Sokoto State Governor, Alhaji Aliyu Magatakarda Wamakko, has stated the resolve of his administration to move the state out of poverty through a vigorous pursuit of policies tailored in that direction.
The governor, who stated this in an exclusive interview with LEADERSHIP at his residence in Sokoto yesterday, stressed that the administration’s investment drive is at the heart of efforts aimed at achieving that goal.
Maintaining this stance, Governor Wamakko said: “We have earmarked over two billion naira to attract various types of investments to Sokoto; building corner shops and shopping malls at strategic locations. The aim is to make it possible to have in Sokoto, many of those things people travel to such places as Dubai, India, etc to buy.
We also provided soft-loans to enable the citizens establish businesses that will generate economic activities and thereby, significantly enhance the spending power of the people.”
Continuing, the governor added: “You cannot succeed in this without having constant supply of electricity. Conscious of this fact, we have therefore reached an advanced stage in efforts to provide the people with independent power.”
Governor Wamakko also listed his administration’s deliberate policy of providing a vast network of roads all over the state, “to facilitate movement of goods and services to all nooks and crannies of Sokoto State,” as some of the major achievements of his administration, while acknowledging however that the nature of the people living in the hinterland to settle in scattered locations (rather than big villages and towns) was posing a huge challenge to his administration’s resolve to provide critical infrastructure to all and sundry.
“You cannot move someone out of poverty when he is ignorant or illiterate. This informs our drive to as much as possible raise the level of literacy of our people.
Education is wealth. So, we are already investing heavily in education at all levels,” the governor further stated while citing the state university and adult education centres strewn all over the state as examples of such efforts.