The Nigeria Guild of Investigative Journalists (NGIJ) said the Governor Yahaya Bello’s administration in Kogi State has tackled security, revamped the agriculture sector, improved on health care services delivery and provided infrastructure in schools.
The Guild in its 2019 Democracy and Governance Assessment report on Kogi State, said inferences from its ten thousand questionnaires formed the basis for its conclusions.
According to the President of the Association Mr. Wale Abideen, twelve of the Guild’s investigators were in the three Senatorial Districts of the State for one month to carry out their investigations.
“The NGIJ’s tour to Kogi State was aimed at getting firsthand information about the real situation on ground. Our members physically visited the three Senatorial Districts of the State and they interacted with critical stakeholders including labour unions, top government functionaries, traditional rulers, security agencies, market women and men, artisans, civil servants, political parties and the general residents.
“To that end, we also administered over 10,000 questionnaires across the 21 Local Government Areas of the State in other to extend the scope of and deepen our assessments. However, we must emphasize that this investigative effort is by no means exhaustive”, he explained
Presenting the report, the Chairman, Board of Trustees NGIJ, Mr. Segun Abifari said the assessment was in the area of infrastructure, security, education, healthcare, financial prudency, workers’ welfare, job creation, Agriculture, social welfare, and sport.
According to him, the questionnaires gave respondents opportunity to pick any of five available answer on policies, programmes and achievements of the administration.
“After the collation of completed questionnaires, 9224 questionnaires representing 92.24 percent were returned while 7.76% were not submitted to our team for different reasons. Therefore 9,224 responses were used to assess the impact of Governor Yahaya Bello’s administration in Kogi State from January till date”, he disclosed.