The Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) in Kwara State has condemned the decision of the Abdulrahman-led Kwara State Government to abruptly terminate the Kwara State Community and Social Development Agency (KWASCDA), a World Bank-assisted programme designed to address critical infrastructural deficits in rural communities from the upcoming World Bank-assisted intervention programme, NG-CARES.
This decision, which will effectively kill the agency and render all of its staff jobless, is another grave disservice to thousands of rural communities that have relied on KWASCDA for vital social infrastructure, including boreholes, classrooms, electricity transformers, and sanitation projects—amenities that directly improve the quality of life for thousands of Kwarans.
In a statement signed by its State Publicity Secretary, Olusegun Olusola Adewara and obtained by Just Event Online TV, the PDP expressed shock over the government’s removal of KWASCDA from the upcoming phase of the NG-CARES programme, facilitated by the Federal Government and the World Bank without providing any reason for Kwarans noting that while rural communities in other 35 Nigerian states will continue to benefit from this laudable projects, Kwara State stands as an unfortunate outlier due to the Governor’s self-serving political decisions.
Kwarans will recall that KWASCDA was established in 2009 under the leadership of Dr. Abubakar Bukola Saraki’s administration and sustained by his successor, Alh. Abdulfatah Ahmed.We have been inundated with distress calls from affected communities that had previously submitted expressions of interest for the 2024 infrastructure intervention projects under KWASCDA. These communities, which had anticipated the construction and renovation of schools, health centres, community halls, water supply systems, and electricity transformers, have now been abandoned by a government that has chosen political vendetta over governance.
Our Party has uncovered that certain officials within the government, in connivance with a few elements within KWASCDA, orchestrated this act of betrayal simply because the agency was a brainchild of the Saraki-led administration and their inability to influence project cost or choice of contractors which are keenly monitored by the World Bank.
This vindictive and petty politics at the expense of the masses is reprehensible and exposes the Abdulrazaq-led government’s glaring lack of commitment to genuine development in Kwara.
Rather than ensuring the equitable distribution of developmental projects, Governor Abdulrazaq has funnelled state resources into extravagant, wasteful projects concentrated within a single street in the state capital, leaving rural communities in worsening neglect. His administration’s ineptitude, insensitivity, and misplaced priorities are further deepening the socio-economic divide in Kwara State, condemning the majority of Kwarans to perpetual hardship.
We insist on the immediate reversal of this ill-conceived policy, which is nothing short of an anti-people policy aimed at punishing Kwarans for no just cause.
We urge the World Bank, the Federal Government, and civil society organizations to investigate this anomaly and ensure Kwara’s rural communities are not unjustly deprived of developmental opportunities.
Kwara State belongs to all, and as a political party, we will not stand by while a few individuals in government undermine the collective progress of our people.
Kwara’s rural populace deserves better than a government that abandons them to darkness, water scarcity, dilapidated schools and insecurity.
