Shamsuddeen Lukman Abubakar
It is becoming certain that our democracy is generally getting accustomed to bad governance, especially since the advent of this brand since 1999. If this form of government has been genuinely practised, and played according to the rules of the game, it would have given the proverbial dividends of democracy to the general populace to attain more valueable and sustainable mode of living.
In other climes where democracy functions properly, there must be a halcyon and crystal evidence of developments and progress with a sharpened and refined living standards. It is not the same in our clime here as the whole thing is quite repulsive and lamentable.
It may appear on the surface that there is a lengthened practice of democracy in Nigeria, there have rather been glaring inadequacies and political deliquencies saturating and clustering around the system. These had therefore culminated into so many dead weights and encumbered leadership in the country where egocentric, hoggish and narcism have been the common attributes of the majority of the present day politicians and the government they lead.
Nature has just made sure that all things cannot be bad or good at the same time, so there are exceptional and silent few who have decided to toe the line of purposeful and committed leadership. Governor Mohammed Abdullahi Abubakar of Bauchi State may fit into the category of leaders who have chosen to brace the odds to unchain Bauchi State from perpetual underdevelopment. Unlike the empty vessels who make the loudest noise in the state, he has remained quiet to make him concentrate in delivering the mandate handed over to him in 2015.
Having disentangled himself from the counter-productive culture of political godfatherism, he is bent on liberating the people from the stranglehold of those who over time undermined the progress of the state.
Governor Abubakar after taking over in 2015 was stunned when he met a completely siphoned treasury and the massive looting of valuable property and assets running into billions of Naira belonging to the state government. Painfully, this was done by a handful of people to the detriment of the majority.
Most disturbing was the huge debt profile and backlog of salaries he met: the state’s total liabilities – including domestic and foreign loans stood at N125 billion with unpaid salaries of up to four months, while the state’s recurrent expenditure was overburdened with sky-scraping number of ghost workers and fake vouchers floating the ministries and departments.
He has since settled all unpaid salaries as well as gradually off-setting domestic and foreign loans monthly from the lean resources available to the government, because government must keep moving.
Well, the spoilt running taps must be repaired. Leakages must be blocked and they are being blocked. Governor Abubakar has ordered the immediate verification of workers in the payroll of government and the result is the huge amount being saved monthly.
To retrieve stolen monies and property belonging to the Bauchi State government by the past administration, the Public Property and Funds Recovery Tribunal Law, 2017 is in place. This law was the off shoot of a recommendation calling for it by the Committee on State Assets Recovery which also called for the setting up of a tribunal whose membership should be drawn from the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC), Independent Corrupt Practices and other related Offences Commission (ICPC), Police and Code of Conduct Bureau (CCB). The chairman of the tribunal shall be a serving or retired high court judge of the state with its secretary being a lawyer to be appointed by the Attorney General of the State.
It might interest the people of Bauchi State that their share of the Paris Club debt refund is N12.7 billion which was judiciously used to clear all outstanding workers’ salaries especially those of primary and JSS teachers as well as LG workers who from December 2015 had not been able to get enough to cover their salaries from the monthly federal allocation. The governor reported this back to President Muhammadu Buhari that he has used at least 80 per cent of that fund in paying salaries to which the President expressed satisfaction.
The philosophy of the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) is very clear to the people of the state. It is a grassroots party, rooted in practices through the contribution of stakeholders at all levels in the state.
We don’t just understand that the era of free money is gone, we also agree that for every expenses to be undertaken, it has to receive the blessing of the state legislature who would have consulted and gotten the consent of their various constituents.
So the current administration is an all stakeholders’ affair. For anybody to now allege that there is lack of accountability of state finances, such a person or group is certainly not in touch with what is happening in the state. The effort now is one of retrieving Bauchi State from the woods which is a collective responsibility of all citizens of the state.
Abubakar wrote from Bauchi
