The Kwara State Governor, Dr. Abdulfatah Ahmed, has assured Kwarans that his government will complete all ongoing projects in the state before the expiration of his tenure.
The governor gave this assurance during a stakeholders meeting with members of the All Progressives Congress.
The meeting was held at the Banquet Hall, opposite Government House, Ilorin.
According to Dr. Ahmed, the state government has put in place the Kwara Infrastructure Development Fund as a sustainable funding window through an improved internally generated revenues to fund capital projects.
Ahmed said the state intends to invest the second tranche of the Paris Club refund on health and education, especially primary and secondary schools’ infrastructure, to boost the state’s human capital development and sustainable economic growth.
He said: I want to assure you that the next tranche of Paris loan refund we’re expecting will be deployed to SUBEB projects and other community development programmes.
“All our ongoing and new projects will be completed before I leave office in 2019.”
On the coming local government elections in the state, Governor Ahmed called on prospective chairmen to develop capacity to improve revenues rather than relying on dwindling Federal Allocation and state’s 10 per cent IGR to pay workers’ salaries.
He advised them to synergise with the Kwara State Internal Revenue Service in exploring various revenue lines across the state.
Governor Ahmed also advised the APC aspirants in the forthcoming local government election to engage in more consultations in line with the tradition of the party’s structure in the state and come up with manageable numbers of aspirants to avoid acrimonies.
Speaking earlier, the State Chairman of the APC, Alhaji Ishola Balogun-Fulani, disclosed that 87 aspirants are jostling for local government chairmanship position across the 16 local government areas, while 317 aspirants had indicated interest in the councillorship positions across the 193 wards.
Balogun-Fulani added that the State Secretariat of the party had directed each local government to immediately set up seven-man screening committees to screen all aspirants ahead of the primary elections in line with the Kwara State Independent Electoral Commission’s timetable.