The Governor of Kwara State, Mr. Abdulrahman Abdulrazaq on Wednesday launched various projects to mark the fifth (5th) anniversary of his administration.
The projects include the commissioning of the 4.7km Yebumot-Adeta Roundabout and Adeta-Oloje roads in Ilorin, inauguration of the newly developed Flower Garden, the unveiling of the Ilorin City Master Plan, the 20,000-hectare Ilorin Smart City project amongst others.
“Today, I launched historic projects to commemorate the fifth anniversary of our administration. These projects will have far-reaching socioeconomic impacts for our state.
“I started with the commissioning of the 4.7km Yebumot-Adeta Roundabout and Adeta-Oloje roads in Ilorin. I named the roads after two elder statesmen from the capital city — retired Major General Mohammed Abdullahi Adangba and prominent scholar Sheikh Yahya Murtadha Agodi.
“I also inaugurated the newly developed Flower Garden, which is currently the largest green space in Kwara purposely made for outdoor recreational activities, promotion of work-life balance, and protection of mother nature.
“I was later joined at the banquet hall Ilorin by creme de la creme from our state and beyond to unveil the Ilorin City Master Plan, the second ever blueprint since the creation of Kwara in 1967, as well as the talk-of-the-town 20,000-hectare Ilorin Smart City project,” Mr. Abdulrazaq stated.
According to him, the idea of the Ilorin Smart City project is to make the capital city habitable, eco-friendly, and compliant with the rules that govern urban planning in the age of climate crisis, and bequeathing a legacy for the young ones.
“While the Ilorin City Master Plan has been designed to guide how we live sustainably for the next 40 years, the Smart City is our innovative response to the multidimensional challenges of urban living that now confront Ilorin, including congestion and the associated pressures it brings on the existing infrastructure.
“The Smart City is a nine residential district city designed to host 540,000 residents and built in compliance with the United Nations prescriptions for urban living. The first phase of this ambitious project covers 11,000 hectares with an estimated N1.72tr funding requirements from public private investments between now (2024) and 2027,” he explained.
The governor also launched a Compressed Natural Gas (CNG) station in Ilorin, adjudged by the Presidential CNG Initiative (PCNGi) as the first in the North Central region.
He stressed that the PCNGi which is an initiative of the Federal Government (FG) is a direct benefit of the fuel subsidy removal of last year.
Mr. Abdulrazaq noted that his administration will convert at least 20 state government vehicles to CNG-powered engines in the test run.
“As I was engaged with this cocktail of activities in Ilorin, my deputy His Excellency Mr. Kayode Alabi was in the northern senatorial district to commission the Jebba waterworks, a project that ended the community’s longstanding thirst for state-owned clean water source,” the Chairman of the Nigeria Governors’ Forum added.
He equally flagged off the distribution of 16,000 textbooks across basic schools in the state, saying that; “Our administration’s huge investment in education is evident. We took the state out of the UBEC blacklist, paid the backlog of counterpart funds from 2013 to 2019, and again from 2019 to 2023.
“We have also fixed thousands of classrooms across the three senatorial districts, just as we implemented a tech-based programme, KwaraLEARN, that has significantly improved learning outcomes in our state.”
