By Akogun Iyiola Oyedepo
Last month, under the title “There Was a Kwara State,” I examined how the solid foundation once laid for our state has been systematically destroyed. What is now marketed as development is, in truth, continuing damage best understood as missed opportunities and possibilities trapped by leadership that has reduced Kwara into a private family enterprise.
For at least twenty-six years, we have had leadership that delivers the barest minimum and a followership that has grown comfortable with governments that jump and land on the same spot. A docile citizenry has emerged, overwhelmed by despondency. Many have resigned themselves to the belief that nothing better is possible.
Yet Kwara possesses immense untapped potential. With wise, knowledgeable, and courageous leadership, our human and material resources can still be harnessed to confront underdevelopment.
Some commentators divide Nigerian states into “viable” and “unviable.” The so-called viable ones are those that could supposedly survive without federal allocations or those receiving very large allocations—Lagos, Rivers, Bayelsa, Akwa Ibom. Every study I have undertaken shows it is self-deception to place Kwara in that category. Our internally generated revenue cannot sustain the state for even one month, and our statutory allocation, though recently increased, remains insufficient.
No Nigerian state is inherently unviable. What renders a state unviable is uninspired, unskilled, and visionless leadership steeped in selfishness and corruption. If individuals, communities, and unions can remain viable through ingenuity and strategic management, political entities can equally become viable through skill, strategy, and selfless purpose.
True wealth is not measured solely by population or natural endowments. When these are combined with quality leadership, they become powerful tools. The United Kingdom, with 69.7 million people and just 242,945 square kilometres, once controlled the largest empire in history. Singapore, with barely six million people and no significant minerals, leapt from third world to first world after 1965. Japan, with 124 million people and negligible natural resources, imports most of its minerals yet leads the world in automobiles and electronics. Population is an advantage only when developed through science, technology, and effective organisation.
Kwara is rich in potential yet poor in management. Our 3.5 million people (2023 projection) are 70 percent youthful, but largely unemployed or unemployable because of poor education and training—a redundant population. Our 35,705 square kilometres of land lie mostly fallow due to wrong policy choices. Our climate and fertile soils support year-round agriculture with irrigation, yet farmers remain unmotivated and policies directionless. The celebrated Shonga Farms project, which imported foreign farmers, has been exposed as massive fraud. This is colossal waste of the state’s wealth.
We possess petroleum, gold, limestone, marble, feldspar, clay, kaolin, quartz, granite, and laterite—resources for cement, ceramics, glass, construction, and technology. Though the 1999 Constitution vests solid minerals in the Federal Government, the Nigerian Minerals and Mining Act allows states and individuals to obtain licences and participate. Instead, authorities often ignore illegal miners who plunder our land—another enormous waste.
Tourism is equally neglected. Owu Falls, West Africa’s highest and most spectacular waterfall, sits in Kwara. So do Atii, Aise, and Ero Omola waterfalls, Sobi Hill, Esie Museum’s ancient soapstone figures, Ilorin Central Mosque, the Emir’s Palace, and vibrant cultural traditions: Egungun Elewe, Tankai dancers, Ijakadi wrestling, Patigi Regatta, Ilorin Durbar, Awon mass wedding, and Nupe Igunnu. With investment—dredging the Asa River, building access roads, security, and promotion—Kwara could rival Calabar Carnival or Osun Osogbo Festival and generate substantial revenue.
Instead of harnessing land, people, minerals, and culture, we remain 80 percent dependent on statutory allocation—an arrangement that contradicts true federalism. The day resource control agitation finally succeeds and the monthly cheque shrinks or vanishes, Kwara will discover it has been wearing a borrowed robe.
Some celebrate generating roughly ₦4 billion monthly in IGR. Yet salaries, education, health, agriculture, roads, water, and security all require funding, alongside the expensive lifestyles of public officials. Four billion cannot carry this load.
Worse, the figure is deceptive. Rebranding the revenue board as KWIRS changed little beyond the name. Much of the “new” revenue comes from aggressive taxation of struggling businesses that receive no commensurate services, personal income tax deducted from shrinking civil service payrolls, ground rents paid largely by people who earned their money elsewhere, and fees from schools and hospitals that are immediately returned to those institutions. When these disparate collections are bundled and announced as ₦4 billion, it creates a false impression of productivity and self-sufficiency.
The greatest wealth of Kwara lies in the minds of its people. Land, minerals, and cultural assets mean nothing without innovative, competent human capital. Leadership recruitment remains the critical challenge. When selection is driven by nepotism, cronyism, ethnicity, or religion rather than knowledge, creativity, and development orientation, progress is impossible.
The earlier we establish a formula that converts the real wealth of Kwara—its people, land, resources, and heritage—into visible development, the better for all of us.
Chief Akogun Iyiola Oyedepo, a lawyer, two-time commissioner, and former House of Assembly member, is a leading politician in Kwara State and resides in Ilorin.
