The Wole Soyinka Centre for Investigative journalism in collaboration with Albarka 89.9 FM, Ganmo, Kwara State on Tuesday organised a one-day sensitization program on Good Governance and Accountability with representatives of communities and groups in Kwara state.
The sensitization program funded by the MacArthur Foundation had in attendance, 28 people including representatives of persons with disabilities and artisans drawn from various communities in the state.
The program was held at Sity-In-Hotel, G.R.A Ilorin, Kwara state capital.
The participants were enlightened on their responsibilities as citizens and the roles of the people they elected to be their representatives in government in relation to good governance and accountability.
Community people were encouraged to always channel their community’s needs in terms of infrastructure to the constituency office of their lawmakers and appropriate government offices.
Speaking, a participant Mr Ibrahim Muftau, a representative of persons with disabilities, raised observations on what he called the abandonment of dilapidated classrooms in the state and charged the state government not to just abandoned them at the expense of building new ones stating that some only need little money to put it in good and usable condition.
“I want to seize this occasion to call on the state government to attend to classrooms that are in dilapidated conditions in our communities. This can be done along with the company instruction of new ones currently embark on by the state government via SUBEB”
Mr Muftau also called on some parents that don’t like to enrol their disabled child in school in the name of feeling ashamed to bring them to the public said such children can have better and more fruitful futures like any other child when allowed to have formal education and encouraged to develop in a certain way.
Also, another participant Alhaji Isiaka Ibrahim Omotayo from Alagbado community in Ilorin South LGA called the attention of the organiser that his community is still expecting the state government to redeem their promise of getting them public senior secondary schools.
Alagbado, one of the communities visited by the team of good governance and accountability of Albarka 89.9 FM, where they complained about the lack of public senior secondary schools in the area.
Although, the community later briefed our reporter that they have gotten a private school that government want to buy off and convert to a senior secondary school in the area but they are still expecting the government to fulfil their pledge after the visitation by the ministry of education.
He, however, appeal to the state Governor AbdulRahman AbdulRazaq to attend to their needs in the Alagbado community.
Also, comrade Bashir Ibrahim, state chairman of Person with disabilities, seized the occasion to thank the organiser of Media Advocacy, Albarka 89.9 FM, MacArthur Foundation and Wole Soyinka centre for investigative journalism for the privilege to express their community’s needs and other concerns to the government through their media platform said his association after the last public engagement by Albarka got the attention of the speaker of the State House of Assembly where he promised to attend to their area of concern in disability law by presenting it to the necessary committee.
