KWANDCO VISIT HYPPADEC, MAKES CASE FOR KWARA NORTH
Kwara North Development Council, KWANDCO Thursday afternoon paid a courtesy visit to the Managing Director, HYPPADEC, Alhaji Abubakar Sadiq Yelwa, Katukan Yauri at the Commission’s Headquarters in Minna.
The delegation from Kwara was led by the council’s chairman, Comrade Jerry Majin Kolo, accompanied by other members of the Development Council drawn from the five local governments of Kwara North who were at the Hydro-electric Power Producing Areas Development Commission office in Minna to bring the commission up-to-date with the challenges facing riverine communities in the northern part of the state and how best to approach the task of ensuring that the affected people and communities are considered for long term solutions.
Comrade Majin Kolo who presented an emphatic case on behalf of the delegation on the pressing need to bridge the gap in terms of information technology across Kwara North given the fact that globalisation is much dependent on acquisition of digital skills. He noted that KWANDCO through its community development advocacy intends to build an Information Technology Hub that is targeted at providing a platform for the people of Kwara North to acquire on-demand IT skills that will help its teeming population in both personal and official engagements thereby improving their productivity as a people.
Mr. Majin Kolo used the medium to call on the management of the commission to help bring succor to the people living along floodplains in Kwara, especially the peasant farmers who are usually displaced by the annual floods. Dry season farming is now the best alternative for many of these farmers, according to Majin Kolo while urging the Managing Director to help the farmers maximize the attendant economic opportunities in agribusiness.
He also commended the foresight and many giant strides of the commission under the visionary leadership of Alhaji Abubakar Sadiq Yelwa who he described as a passionate community development advocate. Part of the strides highlighted by the team, which they noted has impacted positively on the lives of the people include the Youth Empowerment Initiative, scholarship for indigent students and provision of relief materials to flood victims, a development he applauded and implored the commission to keep up.
Comrade Jerry Majin Kolo revealed that the Development Council has worked out modalities in line with its intention to collaborate with the commission in their quest to ameliorate the plights of the people and engender prosperity in all the HYPPADEC participating states.
While responding to some of the concerns raised by the delegation, the Managing Director equally commended the council for working for the greater good of the greatest numbers of people, describing Kwara North as part and parcel of HYPPADEC because of the strategic location of the affected communities in Kwara which are all found in the northernmost part of the state. He acknowledged the positive feedbacks from the delegation
The Badakoshi Patigi also had something to say about the recently concluded first Kwara North Economic Development Summit where he was represented when he remarked, “I congratulate you on the successful hosting of the Economic Development Summit, it was very rich and came up with ideas that we are also going to study and see how we can benefit from those ideas, so that our people not only from Kwara North but all other HYPPADEC communities to benefit from such ideas”.
He reassured the delegation of the commission’s commitment to partner with host communities through organizations such as KWANDCO, whom he said are the ones that understand the workings of the commission and would serve as link in addressing the dire needs of the masses and would advise the commission better in the areas of interventions that would address the needs of the people.
The Commission’s Director on Community and Rural Development, Dr. Mahmud Muhammad in a short remark appreciated KWANDCO for the developmental strides it has conceived with the aim of opening up Kwara North for massive economic development and reaffirmed the assurances of the Managing Director to work closely with the council for the benefit of the people of Kwara North.
