Op-ed | For Governor AbdulRahman AbdulRazaq, Kwara North is a cruise

By Uthman Qasim

In 2020, floods ravaged several communities in Edu, including Likpata, Tswako and Edogi. Properties were washed away, and livelihoods were buried in the mud. Villagers had no potable water to drink and struggled to feed themselves for weeks. Schools and healthcare centres were submerged in water. It was a national emergency that required immediate, short-term and long-term interventions. Governor Abdulrahman Abdulrazaq visited some of the communities alongside other individuals, including Senator Sadiq Umar, and made promises of relief materials and food. He also announced his administration’s commitment to working with relevant stakeholders to dredge the River Niger and desilt the Kainji and Jebba dams, which, in his wisdom, was the only solution to the problem.

Six years later, the governor returned to the same communities with the same promises. There have been no concrete interventions; only food will once again be distributed. This is as worrisome as the inability of the state government to find a lasting solution to a perennial crisis, especially when all it can offer is a donation of ten million naira to more than ten thousand victims. Those who accepted the donation, if it was indeed given, should be held accountable for how they intend to distribute it and the impact it will have.

The last time Governor Abdulrazaq visited Edu was in February 2023, some weeks before the general elections. He visited again yesterday, as elections are approaching. Between June 2025 and the present, victims of banditry from Edu have paid billions of naira in ransom. Tens of lives have been lost, many people have been maimed, and livelihoods have been destroyed. Since 2021, floods have consistently wreaked havoc on different communities in the local government area. During all these agonising experiences, the governor never visited the people he swore to stand by. He also has fewer than four messages of commiseration for the people of Edu on his social media handles over four years.

As part of the activities marking his once-in-three-years visit, the governor donated a bus to a school with terribly dilapidated infrastructure and severe staff shortages. Poor research and inadequate capital funding are among the challenges it is grappling with. The staff quarters and boys’ hostels are ghost towns where only rodents and reptiles can live comfortably. Instead of addressing these and other crucial challenges, Governor Abdulrazaq decided to “ease mobility”. One is forced to ask: Who is travelling, and where are they travelling to? Are there no buses in that school already? Is the donation of a bus to the school worth announcing by the government? Should the people of Lafiagi now celebrate the donation of a bus to a school that should have been upgraded into a federal institution like its counterparts across the country?

At a time when the governor was donating a bus to a school that needed money to maintain its old vehicles, the Lafiagi Police Divisional Headquarters had no patrol van. The local government area can best be described as being under terrorist siege, yet its police headquarters has no operational vehicle. It has only two motorcycles.

The governor also constituted a committee to enumerate victims of banditry long ago, with the promise that victims of insecurity, largely from Kwara North, would receive assistance. If that committee has lived up to its mandate, one would think the public was asleep while the exercise was being carried out. Family members of the victims are yet to find answers.

Many people expected the governor to visit the Lafiagi Waterworks for its official commissioning, given that the project had been completed, but he did not go there. Everyone is still wondering why he refused to visit the facility. Instead, he went to inspect the ongoing renovations at the Lafiagi Stadium, which was damaged by a windstorm some weeks ago. The original project was one of several legacy projects executed by a local government chairman some decades ago. If completed, its renovation will become Governor Abdulrazaq’s legacy project in Edu Local Government Area. Someone is also asking about the Gbugbu “International” Market. The market is closed.

However, the most troubling reality is the silence of community organisations in Edu, especially LADDU, regarding the absence of development in their region and their veneration of charitable gestures over structural and sustainable development. These organisations seem comfortable with the governor visiting their communities once in a while to donate items. They appear unconcerned about development that outlives governments and individuals. They offer no inspiration to younger organisations such as LEYTA, and one’s fear is that we will all become casualties of a failed society.
In 2019, Governor Abdulrahman Abdulrazaq promised to pay attention to Kwara North. Seven years later, he will be leaving behind a region that is more impoverished, insecure and underdeveloped. For him, it is all a cruise.