*Kwara Must Change's Report on Constituency Empowerment Project facilitated by Senator Ibrahim Yahaya Oloriegbe*

On 18th September, 2020, Kwara Must Change witnessed the execution of a constituency empowerment project by Distinguished Senator Ibrahim Oloriegbe in Warrah-Oja, Ilorin West Local Government, which involved the distribution of commercial quantity worth of cassava and some day old birds with 8weeks feed to beneficiaries his senatorial district.

An Invitation to participate in the program was extended to Kwara Must Change as one of the groups to observe the event, which included gari processing empowerment with cassava empowerment to local community, training and presentation of certificate and support for the beneficiaries.

In our bid to support all efforts geared towards bringing dividends of democracy to the door steps of the people, especially those at the local level, Kwara Must Change participated in the programme.


*What the project was about*

The project was an empowerment project, which is considered as community, social and empowerment support to beneficiaries at the local level. We are of the view that, while elites in the society might not find such project worthy or understand the implication on the socioeconomic situation of the people, it is important to state that the people at the local level are in the best position to explain how much this means to them. Like other social intervention programs of both state and federal government, this is another one, which will strengthen economic capacity and human capital index of people at the community level.

Although, Senator Yahaya Oloriegbe didn't explained the source of the project or where the funding came from, Kwara Must Change understands that the project was part of the Federal Government funded Zonal Intervention Project (ZIP) to support local communities through their elected representative at the Federal level.

Zonal Intervention Project is a federal government program with defined objectives and domiciled under specific Ministries, Agencies and Department of government, and facilitated by federal lawmakers as constituency projects.

In Kwara State, all federal lawmakers have specific Zonal Intervention Projects facilitated to their various constituencies amongst which include, Training of Youths in Industrial Peace in Asa with budgetary provision of N13million, Empowerment of women and skills acquisition in Ilorin south with budgetary provision of N78million, Training of Youth and Empowerment in Ilorin East with budgetary provision of N85million, Drilling of motorized borehole in Ifelodun,Offa,Oyun with budgetary provision of N63million and several others.

The program executed by Distinguished Senator Ibrahim Oloriegbe on 18th September 2020 is one of such programs, and we witnessed the implementation.

*Kwara Must Change observations*

1. As an invited observer, it was expected that the host will present some documentary descriptions of the project to properly inform invited groups of the details of the project, but there was no document given to us to enable the group understand the details of the project from the senator's perspective.

2. While explaining the mode of selecting beneficiaries of the project, Distinguished Senator Ibrahim Yahaya Oloriegbe noted that the beneficiaries were nominated by the ruling All Progressive Congress (APC) within the local government, a process we considered abnormal and undemocratic.

Kwara Must Change is of the view that, as a senator representing the district, the gains of constituency empowerment should not be limited to only members of the senators political party. We understand that the vast majority of the people are not members of any political party and limiting the nominating process to the APC will automatically deny members of the public who do not have any political affiliation of the benefit..

*Recommendations*

1. Partnership with groups on programme of this nature should be from the stage of conception to implementation

2.Beneficiaries for future programme should be made in such a way that it cuts across political divides

3. Invited observers should be appropriately briefed with details of the project and provided with relevant documents for reference purpose.

4. There should be more transparency in the execution of intervention programmes in future.

This man does not worth to replace Saraki from all ramification

Illiterate personified
They keep bleating OTOGE then like they will do things differently

Nigeria is hopeless, YMM members are also hopeless

I created a thread about this irresponsible act of the senator on the day he distributed the cassava tubers. One of his supporter mod. tagged my thread as fake news and closed it. I hope that Charmingrascal as he call himself now know it's not fake news.

Lol