WHY CONTINUITY IS GOOD FOR KWARA – OKE Cc @bukolasaraki @Governor_Ahmed Chief Wole Oke was Minority leader and later Majority Leader of the Kwara State House of Assembly in the Second Republic when he was a member of the defunct Unity Party of Nigeria (UPN). Since the emergence of the present democratic dispensation he had been a leading figure in the opposition in the state until 2011 when he joined the ruling party and worked for the victory of the present governor, ABDULFATAH AHMED, at the poll. The veteran politician who is, at present, the chairman of the governing council of the state College of Education, Oro, recently had an interview with some journalists, including CORRESPONDENT, DELE MOSES. He argues that President Goodluck Jonathan does not merit being voted for in 2015, among other things. Excerpts… You are a frontline politician in Kwara State and you are part of the present government of the state, but as a social critic, how would you access the performance of the government? I think GOVERNOR ABDULFATAH AHMED has been trying a lot to promote development of the state though paucity of fund has not help the people to feel the impact of the government more than they are feeling it now. In term of education, I think the government is trying particularly in improving on the provision of classrooms to schools. However, there seems to be inadequacy of teachers especially for critical subjects but I think government is seriously looking into that. In term of health, yes, everybody will acknowledge the fact that GOVERNOR AHMED has really tried particularly the regeneration of the five General Hospitals. He has really tried a lot in that area. Then, the newly introduced Health Insurance Scheme is highly commendable. It encourages people to go to hospital because you don’t have to pay. Whereas, formerly, when people are sick they will hardly go to the hospital because of the money they will pay, they preferred to use herbs. This HIS now encourages people to go to hospital or health centres as the case may be and we have hope that within a short period, mortality rate will go down in the state. But, provision of more basic health centres is still desirable. If possible, we should have a centre per district so that the centres are closer to the people and even, in case of a large district there can be more than one health centre. So, in term of performance I will say the governor is really performing but you know, there is no perfection in any man. There is a serious lack of fund and unfortunately, again, you cannot even talk of Internally Generated Revenue (IGR) because Kwara state is a civil service state and to ask people to pay this levy, that levy, is an area that the government may find it difficult to implement. To increase the IGR may not be as easy as it was done, say, in Lagos but whatever is available should be spread across the state and not concentrated in one area. Would the situation about development of the rural areas have been better if individual local government manages its funds and there is no joint account with the state government? Well, it is neither here nor there. Even with the joint account system they still make provision for the local governments. The question is how do local governments spend the money they gave them. How much do they set aside for capital projects in their areas. I even understand some local governments have to go and borrow money to pay salary. How do they manage the money they gave to them? That is the question. Did they set aside any amount of money for capital projects? And, even, if they don’t operate joint account how many of the managers of local government are equipped enough to effectively manage the resources put at their disposal. So, you have to think of that also. Some say the continuity agenda of the government is limiting the government in term of performance. What do you think about this? You know the philosophy behind this government is continuity. It has to complete the projects started by the previous government. Yes, there is this question of loans taken in the past that the present government has to refund and this has brought limit to what is available for the government to operate with. But, even then, like any other state or country, government is run not entirely on fund being available within the locality. It is run on assistance here and there in term of loan and assistance from overseas. I wouldn’t say the continuity philosophy has in any way jeopardised development. One beautiful thing about the continuity idea is that we don’t have abandoned projects in Kwara state. This is not the situation in some states. In some states, once a government leaves another one takes over and this one forgets about the projects left by the previous government, it starts afresh. By the time he completes its own four years, he would not have even completed its own projects. So a new government comes in, it abandons projects of the previous government. That is not the case in Kwara state. That is the beauty of the continuity philosophy of the government, we don’t have abandon project in Kwara state. Don’t you think the outcome of the next election can be influenced by the extent of development at the rural areas? Incidentally, it is not a matter that PDP or any other party can say they want to exploit because even in PDP states, are they better in term of rural development? What programme does PDP have that is better than the APC programme. As a matter of fact, when you talk of programmes, APC has a better programme for the people but this could be a trying period because of, as I earlier said, paucity of fund but then, and like I said earlier on, chat with the governor for just 30 minutes, you find out that he has very good vision for the state but he is handicapped by lack of fund, that much I know. So, coming election is not something that PDP can claim any superiority in term of using programmes to woo voters. As you said that APC has better programmes than the PDP, could that mean APC may gain wider acceptance than the PDP at the federal election next year? There are so many issues that have to be factored into what would happen in 2015. There are so many things that have to be brought in. What does Jonathan want to tell the people that will make people to vote for him and not for APC presidential candidate? He has been in the saddle for about five years. What impact has the federal government has made in Kwara state for instance. What impact can people of rural areas in the state say the federal government has been able to achieve for them. So, what is going to be the basis for them to now vote for Jonathan. What I’m saying is true of other areas of the country. Even in his home state, Bayelsa, I was reading in newspapers a while ago that people complained in respect of neglect of their areas. Like I said earlier on, Nigerian politics is one devoid of ideology, anything can happen between now and 2015 election. Just as it happened in Ekiti. For anybody to believe that Fayemi will not win that election I will say that person did not know what he was talking about. So, nobody can be definitive about Nigerian politics. People don’t think of future again, they think of the immediate. There is this view that there are better chances for APC and other opposition at the general election compared to what was at Ekiti, because there will be no concentration of security resources on a place to create fear of intimidation. What do you say to this? There is hope for any political party but when you talk of other opposition parties, what is their presence in the states. Take for example, Kwara here; you either talk of APC or PDP. So, whatever hope they have depends on their strength. Are they on ground at all? For you to nurse any hope you should have done a good job to make yourself known in the state. May be if we restrict ourselves to APC and PDP, APC may have greater hope in term of non- concentrati on of this security resources you are talking about because the security agencies would be overstretched to have the type of concentration we had in Ekiti because election would be conducted in the whole country. Even then, the electorate still has their role to play and the parties themselves, before they can claim the benefits of that relaxation, must sensitise their supporters, if they don’t sensitise their supporters, if they don’t urge them to come out to vote, they will be going back to square one. So, the question of intimidation should not in any way have negative effects on the electorate when they are enlightened. So, it behoves on the parties, particularly those considered as strong opposition parties to, from now on, do a lot of election education for their supporters
Posted on: Wed, 23 Jul 2014 06:27:48 +0000
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