NGScorecard

Okowa's SMART Agenda prioritised road infrastructure: dualisation, flyovers, rural roads across Delta.

State Works Ministry reported over 883 road projects spanning 1,932km built across the state, plus 7 of 22 bridges completed, as of Nov 2022 (7.5 years into the 8-year tenure). Includes the Ovwor/Effurun-Otor Bridge (Ughelli South LGA), inaugurated Mar 2021 after 29 years of abandonment.

Promised free healthcare for women/children, hospital upgrades, and PHC renovations.

Delta State Contributory Health Commission established by law signed Feb 4, 2016; over 1.8 million Deltans enrolled, with government paying counterpart funding for mandatory public-sector enrollees. Separate free antenatal/delivery care for pregnant civil servants and free under-5 treatment also introduced.

Promised rural roads across Delta LGAs for farm-to-market connectivity.

Rural road construction formed part of the 1,932km/883-project road total reported by the Works Ministry in Nov 2022; no independently verified rural-specific breakdown or named rural roads were found.

Okowa's SMART Agenda's 'S' pillar promised strategic wealth-creation projects and jobs for Deltans.

Government-run STEP (Skills Training & Entrepreneurship) and YAGEP (Youth Agricultural Entrepreneurs) programmes, plus WESAP and GEST, reported roughly 15,000 new entrepreneurs trained/funded and a combined 75,332 beneficiaries across all empowerment schemes from 2015-2023 (starter packs, shop-rent support, farm-input support). Figures are the administration's own count; no independent audit of outcomes (business survival rates, actual jobs sustained) was found.

Okowa's SMART Agenda's 'A' pillar promised agricultural reform and accelerated industrialisation.

Flagship project is the 220-hectare Delta Agro-Industrial Park (Aboh-Ogwashi-Uku), a state/private joint venture (Delta State 40%, MRG 30%, Norsworthy Investments 30%) targeting 20-30 factories and ~4,000 direct jobs. As of Aug 2022, only the first lease (a 7.2-hectare oil palm processing plot) had been signed, with construction not yet complete — seven years after the SMART Agenda was announced and roughly a year before Okowa left office.

Not an explicit SMART Agenda pillar, but Okowa's administration repeatedly claimed prudent, transparent fiscal management and debt reduction.

Delta's own Finance Commissioner gave contradictory figures at different points: in one account the state's domestic debt fell from ₦151bn to ₦72bn, while in Nov 2022 the same commissioner (Fidelis Tilije) disclosed a total debt profile of ₦272bn (₦84bn owed to contractors, ₦27bn in pension arrears, the remainder inherited from earlier administrations) while describing Delta as "the most financially solvent state in Nigeria." The state did win World Bank awards for fiscal transparency and debt sustainability during this period. The scale of the discrepancy between the two self-reported figures was not reconciled in available sources.