Governor Mohammed Badaru Abubakar recently had an interaction with some journalists in Dutse, Jigawa state. At the parley, the governor speaks on some pertinent issues, including plan to improve the economic base of the state and the prudent management of the state resources among others. ABDULRAHMAN A. ABDULRAUF reports
On projects by his predecessor
I made it a policy to continue the project that I inherited. One; money has been pumped in there , two; I wouldn’t want the money that had been spent by the state to go down the drain. I will rather finish the job and let somebody claim the credit than lose my peoples’ money. So, we are continuing the projects that we believe if we do not continue immediately will cost the state a lot of money. Those that we can’t continue now, we keep them aside until such a time we can carry on with them. But for those we can, we will continue with the projects so that the situation does not degenerate and then probably the rain and flood will wash away the projects, and the peoples money will ultimately be wasted.
On alleged plan to dump Dutse airport
Look , let me tell you as a matter of fact that I am the only governor that met the PDP councils and allowed the chairmen, except the three that had issues with the House of Assembly , to carry on. Like I said, I have made it a policy to continue the projects started and complete them in order to avoid wasting my peoples resources, especially at this period of shrinking oil prices. We must not allow rain to wash away these projects.
On this airport project they are talking, what I don’t subscribe to is 60 passengers every three-three days, using taxpayers money to subsidise the route. For almost one year, they could even bring in one passenger three times a week. When there is no traffic I can’t create one with taxpayers’ money.
Certainly, I won’t allow the airport to rot away but I cannot support an airline with the taxpayers’ money. The truth of the matter is that people from Kazaure, those in Hadejia, and even Dutse still prefer to go to Kano to fly because they will want to do one or two things there.
But one thing I am very sure of is that the economy of the state will pick up. Secondly, there is a proposal to use the airport as agricultural hub, there is also that on aviation school and Hanger. So, the project is not abandoned. In fact, as we talk now works are still going on , many things ,like the conveyor belt and runway light which were not there before we came on board.
Cost-saving measures
I am the only governor that carried forward N15billion forward from 2015 to 2016. Of course, there is the N10billion you all know, the infrastructure loan that was given to us from the Excess Crude and I think you all know this. Within the six, seven months that I have been here, we manage to reduce our spending. Since my inception, I have not chartered a jet to go anywhere, just like I have forced down Government House spending. Those are the sacrifices we do to save money. Nobody believes we will continue to pay salary up till this time.
We also have to support local government to pay salaries. This is the situation we find ourselves.
It might interest you to also know that I am getting discount on contracts awarded by my predecessors, instead of the ‘normal’ upward review of contract sum. And that is to tell you how prudent this administration is with state resources. In fact, because of my insistence on proper utilisation of public fund, do you know what they call me? They call me Baba calculator, but I am not bothered because I hold this office in trust.
Having come from the private sector, I know and I believe that for us to change the lives of people in the state, we have to change the economic dynamics of this state. Our IGR is less than N200million and is contributed from the PAYE, that is the salaries we pay. The only possibility is to empower people to earn sustainable income from sustainable businesses, for businesses to grow so that we can improve our tax base and improve our IGR. This is the reason we invited Aliko Dangote for the massive rice production, because agriculture is the only area we have comparative advantage to be serious and work hard.
So, even in agriculture, we are faced with some challenges such as the high cost of production. For instance, our average farmers are doing two tons per hectare, our competitors are having 8/9 tons , Brazil is doing ten , Bangladesh 200 tons. Even if you have the same price for inputs, you spend ten naira to get two tons for example, he spends ten naira to get ten tons. So, all this campaign that we can feed ourselves, yes possible, but we have to create the right environment first for us to be able to produce competitively.
A situation where the cost of production is higher than what you produce is voided. That is why we need massive investors. Already, Dangote has done a pilot scheme here and we have managed to get between 6 and 8 tons per hectare. That is more than almost four times of our farmers yield, and that’s the technology , people will now copy that of Dangote. That is the major focus.
Empowerment
We also believe we have to empower the people but the empowerment structure that we inherited is not demand-driven. You teach 100 people how to do carpentry and you don’t evaluate how many carpenters you need in a particular environment.
For instance, if you have a city that needs 100 carpenters and you churned out 200, the balance of the 100 will become underdeveloped and that is back to square one. So, what we try to do is to train people based on demand, take every location or village, what do you have, what are you lacking and in what vocation can someone be trained so that they can earn a minimum of N18,000, In fact if not more , more than others in public service?
Like I said the major focus is to create wealth, to create a local economy that will in future support the state itself because recent development has shown that we cannot just continue to depend on oil. Price has continued to decrease, new technologies are being developed to reduce fuel consumption on everyday basis. When these technologies come up , there will be less demand and more supply and consequently, prices will naturally fall. If we continue this way in Jigawa , then we will be in serious trouble in future.
And still on empowerment, we rolled out goat raring scheme for widows with three goats(two she and one he goats ) to a widow for them to breed. If you go on internet, it has been successful in Bangladesh and in many places as empowerment tools. It cost them nothing, almost nothing and I think the gestation cycle is about six months, and most of the breeds we give, give birth to two, some eve three .
That is our scheme for rural women, we have taken twenty widows per ward and we have 127 wards. It will be a continuous process . And like I said, it is demand-driven as there is always demand for skin and even meat. We hope to continue on this trend. A committee is being set up to visit every village and identify their needs, and we are supporting 1,200 youths in different businesses based on the demand in their locality, based on scientific approach to analysing the needs.
In addition to this, we are doing what other governments are doing. The moment I came on board , we assessed all the water scheme in the all state and went on massive renovation and rehabilitation. We have spent N700million to rehabilitate them and now we are expanding the scope after fixing the ones we have. Those towns that have difficulty with water, we are responding gradually.
Housing
Also, we are working with Federal Mortgage Bank to develop housing units of two-bedroom flat in the local governments that will not cost more than N1.5million, and deductions will be made over 10/15years . We have done the design, we have done the costing, we have engaged the workers union, they are very happy with it. So, we are waiting to get the mortgage so that medium income earners will be able to afford decent housing as against the model that we had where houses were built only for the elite at between N5-N10million.
Health
In the area of health, we have a project that we will have at least one health facility in each ward in the next four years. Even the existing hospitals and health facilities that we have are not professionally sound, because most of the doctors will not want to work in the rural areas, the same thing with nurses. Because of the demand, we already have one school of nursing that has the capacity of training 100, the highest by law. And upon my inception, I established a new one which started with 50 and gradually they will meet up the 100 number. But still, we have planned to have about having 150 for training as nurses and midwives abroad. You are looking at me(to the reporter expressing shock on his face). It’s cheaper because by calculation because of the size, we will need N7million to train a nurse in our own facility but the training abroad , I think is around N4.8million or so, but less than N5million.
It’s a school where they train those nurses in Saudi Arabia and UK. That school is professionally good.
We try to do the selection based on each constituency so that after training you have to work in that hospital to support your own people for two to three years. And we keep training new ones every three years so that well have some fresh ones coming, so that if these ones decided to move in search of greener pasture we have replacement. So, in our outreach areas now ,we have some nurses and midwives and then continue to build the necessary facilities for all the wards.
Challenge in the health sector
The real challenge in health is personnel and that is what we are vigorously pursuing .The reason for picking from the localities is, like I earlier explained , is to ensure the right personnel in these facilities. In fact, we have directed the state ministry of education to ensure that they catch them young from primary schools by tailoring the pupils towards science because this is the best way to grow the sector amidst our present challenges of dearth of personnel. In other words, we want to encourage the mentoring of those boys and girls into reading science and in all these villages so that in the long run , we will have students from all these villages reading medicine and serve their people for sometime before running from the villages like I do.
In addition to tackling the infrastructure in the health sector, we are currently upgrading two hospitals in Gwaram and one other, and we will do that to all the major hospitals in addition to equipping them very well.
Education
Yes, you see on education, we made our contribution to the UBE as far back as 2013, I think first quarter of 2013. So, immediately, we put in our counterpart funding of about N700million while the federal government also put in its counterpart funding of another N700million. Currently, we are renovating the schools, the class rooms and all the infrastructure, I think at about N1.4billion.
Then, we have taken that of 2014, first quarter of 2014 as well and that is about N200million plus, we have received counterpart funding and that job is to be awarded this week or next week. We are doing the work plan, so the whole of 2014 will come to about N800million that we already have, that we put in and we expect another N800million from the federal government and do another renovation, building classrooms, furniture at another N1.6billion. After that we intend to draw the 2015 contribution also, and if we access this, it will go to a total of N6billion that will go into fixing our schools , including the furniture and all of that.
But in addition to that, we realised that the major challenge we have is the quality and quantity of teachers and that is a very, very big headache here in the North. So, we decided to go on massive teacher training. We bought already 1000 tablets. At the initial stage, we want to see how we can probably rescue the SSS3 students because at the last examination, only 4.5% of them managed to get 5 credits in the last WASC, including English and Mathematics.
I think the rate is small compared to NECO which is better. This is after spending close to N600million that I paid as examination fees only to end up with 4.5 percent from my students. So, we said okay, let’s do some crash programme by taking from each school the most brilliant students, 1000 in all, camped them during the last holiday, brought out the tablets and put in the past questions and answers and let them mark themselves to train these children as fast as we can. Yes, a beautiful experiment but we are not happy with the performance because you cannot fix a problem that started about seven or eight years ago. To correct this perfectly well, you have to start from the basics. There are primary schools without teachers, the headmasters barely teach. Rural areas nobody wants to go, cities so many teachers and even in the cities, the quality is not good enough.
Trying the e-class option
That’s the challenge here. We are working on an e-class where we will have all the lessons in one computer for all the schools, having all the lessons projected, lessons prepared by professionals in a professional environment. However, because the internet challenge, we can’t do the e-learning but we can do the recording and do the transmission in the class. That is our vision and it is something that is achievable. We are trying to start a pilot programme with about 20 or 30 schools. So challenging is the situation in the education such that at one time my commissioner for education was trying because she is from the old school and when she sees what is happening today, she is baffled. Imagine an SSS3 student that can’t make a complete sentence, he does not even understand the question. This is how bad the education has been. It will require serious miracle to change the tide in a very short time. It has started deteriorating from a very long time.
Local government
Today as it is in this February, we have to support the local governments with N266million to make them functional. A lot of people are there shouting that this man is talking about agriculture, industry, but how can he take our land and give Dangote? The only asset Jigawa has is land resources and you have to utilise what you have to get what you want. Yes, the oil price appears to have stabilised between 35 and 37 over the last ten days, but who knows when another shock will come. Even at 35/36,we will still remain in the position we are today. My own is even better. A lot of my colleagues are owing salries, a lot cannot power generator
Pension gratuities
In our state, we are lucky. What I have today for pensioners monthly in my state is about N105million, but the pension fund is paid regularly. I think we have the richest pension fund in the country. We have been contributing seventy percent to that fund, that is N110million, and when I came it was behind by more than ten months for both states and local governments. So, i had to make up.