Date: 2012-01-23

The Action Congress of Nigeria, ACN, Kwara State chapter, has condemned the hasty manner with which the state House of Assembly rushed to approve the request for N10bn by the government last week. Chairman of the party, Mr. Kayode Olawepo, in a statement yesterday said the action of the House, which was done without any thorough debate or committee work,  raises many questions. Olawepo argued that the state government had between April and June last year, got more than N16bn as federal allocation and that  triple that amount has accrued to the state since then, saying that  yet, the dearth of infrastructures remains just as bad. We cannot pin those huge funds down to any appreciable capital projects executed by this administration. He was of the opinion that:  The exact debt profile of Kwara State remains the exclusive knowledge of PDP power brokers, no thanks to the corruption-ridden administration of former Governor Bukola Saraki, which, perhaps for the first time in our country, refused to give any handover note.  Apart from the undisclosed debt profile, the Kwara people, through this administration, are currently servicing the repayment of N17bn bond the Saraki administration raised in the guise of providing infrastructure.  For the record, the Bukola administration claimed to have obtained the bond to execute the following projects within a period of two years beginning from 2009: Kwara State Truck Plaza; International Aviation College; Asa Dam Mixed Use Development; New Secretariat; Commercial Agriculture Phase II; KWASU; Ilorin Water Distribution Project and Kwara Advanced Diagnostic Centre . He added that:  Of these eight projects the PDP government said it wanted to execute in two years (2009-2011) with the N17bn obtained in the name of our people, only three (KWASU, Aviation College and the Diagnostic Centre) can be said to have been executed - and half way too. To whose pocket has these huge sums gone, whilst public fund is being used to repay the bond?