Immediate-past Governor of Kwara State, Abdulfatah Ahmed says insinuations in some quarters that he did not live up to his potential piloting the affairs of the state are erroneous.
The two-term governor said that he was not to blame for the failure of his administration to execute some projects and programmes while in office.
Ahmed, who was a lecturer, banker, and Commissioner before becoming governor in 2011, said that paucity of funds affected his administration’s capacity to deliver.
“I lived up to my top potential, but not optimal because of resource constraints. For example, there was a time we thought we were going to raise money from the capital market, we had programmes well laid out, but that was the same year there was economy recession.
“That was in 2014, 2015, and 2016 when we had drop in the price of crude oil, which came with very low revenues into the state coffers.
“Don’t forget that the capacity to raise money in the Capital Market is hinged on that revenue inflow. So, the lower it is, the lower the volume of money you can access from the Capital Market.
“It got to the extent that some states had to be bailed out when this current administration came in because of low revenues. So, it was not a good time for us to enter the Capital Market.
“That was the beginning of our second term. However, we still demonstrated ingenuity in areas that changed the financial models especially in the internally generated revenue when we moved to over 400 per cent in the state where we were able to have the most improved IGR especially in Northern Nigeria with close to N3 billion monthly inflow from only 16 local governments.
“This saw us creating a new funding window for capital project that cut across infrastructure, human capital development and state economy.
“In short, we were able to bring out some new things especially driven out of necessity for Kwara State,” Sunday Sun quoted the ex-governor as saying.
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Ahmed, who was asked to speak his regrets as governor, said, “You see, we are human and largely driven by expectations. Even as humans, if we flash back at our actions in life, you will naturally feel that there were things you would have done differently. It is part of being human.
“The truth is that I came with an expectation to serve the people with clear set programmes and policies and had expectations on resources that will be available to execute these programmes, but some of the resources could not come as a result of global, national and sub-national economic situations.
“So, naturally, there are things I wished I could have done that I could not do.”