Last weekend, the administration of
Governor Muhammadu Badaru Abubakar of Jigawa state mark it first 100 days in
office, in this interview with Adeola Ajakaiye, he enumerated some of the
achievements recorded by his regime within the period, as well as other
initiatives embarked upon to diversify the economy of the young state.
Q: Your Excellency, could give us an
insight into issues that lead to your election as governor?
Thank you for your compliments.
Well, first and foremost I believe there is a wind of change blowing all over
the country, In Jigawa state, and like other parts of Nigeria, the
citizens
were tired and they really wanted change, and having ran before in other
political party, such as AC N as governorship candidate in a race that was a
very close the citizens of the state this time around decided to give us the
mandate to govern the state because of the confidence they have in us. As you
know there was a complete difference in the attitude, and the way we conducted
our campaign in the All Progressives Congress, and with the way the PDP, the
party in power before did their own, we took things easy and left whatever
might be the outcome in the hands of God. The past governor has done
quite well in the area of infrastructure, the main issue today in the state is
poverty, and the people of Jigawa state believed that nobody can solve the
problem of poverty, and unemployment that they grappling with than a
businessman, who is an employer himself, I think that was what help the people
to think properly in their quest for change, they know they need someone who
understanding the working of the economy, and somebody who understand the
reality on the ground.
Q: Jigawa state came into existence over
two decades ago, would you say you are satisfied with the pace of development?
Well compared with other states created
along with it in Nigeria, I will say it is not doing badly, but compare with
Global Standard, I will say I am not satisfied. Our infrastructures are not as
terrible as what we say, as well as our educational sector, although there are
set back, but compared with most state in the north, the situation is not very
bad, and there is the possibility that it can get better. Looking at the
poverty index, we are always counted among the last 10 and that is not helpful,
generally when you compare the state with other states in the north where we
are situated, I will say that Jigawa has not done badly these years.
Q: You talked about poverty as being the
main challenge facing state, and Agriculture has been identified as a sector
that has the potential to create jobs, how does your administration intend to
leverage on the sector?
In diversifying an economy one must explore an
area where it has comparative advantage, and in Jigawa our comparative
advantage, and area of strength is agriculture, this is why we take it as one
area of major focus, we believed doing agriculture in the old fashion way
will not help us, so we have decided to do competitive agriculture, and we
started this by first inviting big players in the agriculture sector, who do
agriculture business in a big way and scientifically, for them to come and play
in the agriculture sector competitively this was done with the realization that
the smaller farmers do not have the strength, machineries, technology, and
knowledge to do farming for competition, and we are losing competitiveness in
this country fast, we use to be competitive before in Groundnut, Cocoa, Cotton,
among others, but today because of lack of concentration and research we are
losing competition very fast, so we decided to invite big time players that
have the knowledge of the business, that will invest in agriculture ,and do it
professionally, competitively, and scientifically, and one of the big time
players we invited was Dangote Group to produce rice in Jigawa at competitive
price. And we are working with the Dangote Group to increase our yield of rice
per hectare, our yield per hectare during the raining season in Jigawa is about
1.4 to maximum 2 tonnes per hectare, the world average is between 7 and 10
tonnes, with Dangote we would attempt to reach the world average, we know that
if we continue to produce at 1 to 2 tonnes per hectare, we can never be
competitive, and we can never grow rice for our market and compete with
imported ones that are being dumped on us, so we have to do it big, and luckly
we have signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with the Dangote Group to
produce rice in Jigawa on a rice value chain, from planting to retaining,
the company will be cultivating 16,000 hectares, and as well as develop an
out-grower scheme using the same technology, and the same arrangement to
produce another 16,000 hectares and together that will give us a total of
32,000 hectares of rice which will be going through Dangote Rice Mill,
the company will be the retailer, and marketer of the rice that would be
produced, so the whole rice chain is achieved, and this will be produced
competitively, and the moment we start getting 7 tonnes per hectare, other
players, particularly, the small farmers will be encouraged to replicate the
technique in their production process in all other locations of the state, and
this we believe will help move farming to the place it suppose to be.
Q: Apart from Dangote, are there other
big corporate players your administration intends bringing into the agriculture
development programme?
Well, Lee Group is already on the ground we are
commissioning his factory sometime in December, this year, and the factory will
be employing about 200 to 300 workers, and there is going to be an extension
over the years. The company is also planning to go into sugar, and seasoning
production and we have also being talking to a lot of international
corporations for them to come and invest in the state. We have being working
with Olam Group in the area of sesame- seed production, and exportation, we are
also working with Nestle in the area of production of corn and sorghum for
their own use. We are talking to almost everybody, so Dangote is not the only
group we are talking to.
Q: Your administration has been in the
news of recent, over what you described as the poor financial state of Jigawa,
could give us an insight into the state of finance of the state?
Well the challenge of poor finance is a problem
all over the country, not Jigawa state alone, before we came to office, Oil
which Nigeria depend upon was been sold at between the range of $110 to $120
per barrel, today it is being sold between $40 to $50 per barrel, definitely
the revenue of the state has dropped, but we have being managing to carry out
all the functions of government under this difficult circumstance without
failing, what we did when we assumed office was to first invite all the head of
Ministries in the state to discuss the situation, and look at the expenditure
profile of government, especially to look at areas that required amendments, so
as to help free resource for critical government activities, without
compromising quality, and we have succeed in doing that and as it is today the
state is running well, we are paying salaries and other wages as at when due,
we are meeting our commitments, and when things get more stabilized we will do
much better.
Q: What about the #9.8 billion road
contract revoked recently by your administration?
Yes, when we assumed office we met an on-going
projects worth #92 billion, and with the kind of money we are getting now, even
if have to stop paying salaries and do nothing it will take us 6 to 7
years to conclude the payment of the cost of the projects, the contracts that
will revoked are those that have not started, and before taken this decision I
set up a committee to examine those that can continue immediately, those that
needed to be put on hold for now, and those that are not needed in view of the
present financial reality of the state, by God`s grace we would finish all the
on-going projects that were started before we assume office, and the two
contracts that we cancelled was in respect of none performance, we have some
contracts that were supposed to be finished in 12 months, and 6 months into the
life of the contract, the contractor have not executed up to 10 percent of the
job, so we saw the need to cancel those contract and probable-ly re-award them
to a more serious and competent contractors that can do the jobs well and on time,
I think this is the situation we are today, until we receive the outcome of
this committee that is when we will be able to discuss with our people,
analyse, and then we will take a position on whether to continue with projects,
or whether not to continue , since all the facts are there, this is an
open government If there no money to do projects we will not do projects, if
there is money to do projects, we will do projects it is simple as that,
everybody will know, we will bring the issue on the table for everybody to see,
it is their state, and they will make the choice.
Q: Do you support the issue of bail
out for states, and is your state among those seeking for it?
The bailout is for states that have arrears of
salaries to pay, those that cannot pay salaries with the present money they are
getting from the Federation Accounts, probable as a result of the loans they
obtained from banks, and when banks effect deductions because of the loans the
state cannot meet their salaries obligation to their workers. So those loans
have been taken over by the Federal Government and spread for so many years, I
think between 10 to 20 years so that the deductions will be less, and the
governments will be able to meet their obligations to their workers, and the
second leg of the bail -out are those states that have arrears of salaries that
have not been paid, for them to be able to paid they were given additional
loan, luckly Jigawa is not among them, so the initiative is for states that
have arrears of salaries, or huge bank loan that will need some restructuring.
Q: Is Jigawa indebted?
Government loans not too many, and the bank loans
are not something that we cannot manage or spread over a long time, like I said
we took over huge public debt totaling about #118 billion been cost of on-going
projects, loans from banks, vouchers approved by the previous government
waiting payment at the Ministry of Finance, and retention money.
Q: One of your electioneering promises
was to re-position the state Civil Service, what step have you taken in this
regard?
When we assumed office I was very open I invited
the leadership of the civil service, and we were holding meetings almost on a
daily basis with the Permanent Secretaries, and top functionaries of the
service, and I asked them to suggest how they think we can improve the civil
service, I asked them to discuss openly and freely, and issues were raised, and
this lead to the plan to reduce the Ministries and Departments from 17 to 13, I
also formed a committee of 6 Permanent Secretaries, and 2 Directors, DFID was
also represented, and my own team, with the mandate to take a critical look at
my proposal for the reform of the service, and marry it with what reform they
will be proposing, and come out with a blue print for the Service. And they
agreed that the Ministries should be reduced to 13. After that we also set up
another Committee made up of the civil servants themselves to draw out a sketch
of all the ministries and come out with the number of workers on the pay roll
of each of the Ministries, this is to let us know the actual number of public
workers in the state, their area of professional specializations, so as to know
the areas where we have enough of them, and where we have less, and to identify
those who are idle, so that we can re-train and send them to areas of need, and
that is what is going on, we have started that already. We have identified that
we need more hands in the agriculture development areas, we need more Extension
workers, about 120 of them are needed, and we are picking from the idle staff
identified, and we are re-training them, and putting them back to farm, we plan
doing the same in the area of teaching, where we have identified shortfall in
teachers, we also have shortfall in medical area, so what we are doing is to
get the right people at the right jobs, get people in the area of excess to
areas of need, so for now the era of earning salary and doing nothing is over
in Jigawa state.
Q: What is happening to your youth and
women empowerment programme?
Well from experience, as a businessman I have
seen several empowerment programmes carried out by state governments, elected
public officers, they train people in several areas of vocations, make big
ceremony to announce it, without taking into consideration, if the environments
where the trainees are situated actually need their service, or the products to
be produce, if example, here in Dutse, the requirement for let say tailors are
20, and you trained 100, and give them 100 sewing machines, and they cannot
find jobs to do they ran into trouble, so what we did in Jigawa today is to do
a demand analysis, to see the demand for the vocational services, before fully
roll out our intervention programmes, we have several of them in the pipeline.
However, of recently we came out with a Goat Rearing Scheme for women and
widows in the rural areas of the state, the scheme has been tested run under my
personal foundation before introducing it, and we have seen it as a very
effective way to help rural women, and as you know the demand for Goat will
continue to be high, because people will need the meat, people will need the
skin, and the shit for Fertilizer, and that is the advantage of the Goat
Rearing Scheme, the goat produces twice in a year, easy to manage without any
complications, and the rural women can do a back yard rearing without problem,
and have seen it work in other countries, so we believe this is the first step
to help rural women. And we have also initiated a programme to assist the local
restaurant operators in the state, we provide them with efficient cooking
stoves that will reduce their cost in their cooking, and we have also provided
funding to boost their business, this we believe will help increase their
income, improve their sanitation, and quality, this programme is out to help
the beneficiaries, and the society at large to improve the health sector, the
less the people get sick through what the consume, the better for them and the
society. In addition to these programmes, we have also set up a Committee
to go around all the Local Government Areas to identify rural businesses,
trade, and vocations that can be supported by government to make the people
sustainable and self reliance. We want to be involved in meaningful empowerment
programmes; this is our understanding of what an empowerment initiative should
be.
Q. What can you pinpoint to as your
administration `s major achievements in past 100 days?
Our major achievement in last 100 days have been
in the area of security, we have relatively maintained security and safety in
the state with less or none bridges, this a big achievement. The second major
achievement was the healthy relationship between the government, and the
Nigeria Labour Congress, we have maintained an open interaction with the Congress,
and by extension with the civil servants in the state. Thirdly, was the way and
manner we have been able to manage the affairs of government in the face of the
dwindling financial resource from the Federation Accounts, doing this entails a
lot of cost saving measures and my private sector background great assistance
in this regard. We have saved a lot money from overhead cost, from the issues
sponsorship of Pilgrims to the Holy Land, we save a lot of money particularly
in this area. We have brought a lot of innovations in the management of the
affairs of the state. We have put in place initiatives that will help empower
the citizenry, take for example the Dangote project in both rice and sugar, I
am sure by the time the projects matures, in the next one and half years thing
will get better, through the projects we have targeted a minimum of 200,000
direct jobs, and since we signed the MoU with Dangote we have kept to the
timeline, not a single hour has been lost on what we planned to do, until
today, we will continue with that and things will get better for the state.
Also in the area of empowerment we have sensitized the citizenry for them to
understand what we know to be empowerment, which is empowerment with demand. In
the same vein we have study the situation in the area of education and already
we have identified where the difficulties are, and need assessment has also
been conducted, we require about 1,500 teachers which we are going to employ
and some are going to engage for the purpose from those been re-trained in
civil service. We have done a lot in the area of health, we are today fixing
all Water Work Schemes, both the ones in the state capital, and rural
areas, we intend before the year runs out to ensure that all the waters works
in the state operates optimally, and efficiently, and next year we will start
building new ones
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