Business
Jigawa Completes 45 Rural Electrification Projects
The Jigawa government says it has completed 45 out of the 63 rural electrification projects embarked upon since inception three years ago and connected them to the national grid.
Alhaji Jinjiri Abdulkadir, the Commissioner for Rural Infrastructure and Community Development, disclosed this on Saturday in Dutse while briefing the Peer Review Team from the Nigeria Governors’ Forum (NGF) Secretariat.
The team was in the state in continuation of its peer review and project inspection exercise initiated in 2009 by the 36 state governors to review their developmental projects and other activities.
According to Abdulkadir, the electrification projects in the remaining 18 villages were at various stages of completion.
He said the projects was estimated at more than N1 billion.
He said the government had also provided electricity extension to some urban areas in the state, which, he said, included Birnin-Kudu, Bamania, Hadejia and Dutse.
He also told the team that the government, through its Rural Water Supply and Sanitation Agency in collaboration with Donor Agencies, had provided water facilities to 560 communities at a cost of more than N657.2 million in the past three years.
Abdulkadir said that as part of its developmental programme, the government had approved more than N800 million in its 2010 budget for rural development.
The sum, he said, would be used for the construction of more feeder roads, development of small scale entrepreneur, rural electrification, water supply and sanitation between 2010 and 2012.
Mr Asishana Okauru, NGF Director General, who led the team to the state, said the exercise was aimed basically at deepening democracy and good governance in the country.
He added that it was also to encourage healthy competition among the governors to ensure equal development across the country.
The team, he said, were expected to identify exceptions and best practices in areas of agriculture, health, education, water, budgeting and other developmental issues that could be benchmarked from states visited.
Okauru said that the identified best practices would be made available to states where they were lacking for replication at the end of the exercise as the report would be submitted to the governors.
The team had earlier visited 27 out of the 36 states in the country.