Date: 2020-11-04

The government of Kwara State, in partnership with Dangote Foundation, is set to disburse N150 million grant to 15,000 rural women in Kwara.

Kayode Oyin-Zubair, the Senior Special Assistant on Community Intervention to Governor AbdulRahman AbdulRazaq, made this known on Tuesday in Ilorin when he paid a courtesy visit on members of the Correspondents Chapel of Kwara NUJ.

Mr Oyin-Zubair said that each beneficiary would get N10,000 before the end of 2020.

The governor:s aide said that development programmes of the present administration in the state would be community-driven.

According to him, this is because government believes development should be addressed via the bottom-to-top approach. "The three cardinal areas of intervention are people, place and prosperity. "Everything about development should come from the bottom to top and not the other way round. It is a principle that the present administration believes in.

"This is to avoid congestion of urban areas and hasten development at the grassroots," he said.

Mr Oyin-Zubair said that his office had in a few months of his appointment sensitised community development officers at the local government areas in the state to serve as machinery for driving this development.

According to him, the office has also sensitised community development associations in the state on self-help efforts.

"These interactions with stakeholders are to demonstrate that the government really has something to do with them," he said.

He said that the state was also talking to Forestry Research Institute of Nigeria (FRIN) on hybrid locust beans that would be produced within seven years to further empower and make life comfortable for rural women.

Mr Oyin-Zubair said that the state would soon begin exportation of locust beans to Kenya based on the ongoing agreement with a firm in the East African country. (NAN)