'Segun 'Bambo Ojomo commends the Kwara State Governor, Alhaji Abdulfatah Ahmed for his achievements in a short time

Since the inception of the administration of Alhaji Abdulfatah Ahmed as governor of Kwara State, different schools of thought had come out with divergent appraisals of his tenure, especially giving kudos and knocks on his performance within his first year in office. While some groups had scored him low in administrative handling and distribution of dividends, others had insisted that he deserved a great deal of kudos for his giant strides within the period under view.

The unassuming governor had at different fora during his early days in office, reiterated his commitment to establishing a 'government of continuity' in his state which underscores the rate and zeal with which he continued and completed several projects embarked upon by his predecessor, Senator Bukola Saraki, during his administration.

I believe that this important step by Ahmed has upgraded his scorecard in a country in which succeeding administrators usually jettisoned the laudable projects embarked upon by their predecessors, simply owing to egoism.

Although some opinion holders had argued that the continuity intention had stood the test of time for the reason that the successor and his predecessor belonged to the same political party, we had witnessed in several parts of the country, the same kind of transition that had led to drawing up of an entirely new list of intentions, not minding inherited projects.

It is also noteworthy that while the Ahmed administration embarked upon and completed the inherited projects, several new ones were started and completed while others are still ongoing.

Some of the completed projects include 28 new roads out of a total of 41 started by the administration; the procurement and installation of 136 transformers to serve 189 communities; the rehabilitation of Pepele waterworks to serve seven communities, the rehabilitation of 17 waterworks and the sinking of 330 boreholes; the remodelling and rehabilitation of five general hospitals, supply of ambulances to 13 general hospitals, including the rehabilitation of 14 PHCs, supply of drugs and equipment to 43 PHCs and supply of blood banks to 21 PHCs; extension of community health insurance scheme to cover 60 per cent of the populace.

Others are the employment of 2000 youths within 100 days in office, training of 150 individuals under the youth entrepreneurship programme and the introduction of kwabes; the disbursement of N250 million to 1,018 cooperatives under the revolving microcredit scheme and N100 million for Kwara artisans congress; the signing of MoU with the federal government on cassava transformation and the signing of MoU with Ireti farms to supply 500,000 tonnes of cassava chips annually to Hong Kong. The list is in exhaustive while several others unmentioned are still ongoing.

No doubt, there is still room for improved performance especially in the area of road construction in the hinterlands because this would further discourage rural-urban migration and enable the indigenes cultivate self help attitude, hence reducing pressures on the central government and also easing the process of governance. Judging by aforementioned strides, it is worthwhile to grant an outstanding performance index to the present administration in Kwara State.

-Ojomo, a media communication specialist, wrote in from Lagos