The Nation Newspaper

Tag: kwara

  • Kwara uncovers 1,071 illegal employees in civil service

    Kwara uncovers 1,071 illegal employees in civil service

    One thousand and seventy one illegal workers were uncovered in the employ of the Kwara State government, it was learnt yesterday.

    The government said it lost N400 million monthly to the illegal workers in the last few months.

    Commissioner for Education and Human Capital Development Alhaji Musa Yeketi spoke at the book launch of the former Secretary to the State Government (SSG), Alhaji Shehu AbdulGafar.

    Yeketi attributed the incident to dishonesty among civil servants, adding that appropriate actions were being taken against those culpable.

    A lawyer, Malam Yusuf Ali, identified irregular salaries and poor pay as some  factors responsible for corruption and sharp practices in the civil service.

    In his paper, Public Service Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow, Alli lamented that civil servants were aiding corruption.

    “In recent times, top public officers have been accused of embezzling gratuities and pensions of retired colleagues. Poor remuneration has exposed civil servants to sharp practices; most of them demand money before rendering their service to the public.

    “They keep business letter-headed papers, invoice-receipts of their companies and become suppliers and contractors, even in their offices,” he said.

    Noting that no country can develop beyond the capacity of its public service, the legal luminary posited that “there is unfortunately a broad consensus among Nigerians that our public service is both broken and dysfunctional.

    “The quality of our public servants and the service they provide are below expectation. Unlike the days of yore, when only the best and brightest competed to join the administrative service, our public service is now seen as the employer of the dull, the lazy and the corrupt.”

    Ali called for training and retraining of civil servants to enable them adapt to modern trends, adding that the civil service should be repositioned to be the information pool which commissioners and ministers rely on for effective administration.

  • Kwara detects 1,071 illegally recruited workers

    Kwara detects 1,071 illegally recruited workers

    The Kwara State Government said yesterday it had discovered 1,071 workers illegally recruited into its civil service within the last few months.

    Education and Human Capital Development Commissioner Musa Yeketi attributed the recruitment of the illegal workers to dishonesty among some civil servants.

    He said the illegal workers were costing the state N400million every month.

    Yeketi spoke  at the launch of a book entitled “My Public Service at the Heart of National Development” written by a former Secretary to the State Government and Head of Service in the state, Alhaji Shehu AbdulGafar.

    The commissioner did not elaborate but said that appropriate actions were being taken on it.

    In his speech, the Guest Speaker, Mallam Yusuf Ali (SAN), identified military rule, insecurity of tenure and nepotism as factors militating against the progress of the civil service in Nigeria.

    Ali said that the country’s public service had deteriorated owning to “high rate of corruption, nepotism and mediocrity.”

    He said that many Nigerians were poor because of insincerity and dishonesty of some leaders.

    He called for institution of a reward system for dedicated public servants, saying that the measure would boost morale, motivate the people and curb corruption in the service.

    Ali also advocated prompt payment of pension and gratuity to retired public servants in order to make the service more reliable.

  • How Kwara can become financially independent through non-oil export

    A large number of states in Nigeria are running on avoidable deficits due to overdependence on centrally allocated crude-oil dependent revenues. Many of the state governments came into power with the mindset of getting monthly allocation from the federation account but the decline in the oil price and the lingering slowdown due to destruction of oil pipeline and installations have dashed many hopes. Unpaid salaries, uncompleted and abandoned projects and many socio-economic and political challenges are many states due to paucity of funds.

    In this article, I will be focusing on how Kwara State can become financially independent through aggressive drive for non-oil exportation. According to BudgIT, Kwara is among the states in Nigeria that is running at a huge deficit. This is because the total income realisable from both the internally generated revenues and the federal allocation are grossly inadequate to meet the recurrent expenditure talk less of the capital expenditures.

    My position has been that all the states in Nigeria have what it takes to internally fund their budgets and survive independently of the federal government allocation. To achieve this, they only need to focus on two major sectors namely; agriculture and non-oil export. The strategies put forward in this article are capable of not just helping the states to generate revenue and become self-sufficient, in addition to this, it will also help them to create numerous jobs for their teeming population.

    Kwara is blessed with very large land mass that is suitable for the production of different kind of exportable agricultural commodities, but in this article, our recommendation for this state is Raw cashew nut export. Even though this is a tree crop with gestation of about two years for improved varieties, but the potential upon maturity will last for many years.

    According to the Collaborative Survey by National Bureau of Statistics, Central Bank of Nigeria, Federal Ministry of Agriculture & Rural Development and Federal Ministry of Trade & Investment, this state produced about 39,000MT of raw cashew nut in 2012.

    Using the national average of about 38 per cent, this state currently has arable land that is about 1,414,080. hectares of lands. We have made some reasonable and very conservative assumptions in this analysis and these include that: the state is using just 40 per cent (565,632 hectare) of this land for cashew nut plantation

    -the yield per hectare of Cashew nut is 1MT per hectare (even though, there are varieties that can yield more than this) this yield was used to make provisions for losses that might occur during harvest -the unit price of cashew nut is $1,000/MT FOB Lagos (even though it can be as high as $1,200) -cost of farming was put at N25, 000 per hectare based on some research works -cost of exporting per metric tonne was put at N35, 000 base on the export projects I have handled in the past

    With a yield of 1MT per hectare, this means that the state can produce 565,632MT of cashew nut on the land size stated in the assumptions above. If this cashew nut is exported at a free on board (FOB) price of $1,000/MT, the total proceeds will be $565,632,000. Using a conversion rate of N310 to 1$, this amount to N175, 345,920,000. The unit cost of farming Cashew nut and exporting are N25,000 per hectare and N35,000 per MT respectively. The total cost of farming plus 50 per cent profit on the sales to the government (or to the trading company engaged by the government) comes to N21,211,200,000 and the total cost exporting (transport, documentation, freight forwarding etc) comes to N19,797,120,000. The total project cost (farming and exportation) will be about N41,008,320,000. The estimated profit that can accrue to the state on this project comes to about N134, 337,600,000.

    According to data obtained from government sources, the IGR of the state for the year 2014 was about N17,497,620,787.52. This will remain low and even drop further because it is mainly generated from the personal income tax on workers in the state most of which have not been paid for some months now. From the analysis we have done on farming and exportation of Cashew nut, the state government could grow her revenue several thousand times over and above the current level if the government can embrace this new way of thinking in their drive for revenue generation.

    The state can start this drive with the exportation of Cashew nut to meet the current financial obligations but with a plan to begin to add value and process it into Cashew Kernel which will more than triple the revenue from the raw cashew nut.

  • Kwara ‘not owing pensioners’

    The Kwara state government yesterday said it is up to date with payment of salaries and entitlements to its workers and retirees. It denied owing pensions

    This clarification follows a media report which suggested that some pensioners in the State had died since April, 2015 as a result of unpaid allowances.

    In a statement, the government said local councils are responsible for the payment of allowances to the local government retirees referred to in the report.

    “Local government councils in the state, which receive separate allocations from the federal government, are responsible for the said pensioners and have varying degrees of staff and pension arrears,” the statement said.

    It added that the councils have been unable to pay their workers and retirees regularly for some months due to the sustained drop in federal allocations accruing to them.

    The statement said the nonpayment of salaries and pension is not peculiar to Local Government Councils in Kwara State as most councils are facing similar challenges which is reflective of the current financial situation affecting the country.

    The statement added that Governor Abdulfatah Ahmed had been working with council chairmen to resolve the salary and pension crisis at the council level.

    Part of the support, according to the statement, is the recent release of N162m to augment allocation for the payment of July salaries.

    The government also said it had disbursed N430, 388, 359.24 as subvention to seven of the state-owned tertiary institutions in 2016, noting that an outstanding balance of N86, 996,421.7 will be released this month.

    The institutions are Kwara State University (KWASU); Kwara State Colleges of Education in Ilorin, Oro and Lafiagi; Kwara State College of Arabic and Islamic Legal Studies; Kwara State College of Nursing, Oke-Ode; and the Kwara State School of Nursing and Midwifery, Ilorin.

  • Kwara to launch N4.2b infrastructure fund

    The Kwara State Government is set to launch its Infrastructure Development Fund ‘InfraFund Kwara’ (IF-K) in the energy sector in the fourth quarter of 2016 with an initial investment of N4.2 billion.

    Governor Abdulfatah Ahmed revealed this during an interaction with community leaders in his office last Friday. He said IF-K has been codified into the Kwara State Public Private Partnership Law, which he assented to in 2015.

    According to him the IF-K project is a result of the Kwara Infrastructure Investment and Finance strategy, which he approved following an infrastructure assessment that was done in 2014.

    He said the outcome of the assessment showed an estimated N225 billion deficit value of infrastructure across the 16 councils and spanning all sectors, which required both government and private investment, in order to boost the state’s productivity and wealth creation.

    The governor added that the main objectives of IF-K is to provide a guided, systemic and outward facing framework for continuous and consistent infrastructure development, optimally leverage private sector or resources for infrastructure development and maximize the state’s resource allocation policies.

  • Doctor declared missing in Kwara

    Doctor declared missing in Kwara

    The Nigeria Medical Association (NMA), Kwara Chapter, yesterday declared one of its members – Abdulkareem Abdulrahman – missing.

    Branch secretary, Dr Victor Iroha, said in a statement that Abdulrahman was last seen at 6am on Sunday, July 24 as he “drove out of his residence opposite Federal Road Safety Commission Office, GRA in his navy blue Toyota Corolla car with registration number BWR 532 RP.”

    Abdulraheem, a medical officer with Hospital Management Bureau, was posted to General Hospital in Omu- Aran.

    “His phone has also been unreachable and there has been no trace of either him or his car,” Iroha said, adding that all search efforts had so far yielded no results.

    He said the matter had been reported to the police and other security agencies.

    The NMA appealed to people with useful information to contact the nearest police station or his brother Ridwan on 08110709470 or NMA Kwara spokesperson on 08034086152.

  • Kwara gets N3b as June allocation

    The Kwara State Government has said it got N3,117, 634, 155.58 from the federation account as its June allocation.

    A statement by the Commissioner for Finance, Alhaji Demola Banu, said the government got a statutory revenue allocation (SRA) of N1,964, 362,872.63; VAT of N621, 720, 038.40; Exchange Difference of N473,821.529.00; and proceeds from solid minerals, N57,729,715.55, totalling N3,117, 634,155.58.

    The local government areas got N2, 233,730,999.61 for June.

    The councils received a statutory allocation of N1,532,966, 930.89; VAT of N352,531,877.20; exchange difference of N312,517,416.19; and proceeds from solid minerals, N35,714,775.33, totalling N2,233, 730,999.61.

    Banu added that the details of the allocation will be publicised after the Joint Accounts Allocation Committee (JAAC) meeting next week.

    He hoped that with the increased allocation, councils would be able to meet more of their contractual obligations.

  • Welder allegedly kills farmer in Kwara

    Welder allegedly kills farmer in Kwara

    A welder, Segun Bamidele, at the weekend allegedly killed a farmer, Sunday Owolabi, on his farm at Rore in Irepodun Local Government Area of Kwara State.

    It was gathered that Bamidele severed Owolabi’s head and attempted to sell it.

    According to a source, Owolabi went to his farm on Saturday but never returned. His relatives got worried and a search was conducted. His headless body was discovered the next day on his farm.

    “The suspect tried to sell the severed head to Aliyu, who turned him down. Aliyu reported to a community leader, who informed the village head.

    “Upon interrogation, Bamidele confessed to have acted under the influence of alcohol.”

    It was gathered that the case was reported at the Omu-Aran police division, which led to Bamidele’s arrest.

    Police spokesman Ajayi Okasanmi confirmed the incident. He said the suspect was arrested and was being interrogated at the state Criminal Investigation Department (CID).

     

  • $100m cassava plant coming to Kwara community

    Residents of Edidi, Isin Local Government Area of Kwara State have rolled out the drums to welcome American investors and their Nigerian partners in their community. The partners plan to build a $100m cassava production and processing plant there.

    The residents beat their talking drum and fired celebratory gunshots into the air to express their joyous mood. One of the American visitors also broke into a dance, drawing admiration from the locals.

    The event took place at the palace of Eledidi of Edidi land, Oba Gabriel Aboyeji.

    Receiving the visitors, Oba Aboyeji assured that the investors would not regret investing in his domain, adding,”there will be no hindrance of any form.

    “I urge you, therefore, to consider first indigenes of the community as soon as the project kicks-off. We are assuring you of our cooperation as the community is peaceful.”

    The two American investors, Ecotech-rab and Tranfeed Group along with their Nigerian partner, Satco Global Group promised to, in the next 18 months, establish cassava production and processing factories in the community.

    The factories which will be sited in Edidi, Irepodun Local Government Area of the state are expected to gulp a sum of $100 million

    The factories when completed are expected to create about 2,500 jobs, Group Managing Director/Chief Executive Officer (CEO), Satco Global Group, Femi D Philips said.

    Mr. Philips said, “We are the sponsors of this project and it is going to cost us about $100 million. We intend to complete it in the next 18 months. The project is expected to gulp about five thousand hectares of land. The first phase will about two streams of 120 tons per day and there will be an upgrade of 48 tons per day; giving us about 168 tons per day for a stream.

    “We are going to bring our expertise into planting cassava in a manner that will allow for optimum yield. So we are bringing our species from outside Nigeria and blend with the local species in Nigeria. We are looking at working with IITA in this area.

    “We are going to be producing starch powder, ethanol and production of feeds for livestock and others. It is an agro-business kind of.”

     

     

  • Kwara Assembly okays N1.3b loan

    The Kwara State House of Assembly has granted the government’s request to access the N1.3 billion Federal Government Budget Support Facility (BSF) loan.

    With the approval, the government will be able to access the loan whenever there is a shortfall in its monthly allocation.

    The approval came after the Speaker, Ali Ahmad, read Governor Abdulfatah Ahmed’s request at an emergency plenary.

    The loan, according to the governor’s message, will be disbursed in three tranches.

    “This facility, when accessed, will give Kwara a sigh of relief in the implementation of its policies and programmes,” the message said.

    The House also approved the state’s request to access a N973 million loan from Skye Bank Plc.

    The loan, the governor said, would be used to finance State Universal Basic Education Board (SUBEB) counterpart fund to enable the state access the 2014 Universal Basic Education Matching Grant from the Federal Government.

    The facility, he said, had ta enure of 12 months with 22 per cent interest rate per annum, and is secured with an irrevocable standing payment order.

    Governor Ahmed added that payment of workers would be a priority whenever the fund was accessed.