AbdulRazak’s First 100 Days -By Olusegun Adeniyi

On a Sunday afternoon about six weeks ago, I got a call from the governor of Kwara State, Alhaji AbdulRahman AbdulRazak, asking whether I was at home. When I replied in the affirmative, he asked me to send the address as he wanted to visit. I did and within an hour, the governor was in my house. He came in just one car without any protocol and entered alone. He left after spending almost three hours during which we discussed what he met on ground in our state and how he intends to turn around the fortune of our people.

As at the time the governor visited, he had only just spent two months in office but he had already visited every part of the state as he shared with me potentials that I never knew existed in different areas. He started with Kwara North where, as he told me, the first rice mill in the entire northern Nigeria was built (in Patigi) by the late Sardauna of Sokoto, Sir Ahmadu Bello. He told me of an abandoned farm settlement within the area. With agro-processing as his idea for empowerment, his eyes are trained on sugar and its by-products, including power generation.

In Kwara South, the governor sees cashew, cassava and poultry as the areas to pursue while maize production will be encouraged essentially for feed mills. As he talked about each area and what could be done, the governor reeled out statistics to back his point. From education to health and other sectors, there is no area that we did not cover in our discussion. The state, he assured me, is currently embarking on the enumeration of workers, teachers and pupils to be able to work with accurate data. By the time the governor left my house, I had no doubt in my mind that he has started on a good note. What is now left is for him to put in place his own team (he has thus far relied on staff inherited from the previous administration) and begin to work for our people. I wish the governor well.