We have deliberately delayed our reaction to Governor Abdulfattah Ahmed's one year anniversary, which, true to our prediction before and after the election last year, has been a continuation of the culture of outright lies, propaganda, false claims, and mindless mismanagement of public fund.
In what confirmed our perception of this government, we quote the following comment on the Facebook social media network on May 30, 2012 by a Kwara senior journalist, Mr. Oyin Ajirotutu Zubair:

"Yeparipa...Kwara governs on propaganda! 600kms of road constructed within one year? This includes Ijomu Oro road, which is 98% completed. Haba,...I passed through this road at about 9.30pm yesterday o (May 29, 2012). No visible work, yet the government is claiming 98% work done. I wouldn't be surprised too, if bumps on Igbaja township rd is recorded among the 600kms allegedly constructed by Ahmed administration in the last one year. Who is fooling who? Indeed, legacy of lies continues."

The days leading to May 29 were filled with all manners of praises for Kwara Governor. Radio and television airtime and newspaper space were bought to list the achievements of the administration, even when citizens groan about the rising poverty, unemployment, corruption and mismanagement of public funds.
Interestingly, the harbingers of the news of the Kwara Eldorado are no other persons than paid agents of the government: commissioners, contractors, permanent secretaries, cronies and political associates. They call the last 365 days an embodiment of shared prosperity but in reality it has been a year of shared pains and hardship for our people!

Their claims in education, human capital development and youth empowerment, economic Growth, strategic infrastructure, quality health care, water supply and agriculture are bogus, and the government tells lies against itself as shown below:

1. Assessing a government with no agenda: During the period of campaign for the office of the then PDP candidate Abdulfatah Ahmed gave no identifiable programme or agenda to the electorates of Kwara state. The mantra then was CONTINUITY. How can one assess a government of continuity? The government of Bukola Saraki just rolled into that of Abdulfattah Ahmed so much that for the past one year one can hardly say whether we have a new governor or Senator Bukola Saraki is still in the saddle. In fact, Saraki did not give a hand-over note to Governor Ahmed as the Government of the latter is derisively described in Kwara State as the Third Term Agenda of the former.
2. Performance should be measured by available resources: When the Governor and his handlers reeled out achievements in the agriculture, education and so on, they failed to tell the whole world how much the government of Kwara State received in the last one year through statutory allocations, value added tax (VAT), internally generated revenue (IGR), loans, excess crude etc. But we know that Kwara state at the very least got a conservative average of three billion naira monthly for the past one year. For the past one year, therefore, the government of Kwara State should account for over N50b that accrued to it in the form of statutory allocation, VAT and other grants. This is beside the loans that are already accumulating, with its accompanying dangers for the future of the state. All objective analysis of achievements of government should be based on available resources. The Ahmed's administration has been quiet on this.
3. EDUCATION: The government's claim on free education is false as parents still pay for their pupils in public schools. Such money ranges from N600 and above. The government calls this money PTA contribution, part of which is retained in the school for maintenance and part goes to the Ministry of Education for only God knows what. While the Ekiti State Government gave laptop computers to teachers and students of public secondary schools under their own free education policy, the government of Kwara State gives "10 free note books per session to senior secondary school students to ease economic burden of educating students on parents and guardians." In fact apart from the supply of 33,000 solar-powered laptops to public schools, school bags are given to students in Ekiti State. In Osun State, students are supplied with uniforms free. But in Kwara State, parents run the schools but government gives 10 exercise books to each students. That indeed is their FREE EDUCATION. While the Ekiti State Government supplied brail computers and other learning equipments to the physically-challenged schools, government of Kwara State beats its chest for renovating some structures in its school for the physically challenged. Also, the government's claim on the issue of payment of NECO/WAEC fees is absolutely false as it remains in the realm of political intention and pronouncements. Parents paid the fees and they are not yet reimbursed. Yet this government has already claimed it as an achievement. Furthermore on education, apart from the fact that for some years there has been no evidence that the government of Kwara State contributes its own counterpart fund to the funding of Universal Basic Education in the state, the government recently directed school heads to generate fake figures on enrollment in supplied registers to all schools in Kwara State. For example, in a class where the authentic figure was twenty nine (29) students, boys and girls, a school head had to generate two hundred and twenty eight (228) fake students, boys and girls. This might be to perpetrate fraud or to cover up fraud. We challenge the government to deny this fraudulent practice which has become so offensive to our people. That is the rot in education sector, where the governor is being rated high by himself and his cronies.
4. HUMAN CAPITAL DEVELOPMENT: Government talks glowingly about its feat in the areas of Human Capital Development. These, they claimed, have been achieved through Government Policy of Kwara Bridge Empowerment Scheme (KWABES).The philosophy of KWABES is to give Youth Temporary Employment for a stipend of 10,000 naira per month. The lucky 2000 out of the estimated 330,000 unemployed Kwarans are distributed to private companies and Government Parastatals where governments and companies share the burden of payment of the stipends. The scheme which is to be a bridge between the temporary employment and the envisaged permanent ones is a concept that has not worked as nobody under the scheme has crossed the bridge to any shared prosperity for one year! We therefore condemn the lies of Governor Ahmed that 1000 of them have been given permanent employment. Where are they? Secondly, government's claim that it disbursed N250 million loans to the artisans and co-operative unions and societies in Kwara State are false. Truly, the government has micro credit loan scheme that is not working. This is because of the conditions attached to the scheme. The co-operative societies should each open an account with the sum of N5000 with a micro finance bank and to enjoy the facility, the benefiting cooperative society should be guaranteed by a civil servant of not less than level 14 grades. But under the scheme, government raked in money as it registered 2,227 cooperative societies at the sum of N8, 200 per society. Yet only very few can satisfy the stringent conditions for the loan and the few societies of not less than 30 members were given between N200, 000 to N400, 000 per each society. What therefore would be the value of this scheme as it could be another evidence of shared poverty, rip-off and deception? But can one compare 2000 KWABES' 'employed' youths of Kwara State to 20,000, 10,000 and 5,000 youths that the governments of Osun, Oyo and Ekiti respectively took off the streets in youth empowerment programmes that are more robust and well focused? Governor Fayemi of Ekiti State has even gone a notch higher to paying N5000 monthly to the state's senior citizens who are of 65 years of age upward and are without any pension package. In Kwara State today thousands of our senior citizens are still being denied their legitimate pension. The government has become so lawless that the judgment debt on pension arrears remains unpaid till date.
5. Agriculture: What we still have under this sector is a policy of alienation of the over one million Kwara indigenes and residents that have one thing or another to do with agriculture. Government in continuation of its 'foreigner-based' commercial farming have now brought into Kwara State one Vasolar Consortium of Spain for rice cultivation, processing and packaging. We have since made clear that the group is either nonexistent or has no record in rice production. Yet the Ahmed government is committing Kwara's seven million euro (N1.37b) and 20,000 hectares of public land to this project. They also intend to bring into Kwara State Mosib Group from the United States. All the above are joint venture relationships. The two promise to be another Shonga Farm which has variously been described - and rightly so - as a fraud or a rip-off. And in any case, we wonder why they need be listed as achievements of government as they are not yet on the ground but in the realm of contemplation. But the question that ought to be asked is: what has the government of Kwara done for the teeming population of Kwara farmers?
6. Road construction: perhaps the most outrageously annoying claim of this administration is that in the last one year "a total of 600 kilometres of roads have been completed, while another 350.80 kilometres of rural and feeder roads have also been awarded for rehabilitation and construction by the state Government." The fact is that in both North and South senatorial districts of Kwara State, we are yet to witness construction of any new road. The ones being commissioned by Governor Ahmed to celebrate his one year anniversary had been completed by his predecessor who had commissioned many of them before leaving office. That is double commissioning of projects! The only new roads constructed in the life of this administration are all in Ilorin metropolis. And they are so few and insignificant to command noisemaking by any serious-minded government. These new roads (Olaolu to Central Bank Quarters (about 500 metres); Stella Obasanjo-ITC Road (also about 500 metres); and another one near the governor mother's place (also less than 500 metres) could not be more than five (5) kilometers. Where therefore did the government construct six hundred (600) kilometers of road within the last one year? The government, on May 29, 2012, listed the Ijomu-Oro as one of the roads it built. No such thing exists! This is an open challenge to the government. When last has any government official gone to Abuja through Osi to Eruku? Is any of them from Offa and Erinle to know the state of the road? Most of the top government officials are from rural areas, we ask them what is the state of the Edidi to Odo-Eku Road, Obo-Ile to Isapa, Osi to Obo-Aiyegunle. The claim of the current government of reconstructing Oro-Arandun Road is far from the truth as the road has been under construction for more than eight years without successful completion. To go to Abuja through Ekiti State, the portion of the Kwara State road from Omu-Aran to Ekiti State boundary has been abandoned for a re-route through Erinmope in Ekiti  State while the Odo Owa to Ekiti State boundary is a nightmare. The Ganmon to Ote and Osi to Etan roads for which this administration is claiming credit were built by the previous regime. In the face of the 600km roads' claim, we appeal to the Kwara State branch of Nigeria Union of Journalist (NUJ) to assemble a team to tour the state and tell the whole world their experience. If there is any area at all where the failure of this government is most apparent it is in the area of rural roads.
7. Quality Health Care: It is true that five General Hospitals are currently being renovated. The attempt is commendable, even though, as usual, there have been deliberate misinformation about the amount spent on the contracts. The government has been bandying conflicting figures. While its official website said the hospitals were renovated (again a bogus claim since the work is ongoing) for N1.6b, the governor himself said at an event in Omu Aran just about two weeks ago that they were renovated for N500m. Yet other newspaper accounts said N200m. Which do we believe? But our main grouse with the health care delivery system in Kwara State is not with physical structures of Health Institutions. Kwara State has within its health care system just about one hundred medical doctors. One hundred medical doctors are grossly inadequate to service a population of 2.3 million people. There are acute shortages of all other health personnel, equipment and drugs. Nothing is significantly done about these in the last one year.
8. WATER SUPPLY: Year in year out from the administration of Governor Shaaba Lafiagi in 1992 to the present government, water remains a great and seemingly unsolvable problem of Kwara State. If Governor Ahmed lays any claim to an achievement in this sector, where is the water?

The last one year for the people of Kwara State is not a period of shared prosperity which is the mantra of the administration. Nothing is working whereas people in government are churning out fake statistics that conflict with the reality on the ground. What is being shared in Kwara State is not prosperity but poverty, pains, hardship and hopelessness? If this government deserves to be praised for anything, it is for its ability to make false claims and celebrate corruption. In fact, Kwarans are embarrassed at the shamelessness of our government which, for want of any verifiable achievements, in rolling out the drums for mere unveiling of a new logo, which, together with the empty noisemaking of May 29, cost Kwara people a whopping N31m. Kwara definitely cannot continue like this, 45 years after it became a state. Our people deserve a better deal!

Mr. Kayode Olawepo
ACN Chairman, Kwara State

Kwara PDP challenges ACN to tour Ahmed's projects