The Nation Newspaper

Category: Northern Report

  • Gombe lawmakers tackle clashes

    Gombe lawmakers tackle clashes

    Members of Gombe State House of Assembly have waded into the land crisis in the southern district of the state. Clashes over land in such councils as Balanga, Billiri, Kaltungo and Shongom have led to deaths, injuries and arson among other fallouts.

    Worried by these incessant clashes, the member representing Billiri South constituency in state House of Assembly, Honourable Rambi Ibrahim Ayala moved a motion seeking a clear-cut demarcation of boundaries in the district as a way of ending the bloodshed.

    Ayala who chairs the House Committee on Land and Water Resources also called for the reinforcement of security in the affected areas.

    He said: “Despite the relative peace enjoyed by the people in the state irrespective of their diverse backgrounds…communal clashes in some parts of the state have continued to rear [their] ugly head leading to many loss of lives, and thereby disrupting economic activities in those areas. We have a responsibility to our young ebullient and dynamic state to serve as a fountain that will quench the ravaging conflagration of ethnic strife in our state.

    “As we are all aware, the unresolved land boundary disputes in some parts of the state have given rise to skirmishes as recently witnessed amongst the inhabitants of Kaltungo, Shongom, and Billiri local governments of the state, which has led to unavoidable loss of lives and property. Therefore, we cannot continue to remain complacent as in the case during the Holocaust”.

    Ayala said he urged the House to send a delegation to the affected communities and mobilise their elders to enlighten the residents on peace.

    He praised Governor Ibrahim Dankwambo’s efforts in containing insecurity and enshrining the culture of peaceful coexistence in the state.

    Inspired by the Ayala motion, the state House of Assembly constituted a joint committee on security and land to look into the matter and report to the House.

    The most recent of such tension heightening contentions over farmland was the fierce fighting at Poshiya village in Billiri local government area which led to the death of the Dean of Academics, Evangelical Church Winning All (ECWA) Theological Seminary popularly known as Kufai, Reverend Emmanuel Joshua.

    The conflict which occurred around mid-June 2015 reduced Poshiya village to a ghost town as all the villagers fled their homes and went into hiding due to fear of more attack from their opponents in Shongom local government Area which shares the same border with Poshiya.

    Reverend Joshua had hired some women to clear a farmland for him to cultivate but the women were sent away by Shongom people.

    Next, the clergy went himself to ask why his hirelings were chased out. He was waylaid and killed.

     

    The clash also consumed Seminary’s Liberian, Agabus Abona and two others, leaving several others with injury.

    Spokesperson of Gombe State Police Command, Deputy Superintendent Fwaji Atajiri said the command immediately deployed a team of mobile policemen to the area to deal with the situation but did not make any arrest so as not to escalate the problem.

    Gombe state Deputy Governor, Honourable Charles Iliya visited the area to pacify the communities, urging the leaders to prevail on their youths to sheathe their swords.

    The Dagaci (Village Head) of Poshiya, Mr. Dedan Kamasco expressed his disappointment over the clash.

    He said they have documents of a court ruling apportioning the disputed area to his community and wondered why their opponents would not just accede to a court ruling.

     

  • Take your vehicles for computer test’

    It is not enough to have a spare tyre or fire extinguisher and those other things road safety managers insist on; you should also present your vehicle for computer test.

    At the first anniversary of the Abuja Computerised Vehicle Testing Service (CVTS), its executive officer Mr Segun Obayendo urged motorists in the Federal Capital Territory (FCT) to take their vehicles to CVTS centre for the test.

    He said the measure prevents accidents.

    Obayendo said the measure had been around for decades.

    “Now we have improved on it by using state-of-the-art equipments. The problem is that it is new and we lack the tendency to resist change, even if it is to our own advantage. That is what has affected this project, but with consistent sensitisation programmes, we will get people to comply.

    “When we go on enforcement, sometimes we get motorists who are not with the inspection report and some are still having the handwritten Road Worthiness Certificates, that is not what we are issuing out after the inspection, it is against our laws. We believe that as time goes on, people will do the right things on the issue of road worthiness,” he said.

    He also frowned at the fact that the vehicles inspection center has been able to inspect just 14,000 vehicles in the FCT in the past one year in their two vehicles inspection centres, which he said is a very small number compared to their expectations.

    “The two centres we have, have capacity of 250 each, which 500 vehicles per day. That means we are supposed to have inspected over 140,000 in one year, if the people were complying.

    “For now the sanction of offenders is that when they are caught, we compel them to go through the exercise for them to get the road worthiness certificate and then they will pay a fine of N2000 for not complying with the law initially,” he said.

    The Permanent Secretary, FCT administration, Mr. John Chukwu, further advised the Federal Road Safety Corps (FRSC) FCT chapter and the FCT Transport Secretariat to partner with the vehicles inspection testing services in order to have safety on FCT roads.

    “We are also encouraging motorists in the FCT to Make use of this facilities, by ensuring that their vehicles are worthy of road use. If they do it, they are ensuring the safety of their passengers, families and their own lives.

    “That is why we are encouraging both the FCT Transport Secretariat and the Road Safety to collaborate with the VIO, to ensure that these facilities are used. In doing that, we are going to reduce the numbers of lost lives and fatalities on our roads,” he said.

    Merit Awards of Excellence were given to the immediate past FCT Transport Secretariat Secretary, Engr. Jonathan Ivoke, Inspector General of Police, Mr. Solomon Arase and FRSC Corps Marshal, Boboye Oyeyemi, amongst others for their contribution in ensuring that Thérè is saftefy on FCT roads.

     

  • Traffic offenders to be sanctioned

    Traffic offenders are in for a rough ride in the Federal Capital Territory (FCT) judging from pronouncements from the Administration.

    FCTA has also threatened to sanction motorists who indiscriminately park their vehicles on walkways and other unauthorised places.

    FCT Permanent Secretary, Mr. John Chukwu, an engineer, said this in Abuja at the first anniversary of the Abuja Computerised Vehicle testing services.

    Deputy Director and Chief Press Secretary FCT, Muhammad Sule made this known in a press statement, i which he stated that the Permanent Secretary had appealed to all Abuja road users to obey traffic rules and road signs to avoid crashes.

    He also stated, “The Permanent Secretary further threatened that parking on walkways and other unauthorised places would not be taken lightly as appropriate sanctions would also be applied.

    “Engr. Chukwu used the occasion to appeal to all road users in the Federal Capital Territory to obey traffic rules and road signs to ensure safety on Abuja roads.

    “He identified three major causes of road crashes, which according to him include the state of the road, the attitude of the driver and more importantly the state of the vehicle.

    “Where the state of the vehicle is largely compromised, the resultant effect can better be imagined and therefore every effort must not be spared to keep vehicles plying FCT roads Roadworthy.

    “The Permanent Secretary thus, instructed the FCT Directorate of Road Traffic Services to synergise with the operators of the Testing Centre to ensure that all vehicles in the Territory are subjected to the clinical diagnosis of the Centre before roadworthiness certificates are issued to the owners.

    “In order to reduce the effect of the high rate of road fatalities occasioned by the prevalence of unworthy vehicles, Engr. Chukwu directed the Directorate of Road Traffic Services to replicate Vehicle Testing Service Centres in all the six Area Councils of the Territory.

    “He reiterated that the establishment of the Testing Centre in the six Area Councils would provide easy access to motoring public in and around the Satellite Towns to get their vehicles tested.ý”

  • Our infrastructure challenges, by Kuje residents

    Residents of Kuje area council of the Federal Capital Territory (FCT) bemoaned their lack of basic amenities in their community, calling on chairman of the council Shaban Tete to respond to their needs.

    One of the residents, Mr. Joshua John who spoke with Abuja Review said nothing much has changed for the better in the council since Tete took office.

    He said, “The good thing about this administration is endless promises without fulfilment. We have not seen anything that has been constructed and commissioned by this administration that can improve the living standard of Kuje people, apart from the market that was recently commissioned.

    “The leadership of the council led by Mr. Shaban Tête promised us potable water supply and rural electricity when he assumed office; now it is going to three years and nothing has been done in any community. The people are still suffering from water shortage and living in darkness.

    “Kuje roads that were constructed by previous administrations are going bad on a daily basis, mostly the roads that lead to the town when coming from Lugbe; also the road that leads to the General Hospital. In fact, almost all the roads in Kuje town are becoming dilapidated and inaccessible. The council cannot even maintain them.”

    Grace Oba, another resident, lamented: “We voted for him [Tete] because of the promises he made to us to make the council like other developed councils like Abuja Municipal Area Council (AMAC). But, since the present administration, things have gone worse in this council. We spend most nights in darkness in this council. We need things to change for the better.

    “We are appealing to him to make his promises a reality by correcting so many things that are going wrong in the council, before Kuje town becomes like one of the communities in the hinterland where there are no access roads, water and electricity. Very soon another election will commence, and the people are waiting and watching to hear more promises.”

     

  • Buhari’s wife, Plateau governor’s help Jos IDPs

    Buhari’s wife, Plateau governor’s help Jos IDPs

    Wife of the President, Mrs Aisha Buhari and Mrs Regina Lalong, wife of Plateau State governor, have lifted the spirits of displaced women and children in internally displaced persons camps in Jos, the state capital.

    They presented relief items worth millions of naira to the IDPs on a visit to the camp at Zang Commercial College Jos. Some of the items included bags of rice, cartons of noodles, cartons of ceramic bowls, kegs of palm oil, toiletries, bundles of cloth and bags of salt, among other items.

    Mrs Buhari was represented by the wife of Nasarawa State governor, Hajiya Salamatu Al-makura.

    The camp manager and Director, Stefanus Foundation, Mark Lipdo said, “The IDPs camp was established in November with over 470 families comprising over 4,000 people. But today some have returned home but there are still 94 families who have no home to return to in Adamawa, Yobe and Borno states. There are currently 38 males, 88 females and 340 children totalling 466 individuals, while over 300 families have been successfully integrated into various host communities. We have over 5,000 IDPs currently in Panda and Karu local governments of Nasarawa state.”

    Mrs. Lalong said, “It is with a heavy heart that I stand before you to address fellow women and children who are victims of insecurity in the country. No amount of reasons can justify the violence in Northeast that caused innocent women and children these kinds of pain you are experiencing in this camp.

    “I am here with the wife of our President who has come all the way because of you and because of the level of inconveniences you faced as a result of your displacement from your various homes.

    “As women and mothers we will do our best to make sure we cushion the effect of whatever you are passing through at the moment and to also encourage you that this moment is temporal.

    Mrs Al-Makura said, “The wife of our President has received information about your presence in this camp and she has asked me to come and see you on her behalf.

    “These few items have been assembled by the wife of our President and the wife of Plateau State governor as a show of love and to prove that we all share in your moment of hardship.

    “Having come and seen your situation, I will go and report back to the First Lady and  she is prepared to take further action to alleviate your sufferings.

    “Please don’t think your present condition is going to be permanent, the government of President Buhari is very passionate and committed to do all that is possible to return you to your various homes to continue with your normal life as you used to do.

    “So I encourage you to remain calm, hopeful and be prayerful while the federal government proffers lasting solution towards your rehabilitation.”

    The IDPs were elated.

    Mr. Ezekiel Bala spoke on their behalf: “We want to return home, we have spent one year in this camp and we have been looking forward to the day we will return to our homes right from the very day we came here. Some of us went home and came back to the camp because all our houses have been demolished.

    “Apart from the absence of houses, our places are not still safe for occupation, people cannot go to farm, the insurgents are still lurking around. We want to know how long we are going to remain here. Our children have not gone to school for one year, they have no future in their own country.

    “We want Mr. President to provide us shelter and security for us to return home as soon as possible; that is our demand.”

     

     

  • Will el-Rufai get this hospital working?

    Will el-Rufai get this hospital working?

    It was conceived to provide the best medical services and end recourse to facilities overseas but, six years after, this sprawling Kaduna State hospital has not taken off. Will Governor Nasir el-Rufai make the difference? TONY AKOWE reports

    Before becoming vice president, former governor of Kaduna State Namadi Sambo had a wonderful health plan. The only trouble was that the sprawling 200-bed hospital he conceived and started building could not get off the ground; in fact, it was abandoned at completion stage. Then, in came his successor Ramalan Yero who loved the project so much he went shopping for cash to complete it. Still, the jinx remained unbroken, six years after.

    Is there any hope in the administration of Mallam Nasir el-Rufai? Will the hospital see the light of day, and not only justify the huge cash forked into it but provide the services Kaduna State residents and other Nigerians crave for?

    Sambo laid so much emphasis on reversing the ugly health situation in the state. One of the ways he proposed was providing a state-of-the-art medical facility in the country.

    He said then that the medical facility which would be a 200-bed hospital will provide the best of medicare comparable to the ones in other countries where Nigerians rush to for medical attention.

    He said he believed that the  hospital will put an end to Nigerians traveling out of the country on medical tourism.

    The government went to the capital market to generate part of the funds for the construction of the hospital which was later scaled up to a 300 beds.

    The contract for the construction was awarded to Nahman Construction, a Lagos-based firm for an undisclosed sum in 2009.

    However, with the structural work of the hospital almost completed, the complex was abandoned for almost three years. The contractors left the site and are yet to return  even though the state government said it had enough money to continue with the project.

    When The Nation visited the site of the project located at the Kaduna Millennium City, only the security guard and two broken-down trucks were seen, while the place has been overgrown with weeds. The walls of the hospital were already suffering from lack of maintenance while part of the roof was giving way.

    Permanent Secretary in the state Ministry of Health, Dr. Paul Dogo told The Nation that work on the project had to stop to allow for the installation of equipment.

    Investigations revealed that the hospital was initially scheduled for completion in 2012, but was delayed and rescheduled for completion in 2014 due to the inability of the state government to take delivery of some state-of-the-art equipment for the provision of comprehensive health care services to the 6.1million people in the state.

    It was gathered that Mukthar Ramalan Yero government in the state went shopping for loan from the Islamic Development Bank to provide the needed facilities for the hospital and other developmental projects in the state, some of which were also to have been funded from the bond taken from the Capital Market by the state government. The bank was to provide $141 million with the breakdown including, $81 million for the construction of Transmission Mains and Service Reservoirs at the Zaria Regional Water Supply Project, $43.13 million for the provision of modern equipment at the 300 bed-space Specialist Hospital at the Millennium City and $17.32 million for the construction of four (4) new Science Secondary Schools to be located in the New Kaduna City, Koreye, Sabon Gari LGA, Rigachikun, Igabi LGA and Manchok, Kaura LGA.

    While signing the loan agreement with officials of the bank in April 2014, the former governor, Mukthar Ramalan Yero said, “We have promised the people that we are going to complete all ongoing projects in the state and I want to assure the people that we have not abandoned any project and we remain committed to completing them based on availability of funds.”

    Dr. Dogo told The Nation on the telephone that the El-Rufai government was committed to completing the project and has set up a Project Monitoring Unit that is saddled with the responsibility of reviewing the project with a view to completing it. According to him, the government is concerned with the poor state of health facilities in the state. According to him, it is the concern of the government that led to convening the recent health summit in the state. The government has put in motion machineries to upgrade about 255 primary health Centres across the state and has signed a memorandum of understanding with General Electric Healthcare to provide modern health facilities for the health Centres including the 300 bed hospital.

    He said, “If we get it right this time, we can begin to reverse the ugly trend”.

    Governor Nasir el-Rufai confirmed this in a state broadcast.

    He said, “Kaduna State has signed a Memorandum of Understanding with General Electric Healthcare to modernise our primary health centres and public hospitals. Both parties have committed to identifying the specific needs of the centres and hospitals, so that modern equipment can be installed to improve the diagnosis and management of patients.

    “We shall sharpen our focus on primary healthcare by full implementation of Primary Healthcare Under One Roof (PHCUOR). We have therefore sent this framework as our first Executive Bill to the State House of Assembly. This focus includes a project to fully equip at least one primary health care centre in each of the 255 wards in the state, and at least one general hospital in each of the three senatorial districts. In addition to providing better facilities, we would be recruiting more doctors, nurses, midwives and technologists for our improved hospitals”.

    If el-Rufai does get the hospital working, he would have pulled off a feat his predecessors could not.

     

  • Pupils’ breakthrough in phone tech

    Pupils’ breakthrough in phone tech

    In barely two weeks of UNESCO-sponsored training, pupils show remarkable promise, developing 14 phone applications. OLUGBENGA ADANIKIN reports

    Pupils are making life easier in several respects. They can now access school libraries, for instance, from the phone in their hands. And if you like to avoid the dangers of answering calls while driving, a new application can send an automatic message to your caller informing them that you are behind the wheels and that you are at such and such location, just in case it will be of any use to them.

    Secondary school pupils have come up with these and other applications, all to make life a little easier. It is no less than a breakthrough.

    It was all thanks to the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation or UNESCO, which organised a rigorous Mobile Application Training exercise for about 68 secondary schools in the Federal Capital Territory (FCT). It is known as YouthMobile.

    Each of the schools sent one pupil who gathered at the Government Junior Secondary School (GSS), Jabi for the four-week training programme.

    It started on July 27 and ended August 21, with the participants taught basic principles of computer coding and application designs for mobile phones.

    Away from conventional computing, the students were about to develop 14 mobile applications crucial for stakeholders in the education and health sector as well as measures to reduce road accidents.

    The workshop was supported by Samsung. About 150 Samsung ATIV Book 2 laptops were donated to the participating schools to further complement the training.

    •Akindayo Akindolani receiving his certificate
    •Akindayo Akindolani receiving his certificate

    Executive Director, Zariah Elizabeth Foundation, Mr. Dayo Akindolani, Lead Consultant for the training, empowered the students using the MIT Application Inventor, the major software used to design the 14 mobile applications.

    According to him, the training became imperative to equip secondary school students at a very young age so as to prepare them ahead of time and they could compete with their colleagues’ home and abroad.

    “UNESCO really wants to empower young people on mobile developments. They want to create tech entrepreneurs from young students. Globally people are developing phones and they will want mobile applications to be on them. There is an app that teaches students current affairs because most students are ignorant of public office holders in their states, local governments even at the federal level. So with this application, they are easily empowered about their President, governors, lawmakers and the rest,” Akindolani said.

    “There is an application designed by the students which can send short messages to your loved ones in your local dialect, during emergencies,” he added.

    ýMusa Yakubu Maikasuwa representative of FCT Education Secretariat, described the students as super and intelligent, saying, “The set we have now are more exposed to bring FCT the deserved honour.”

    Maikasuwa said irrespective of the quality of education or status of education acquired, everyone is expected to be computer literate, emphasising that the students should count themselves very lucky being selected from over 150, 000 secondary school students in the territory.

    “When you are not ICT compliance you are an illiterate so the students should count themselves extremely lucky for being selected to participate in the workshop. You have been provided the skills to make you self-reliance, so you can be established somewhere for being part of this process” he said. “Make sure that the laptop is being utilised and also use the skill for you benefit and that of the society,” Maikasuwa added.

    UNESCO Regional Director, Benoit Sossou said the YouthMobile training was one of the several UNESCO programmes aimed at enabling universal access and preservation of information knowledge.

    Sossou, who was represented by his assistant, Mrs. Adele Nibonal noted that the programme was to empower secondary school students in building inclusive knowledge, societies, creating the conditions for sustainable development and peace by promoting universal access.

    He said a similar training would be held in Cross River State for 80 secondary schools from Oban, Akamkpa Local Government.

    “The curriculum used for this training is the MIT App Inventor which is high-level and open-licensed for easy translation, localization and innovations. 68 secondary school students from the FCT were trained within 4 weeks.

    “The YouthMobile Initiative builds on the experience of many worldwide initiatives that introduce young people to computer science programming (learning-to-code) and problem solving (coding-to-learn). It also builds on experiences targeting young women who are vastly underrepresented in this field.

    “Finally, it builds on the consideration that for millions of young people, the smart phone in their pocket is a very powerful computer, it will be their only computer and they use it in nearly every aspect of their lives; communicating, learning, taking pictures and playing games.” Sossou added.

    Miss Aminat Mohammed from Army Day Secondary School, Maitama described the training important to her life, especially computer literacy and application development.

    ýMohammed said, “I have learnt a lot because now I can develop an app on my own without anyone assisting me, before now, I can’t even operate a laptop but now, I can to a reasonable extent.

    “I will advise other students to learn more on ICT because it’s very important. You can be self-employed without waiting for anyone to offer you jobý.”

     

  • Fed Govt urged to scrap council legislature

    Youths in the Federal Capital Territory (FCT) under the auspices of Abuja Original Inhabitant Youth Empowerment Organisation (AOIYE) have called on the federal government to scrap local government legislative houses, which they described as comatose.

    The President of the indigenous organisation, Commandant Isaac David who made this call in Abuja on behalf of the youths, in a press statement, blamed the prolonged and negative relationship between the councils and the FCT administration on the incompetence of the area councils legislators.

    According to David, the FCT  administration which is being run by bureaucrats who are not close to the grassroots, rely on information and data metrics fed them by the leadership of the area councils who run the councils as a family business without enough consultation with the public.

    “The Legislative Houses are comatose and may need to be scrapped as they are not doing their work. Because of their incompetence, the chairmen run the council as if it is their family business.

    “Recently, the media has been inundated with commentaries on the management of resettlement issues in the programme of the Land Swap and especially the Centenary City and how the original inhabitants were shortchanged in the process.

    “All this adverse publicity would have been avoided if the area councils being managed by the elected representatives of the people did their work in a transparent and accountable manner. There is also not only poor communication between the Councils and the public, but also internal communication among themselves.

    “Government communication involves not only sending out persuasive messages to the public, but also explaining working policies, creating awareness of the rights of citizens, and developing mechanisms that enable two-way communication between citizens and the government. The Councils need to understand that government communication is not propaganda,” he said.

    Commandant David further said that effective public communication efforts enable citizen participation, but the FCT area councils lack a culture of consultation and participation, exacerbated by low literacy rates and lack of information provision even with the passage of the Freedom of Information Act.

    “Without better communication governments risk losing public support for their programmes, policies and development interventions. We note that it is the intention of Government to provide the public with timely, accurate, clear, objective and complete information about its policies, programmes, services and initiatives. The public has a right to such information,” he said.

     

  • Our grouse with agric scheme, by Kwara farmers

    Our grouse with agric scheme, by Kwara farmers

    Smallholder farmers in Kwara State have made their position clear on the impact of the Growth Enhancement Support Scheme (GESS), saying it has been of little help.

    The farmers including women met in Ilorin, the state capital, to pronounce a damning verdict on the scheme, stressing that they gained nothing from it last year.

    But the federal government attributed the not to impressive performance of the scheme on the Smallholder farmers themselves.

    GESS is a federal government’s programme that aims to provide subsidised agricultural inputs especially fertilisers and seeds to smallholder farmers through a voucher system. It was also designed by the former President Goodluck Jonathan’s administration to ensure that subsidised fertiliser and seeds get to actual farmers, rather than providing a general subsidy to all farmers.

    The assessment of the GESS performance is contained in a score-card CCEPE presented to the stakeholders in Ilorin.

    The score-card is dubbed “Dissemination of Community Participatory Assessment on Government Expenditure on Agriculture and Score-Card on Growth Enhancement Support Scheme (GESS) 2014”.

    The programme was convened by the Centre for Community Empowerment and Poverty Eradication (CCEPE) and supported by the Actionaid Nigeria

    Participants were drawn from rural communities across the state.

    The report noted that the GESS programme did not improve for 2014 in Kwara as much as it did in 2013 unlike in Bauchi and the Federal Capital Territory, where there was a significant improvement in the year under review.

    “However, some states like Kwara, Delta and Ondo made significant improvement on the number of farmers that benefitted from the programme in 2014.

    “In spite of these individual state’s improvement, the programme is still plagued with several challenges, most of which were identified in the 2013 assessment.

    “For instance, farmers still experienced acute delay in inputs delivery, far redemption centres, and difficulty collecting inputs at redemption centres.

    “All persisting as a challenge is the poor phone networks and low farmers’ ownership of telephone handsets”, the score-card said.

    The Programme Officer of CCEPE, Mr Abdulrahaman Ayuba,  who presented the report explained that the real smallholder farmers were still left out of the scheme as many of them complained of registering, but not redeeming their input and the inconsistency in input redemption from year to year.

    Ayuba said that the NGO, which engaged a consultant to assess the performance of the scheme, discovered that its performance dropped in Kwara from average in 2013 to poor in 2014.

    He added, though that the scheme improved in states like Bauchi and the Federal Capital Territory, where the Actionaid Nigeria carried out a similar research when the 2014 performance was compared with that of 2013.

    Ayuba added that “generally, among the eight states the scheme performed averagely with 2.63 points, which could be because five of the eight states scored average points.

    “Compared to 2013 performance, the overall performance of 2014 GESS was not better than the 2013, because they rated the scheme average in both years. Only Bauchi state improved its performance from average (3.15 points) to good (3.45 points). The remaining states either maintained their performance or dropped in their performance.

    “At the commencement of the programme in 2012, 1.7 million farmers were reached with fertilizer and seeds, which means, it fell short of its target by 3.3 million farmers. By implication, the scheme performed woefully in its first year. In 2013, the programme redeemed 5.9 million farmers, cumulatively, a remarkable improvement from 2012.

    “What this suggests is that 4.1 million were the actual addition in the 2013 farming season. Again, the progamme could not meet five million farmers targeted. In 2014, the scheme also redeemed seven million; meaning only two million farmers were added. This implies that the annual number of farmers redeemed dropped geometrically.

    “Instead of having a total of 15 million farmers benefiting from the programme, only seven million farmers were doing so. Less than half of the projected number of farmers benefited from the programme in 2014. And there is no guarantee that farmers that benefited in the previous year will do so in any current year.”

    The report therefore, advocated for a review and continuation of the GESS programme to serve as a pro-active measure considering the danger of it being discontinued by the new regime.

    “All stakeholders advocate for an act on GESS to guarantee sustainability of the programme and the financial commitment of the state and local governments.

    “Improve the delivery time of inputs by improving on settlements with agro-dealers, which in turn should improve loan repayments and transactions for input supplies”, it said.

    Other recommendations of the report include a detail study on redemption process with the aim of better understanding why farmers are saying they are not redeeming their inputs; further increase in the redemption centres so as to bring the inputs closer to the farmers; involvement of traditional rulers in warehousing the inputs to improve accessibility; involvement of farmers and agro-dealers in decision affecting them and integration of the department of agriculture of the local governments in the process.

    The report also recommended that the department of agriculture of the local government be integrated in the process to improve farmers’ registration and continually generate needed data on the performance among others.

    In his response, Kwara State Acting Director, Federal Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development, Mr. Raphael Adeponle advised farmers to see agriculture as a business.

    He noted that farmers see whatever that is given to support them as largesse and did not bother to pay back credit facility they accessed.

    Adeponle said he had noted all the observations raised in the score-card, promising to channel them to the appropriate quarters.

  • DSS cautions Jigawa youths on social media comments

    The Jigawa State office of the Department of State Security has expressed concern over the disruptive tendencies and threat to peace by political groups on the social media.

    This was disclosed by the state DSS director, Mr Yusuf Isiyaku in a speech at a one-day sensitisation seminar organised for social media groups across the state.

    The seminar held at Three Stars Hotel, Dutse.

    Isiyaku urged parents and guardians to monitor how their children use the social media with a view to guarding against moral decadence.

    The DSS director explained that  an independent investigation by the Channels Television indicated that the Jigawa State has more followers in the government activities in the federation, “but in our own analysis the followership is not progressive but destructive”.

    According to him, report from an independent body revealed that youths in Jigawa State have higher participation in political discussion on social media more than any other state in the country.

    The Director added that, according to his department’s assessment, the participation was more destructive than constructive, putting the state in bad light.

    “In view of this, we deem it necessary to come up with programmes to re-orient our youth on how to best use social media for their betterment and that of the state and country at large.

    “We invited traditional and religious leaders, legal practitioners, security agencies to enlight the representatives of youth group across all 27 local government of the state on proper usage of social media in tandem with religious norms and culture of the society”.

    Speaking at the occasion, Emir of Dutse Dr Nuhu Sunusi urged the youths to abide by the usage of decent words and respect to their leaders in any of their discussion or posting on the social media and other platforms.