Chairman of the The People's Democratic Party (PDP), in Kwara State, Akogun Iyiola

Oyedepo, has decried the backwardness of the people in the state particularly in the rural communities.

Oyedepo, who is a lawyer, said this at the weekend, in Ilorin, while speaking at the public presentation of his book titled: "Letter to the Emir".

He frowned upon the fact that Kwara still remained stagnant for over three decades despite over N544 billion federal allocations to the state in the last 16 years, adding that evidence of the backwardness of the state were legion.

"If Ilorin is becoming highly urbanised with many houses springing up in the former forests of Ilorin, we may be deceived that we are developing.

"A visit to the rural areas will show serious decline in increase in all areas of lives of our rural communities," Oyedepo added.

The PDP chairman agreed that rural depopulation creates urbanisation, but declared that such urbanization, at the expense of the rural poor, amounted to a distorted development.

The PDP chieftain expressed unhappiness with the alarming rate of moral decadence among the youths of the state.

According to him, in the seventies and eighties, hemp smoking and all other forms of drug abuses were visible only among insignificant rogues in the state.

"Our youths today are massively recruited into hard drug and alcoholism. In virtually all our villages and hamlets are army of youths who do not really see hemp smoking as a moral burden," he said.