Kwara Assembly urges FG to checkmate lapses, porosity at border areas

Kwara State House of Assembly on Wednesday urged President Muhammadu Buhari to make the nation’s Border Community Development Agency functioning effectively well, streamlining their functions and activities as part of measures to checkmate security lapses and control porosity at the border areas across the country.

The lawmakers also implored the Federal Government to ensure the provision of basic infrastructure in the affected communities to give them a sense of belonging, saying the problems at the border areas in the country were not limited to porosity and lapses perceived on borderline, but also lack of needed infrastructure.

These were parts of the resolutions of the House of Assembly after considering a report of the House Committee on Local Government and Chieftaincy Affairs on the motion entitled “Provision of adequate infrastructure to Border Communities along Nigeria-Benin Republic in Baruteen Local Government Area of the State,”raised by Umar Mohammed Gunu, a member representing Ilesha/Gwanara State Constituency.

The speaker, Ali Ahmad, while reading the resolutions on the floor of House, noted that the border communities in the state and Nigeria at large, had not felt the impact of the agency in recent times, as most of the affected border communities, especially in Baruten Local Government, lacked access roads and other basic infrastructure.

He said that, this was unlike their counterparts in Republic of Benin that were provided with schools, markets, dispensary and place of worship by both federal and state governments. He asked State Revenue Service to provide revenue-generating facilities in Chikanda and other routes, to use such income to provide necessary infrastructure to improve the well being of border communities in the state.

The legislature also directed the state Ministry of Health to immediately deploy medical personnel and provide necessary facilities to the Chikanda Cottage Hospital for the use of immediate communities in the area.

He, as well, directed Baruten Local Government Council to as a matter of necessity, include projects for development of border communities such as schools and boreholes in its annual budget to reduce the hardship confronting the borderline communities in the local government area.