Speaking against the backdrop of a feature published in a newspaper about a fortnight ago saying Kwali Area Council is broke and had not been executing enough projects, the Chairman of the council, Hon. Ibrahim Daniel, in an exclusive interview with Blueprint, said the council was portrayed in bad light.
“Those that wrote that only tried to portray the council in bad light and give their readers the impression that the administration of the Area Council is not doing anything or at least, is not doing much to alleviate the people’s suffering,” he said.
The Chairman explained that 70 percent of the council’s allocation from the joint Accounts Allocation Committee (FAAC) is for the payment of teachers and staff salaries.
The remaining 30 percent, he explained further, “is for taking care of other needs, including projects, programmes and services which, of course are too many.”
The projects, he said, include: healthcare, education, rural electrification, rural roads, bridges, culverts, people’s empowerment and provision of borehole amongst some others.
“Base on these, the present administration, against all odds, has performed credibly well in the area of providing the needed amenities to the people of the council,” he noted.
According to the Chairman, since he got to office, his administration has been able to achieve the following:
Sharing of 18 buses to various Junior Secondary Schools in the council, building three blocks of classrooms in Yebu village, rehabilitation the Dafa-Yangoji Road, provision of solar street lights in Kwali metropolis, provision of electricity transformers in almost all the villages in the council, rehabilitation of Kwali township road and awarding of scholarships to indigent students.
Other feats Daniel said his administration has achieved are: empowerment of women, provision of free medical treatments, construction of bridge at Dafa Kundu road and provision of medical facilities to the numerous healthcare centres in the council.
“In a rural setting like Kwali, the salaries and allowances we pay go a long way and help the concerned families, we do not even mind the over-bloated nature of the staff strength which is even a way of helping the people out of their problems,” he said.
He continued that, “it is noteworthy also to mention that most of the problems they mentioned in their write-up are things that are commonly associated with rural communities and under-developed places all over the world. It is not preposterous and puerile that writers of that write-up wrote about a man who went to the farm and got bitten by a snake, emphasizing that rather than going to the hospital, he resorted to self-help. It was alleged that the man died five days afterwards at home because the badness of the road made it difficult for him and his relations to access the general hospital in the town. How childish, how irrational? How can supposedly intellectual human beings blame such a situation on the area council administration?”
According to him, “it is well known that people leave these rural communities to travel out to Kwali Metropolis even to Gwagwalada, Abaji and to as far as the main Abuja city. Nobody has ever complained their inability to go out because of the dilapidated nature of the roads. It is reckless assertion to say that the women in those communities making up Kwali Area Council who are pregnant give birth at home because of the same bad roads that make it hard for them to go to the open town.
“However, it is not common knowledge that in most communities in the north, Nigeria and indeed in Africa, women have been having their children at home and through the help of nature birth attendants and local mid-wives even where hospitals are build close to them.
“Are there not instances where hospitals exist yet people patronize nature doctors/ herbalists and drug stores near them? Is it always the fault of the president or governor that such situations obtain? Who do you blame when government provides overhead –bridges and people decide not to use same and get knocked down while running across the road?”
“Kwali Area Council did not start today and with this administration which means that they cannot be all solved in one fell swoop. We are doing the best we can to solve the ones we can within the very extent and scope of our loan resources available to us, I therefore appeal to the good responsible people of Kwali Area Council to continue to show their usual understanding as we continue to battle the problems while mischief-makers continue to do their fruitless, negative hatchet jobs”.
According to him, taking dividends of democracy to the people was the watchword of his administration, and that has been what it has been doing since it was inaugurated last year, adding that “I will do everything humanly possible to see that it ends in the same note where our people would be satisfied with our leadership.”
