated SME agency, we’ve been able to create entrepreneurship for them and this has set them on a wealth growing path.
Of course, we’ve allowed associations, groups to benefit from the Small and Medium Enterprises. We set up the Artisans Congress which is made up of over 53 associations. They’ve all benefitted under this Small and Medium Enterprise Scheme, including our transporters under the NURTW. We have the Motorcycle Riders Association, Okada Riders Association and Keke Napep Riders Association who have all benefitted in one form or another through our Small and Medium Enterprise Scheme.
We also put buses on the road to help movement of people from different locations, especially some of our students who have had challenges getting to school on time. Under this scheme also, we regulated the use of auto cycles in transportation because we wanted to be sure that they are not involved in criminality. So, we streamlined their movement in the state and got them properly compartmentalized to specific locations with proper identity and profiled them under the scheme.
One major achievement of this administration is the reform in the collection and administration of our Internally Generated Revenue. Relying on funds from the federal government was not sustainable and the only way we could change the way things were done in the state was to come up with a new revenue generating outfit to ensure that funds are captured and expended accordingly.
For this reason, we repealed the law setting up the Board of Internal Revenue. We got a new law setting up the Kwara State Internal Revenue Services that changed the people and technology to drive the process. That alone ensured the increase of our revenue from N7 billion to N17 billion. The implication is that it created latitude for a lot of things. We were able to raise funds to ensure that parastatals run properly and ensure that tertiary institutions are captured. Most importantly, funds were available for capital development.
The other wonderful side of it is that funds that were accessed under the internal revenue were used to set up the Kwara Infrastructure Fund (IFK), to drive infrastructure development. These funds have gone into driving capital projects especially in water, roads, energy, schools and health sectors.
The IFK, which is the Kwara Infrastructure Fund started with an initial seed money of about N5 billion and has grown to over N11.6 billion. This fund has been deployed to critical areas that affect our people. We have been able to deploy about N3.5 billion to capital projects in Kwara Central, about N3.2 billion to projects in Kwara South and about N2.9 billion to projects in Kwara North.
This is apart from projects we inherited and ensured their completion. We also initiated new projects. Some of these projects have been completed, while others are on-going. Part of the programmes under the infrastructure fund is the Split Diamond Under Pass constructed in Asa-Dam Road in Geri Alimi which, by God’s grace, will be taken to completion in the next six months.
We witnessed the flag off of the Kwara State University in the three campuses across the three senatorial districts. We have the School of Governance in Kwara Central, School of Environment in Kwara South and the School of Agriculture in Kwara North.
We also witnessed the dualization of the UITH/Sango Road, which is expected to be taken to completion within next few months.
The benefit of that is immensurable, especially as it relates to movement of humans and vehicles. It also ensures free movement of patients under emergency service. This will not only improve the aesthetics of the area but increase access to better health care.
In the area of human capital development, which includes health and education, we have been able to renovate close to 600 classrooms, inclusive of the School of Special Needs. We reduced the amount payable by students of Kwara State University, by 30 percent to reduce the burden on the parents in terms of payment of school fees. We have also established the School of Engineering at KWASU.
Part of the reasons why we setup the university was to drive technology. We want to ensure that we have a conducive environment for the study of engineering, therefore, we established an ultra-modern Engineering Faculty, to keep students abreast of modern engineering techniques.
Another area which is very critical to Human Capital Development is vocational training. You’ll agree with me that in as much as we are creating an environment to teach and make our youths learn and develop themselves, there are gaps that exist in terms of what the market needs.
Our administration reasoned that these gaps can only be filled with vocational training programmes. In other words, we have an institution that trains people. The Ajase Ipo International Vocational Training and Entrepreneur College which operates in conjunction with City & Guilds, London trains artisans on international best practices so that they can export their acquired skills to any part of the world.
In the 70s and 80s, one of the biggest earners of foreign exchange for India was remittances largely from people that they exported to other parts of the world to deliver services. This is why we set up the International Vocational Training and Entrepreneur College, Ajase Ipo. Their training is subsidized by the state government while some are sponsored by various stakeholders. The most important part of it is that the World Bank is currently funding 75 students under this programme for entrepreneurship under the Human Capital Development programmes to ensure that drugs are available in our health institutions through a well-structured drug revolving scheme.
Under our health-for-all-programme, we remodeled five general hospitals in Ilorin, Offa, Share, Omu Aran and, Kaiama. These are critical areas that are supposed to serve as secondary health care facilities. In addition, we also re-modeled 50 primary health care institutions which are largely to serve the rural environment.
We’ve also improved on accessibility to healthcare services through the expansion of our community health insurance scheme which hitherto covered one local government to a comprehensive state wide health insurance scheme. The law to drive the health insurance scheme has already been passed. This will, no doubt, make healthcare services available to an average person in the rural environment with as low as N1,000 or N2,000 all year round.