The achievements of the PDP-led government in Niger state have come under attack as the state Publicity Secretary of the All Progressives Congress (APC), Mr. Jonathan Vatsa, claims in this interview with AIDELOJE OJO that the government is built on deceit. He also boasts that the APC will surely take over government in the state come 2015
APC’s acceptance
Today in Niger state, the All Progressives Congress (APC) has a wider acceptance from the people. In a nutshell, APC is the fastest growing party in Niger state and in Nigeria at large. Particularly in Niger state, the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) government has failed the people. It has failed to fulfil all its promises to the people and the only alternative party to flush it out is APC. And by the grace of God, come 2015 election, I am assuring you that with the support of the people of Niger state, we are already in Government House.
Fallout of Niger congress
Normally in any election, there will be complaints. There are those who did not win election and they are aggrieved. There are those who complained that boxes were over voted. However, when we came on board, we visited those who were aggrieved over the congress to tell them to come and join us in moving the party forward. The response we received from many of them was wonderful as they said they will not go away from the party on account of the congress. They affirmed that APC is the only answer to rescue the people from the oppressive rule of PDP and that they would join hands to move the party to success.
Alleged infiltration
During the congresses, we were able to identify those that government had sponsored to cause crisis in the party and flushed them out of our system, because the government was afraid of us, it knew that with our coming, it was not going to be easy for them as usual. PDP as a cancer, tried to enter into us but because we have people who are politically experienced, who knew the game very well, we quickly identified those that the government sent and filtered them out. I am assuring you that in Niger state, the APC has kept its satellite on all the candidates, we know all those who are with us and working for us. The moment you are not working for the party, we will know and we quickly return you to where you are coming from. So, we identified those who are double edged and chased them out.
The government has succeeded in creating a weapon with which it controls the people and that is poverty. So the government of PDP has made the people of Niger state poorer than ever before in order to continue to manipulate them as it is easier to control a weak mind. I am assuring you that the APC from where we are coming from and where we are today, it will be absolutely impossible for the government to use sponsored agents to destabilise us. That will not work and it will not be business as usual for PDP-led government.
PDP-led government’s achievements
I have read in the media and I do not know what the government claims to be its achievements. But whatever they claimed to have achieved is unfortunate. I want to take you back the memory lane. When this government came in, Governor Aliyu probed his predecessor, Engineer Abdulkadir Kure and said that the former administration had not worked for the people. Unfortunately, some of the projects this government is showing today were done by the Kure administration. An example is the Legbo Kutigi conference centre. Kure built it and finished everything about it only for this government to come and flash paint on it to claim it. I am asking the government to tell us how it can claim credit for what it has not done.
Let’s speak on the state of roads in Niger state and ask how many roads has the government constructed? Let me quickly tell Nigerlites that the government did not use money it received from Federation allocation to build these roads but to borrow money from the bond market amounting to over N36billion so that even the unborn child in Niger state will continue to pay debts. What has the government done with the huge monthly allocation from Abuja? I hope the governor will be able to answer this question so that the people will know how he has wasted the public funds. This is because the total number of roads constructed by the administration is not up to 200 kilometres. Where are the roads for which N36 billion was purported to have been sunk? Governor Aliyu came with lies and deceits. He built Gulu General hospital in four years with yearly variations of contract sums that ran into billions of naira. Look at the Obasanjo shopping complex – New market road in Minna, a project that is not more than 8 kilometres is taking the government three years to construct and as I am speaking to you now the project is stagnant. What achievements have the administration done? They owned Nigerlites account, because the road projects are soaked in fraud. Another name for this government is fraud. Let me tell you, he accused Kure government of corruption, he is correct because they are all PDP government, but I want to use this opportunity to tell NIgerilites that we were able to see Kure’s corruption because he uses local people, he used analogue but this present government is using national, international and intellectual people and this is why his stealing is scientific. The administration came with gimmicks and deceits.
Why we are not impressed with government performance in Health and Education?
I can be proud to tell you that Niger state is an agricultural state, but this government has come to relegate agriculture to the background. Our farmers, most of whom do not have access to farm implements and inputs are suffering in the rural areas and most of them cannot even get fertilisers to improve their products.
In many areas, the roads are too bad to the extent that even when farmers have farm produce, they are unable to transport them to the market. This has made them to suffer from the activities of middlemen who cashed in on this to extort them.
It is pathetic that for over 7 years in office of the government, it has done nothing in agriculture, absolutely nothing. It has not provided enabling environment for our farmers in the rural areas who are peasant farmers by occupation to flourish.
The government has failed them. Money sent from Abuja meant for farmers in Niger state do not get to real farmers either by way of loans or otherwise. Such money is always shared among government officials including the governor because all of them have big farms. The peasant farmers from the rural areas do not receive any loan from the federal or state governments and if they have any, I challenge them to publish it. I challenge them to publish local government by local governments the beneficiaries of such huge federal government loans on agriculture in the state. The administration even told us that it will go to South Africa to bring goats and cows. Where are the animals and who and who benefited, let us have their names. We are saying that they should be transparent in all their dealings. It is not about speaking big grammar or being eloquent in speaking English language, we should be more practical.
The situation is even more pathetic in the education sector where for over seven years of the administration, teachers in the state have not been promoted and this I must say is suicidal. Does government want to kill them? That is criminal and wickedness where the commissioners are living in affluence and the governor is busy making trips abroad almost on daily basis. We are working on his frequent trips abroad and will soon publish the number of trips he made in his eight years in office. The well being of teachers is germane to the quality of education the students will receive. Today, our primary schools are gossip centres as the teachers just go there to murmur over their predicament.
It pains me when I heard government talking about free education because it is a ruse and the height of deceit on the part of the government. Primary schools are dilapidated and children are sitting under the trees to take lessons. Go outside Minna and you will know the level of decay in education in Niger state. Education is absolutely decayed in the state and there is nothing to show for it. The unfortunate thing is that they have budgeted billions of naira on education which have gone into their private pockets. What we are seeing in the state is total decay in education sector. They claimed to be paying for NECO and WAEC for students in the state, let them publish how much they have spent and who benefited. Have gone to NECO and WAEC and see how much government had paid? I have never seen government coming to lie to its people like this administration. The government of Governor Aliyu is built on deceit with nothing to show for the billions of naira it received from statutory allocations which I am convinced went into their personal pockets. And the governor calls himself Chief Servant; he is only serving himself and has never served Nigerlites at all. He should have a rethink, if he is really the peoples Chief Servant.
Isn’t this an attack on government?
We are not attacking Governor Aliyu or the administration as they would want people to believe. We are only stating the obvious. We have raised issues and they should be able to respond to. I am using this medium to ask them to go straight to the issues we have pointed out and not to keep busy pursuing shadows. Is it not true that the commissioner for local government is at the same time the local government chairman of Edati local government? These are the issues we raised that how can the commissioner of local government be the chairman of local government at the same time. Why has he not handed over to his deputy when he was appointed commissioner? This is a constitutional breach endorsed by the Chief Servant. In Niger state, PDP does not respect constitution because it does things that suits it. Whatever they continue to do wrong, we will continue to tell them they are wrong. Let them call us names if they like, we are not bothered.
On LG/State’s joint account
Today it is a known fact that the local and state governments’ joint account in Niger state is the ATM of Governor Aliyu’s administration. The way he runs the joint account in Niger state is terrible, horrible and unfortunate. When he came in to office, he said he was not going to do like Kure that he will give local governments their money and that he will release their allocation to them. But unfortunately today Governor Aliyu enjoys the local government funds more than the man he took over from. How much has the councils received from him for the past seven years? This has made our people back home to be very poor languishing in poverty, while the governor sits in Minna to beat his chest that Niger state economy will be among the best three in the country in 2020. And I ask how it can be when the rural people do not have direct access to their funds. What the governor does is to give stipends to council chairmen in the state and ask them to sign vouchers. The chairmen stay in Minna and only go to the council secretariats to share loots and return to Minna immediately to run away from their people. I want to use this opportunity to call on the National Conference to rescue local governments from the state governors because the local government are being gang raped by their governors.
3 Arms Zone, dead project
The three arm zone is just a story told by the governor but full of fallacies. Governor Aliyu does not think that he has come to govern the people because his dream and thinking do not match the thinking of the people. In the whole of the federation, it is only Niger state that is talking about 3 arms zone in the states and he went and took loan. To our dismay, he cannot actualise it because it is dream that cannot be actualised. It is through these kinds of gigantic projects that money is being siphoned. So we are waiting to see the 3 arms zone and if he could not give us the 3 arm zone, he should return the commissioners’ type A quarters he sold to his cabinet members on the pretence that he was going to use the proceeds to build the 3 arm zone. We have not seen the new one on ground and he had gone with the old one. In fact, another name for Governor Aliyu administration is deceit.
Aliyu as most travelled Governor in Nigeria
No past governor of Niger state had travelled like that of governor Aliyu, he had spent huge amount of money on hiring of jets and planes. In fact he is ‘Ajala travel all over the world’ I can assure you that Niger state is one of the most peaceful in the country, yet the governor spends billions on security votes because there is no receipt for such expenditure.