As the Kogi State gubernatorial race gathers steam, Governor Idris Wada spoke with Hassan Elaigwu and Sunday Kuje on his stewardship in office, his second term bid and the state’s debt profile, among other salient issues. Excerpt
In the face of dwindling resources across the country, what course is your administration charting for Kogi State in terms of sustainability and survival?em>Kogi State is totally a civil service state, but we have a lot of solid minerals that can be explore to provide economic opportunities for our people. The Federal Government by the provisions of the Constitution takes control of the mineral resources. The state government has limited power in terms of what it can do in exploring the resources. That is why states are seeking the necessary permission and licences from the Federal Government to exploit the mineral resources within their domain.
Also, the security situation in the country has made it quite difficult to attract investors who have financial capacity to exploit solid mineral resources in the state. That is why we have focused on agricultural sector where we have created the enabling environment for economic opportunities in Kogi. The people have embraced this and have invested in farming more than ever before in the state. We are working with Federal Government, the World Bank and Agriculture Development Bank to establish the farms in the states. We have acquired hectare of land running into 30,000. We are now a rice growing state in Nigeria. We have a lot of young people investing in farming in Kogi.
We have equally made effort to improve on our Internally Generated Revenue (IGR). We have increase it from about N 150 million a month to about N550 million. We have invested in the Obajana Cement and smaller industries springing up in Kogi as well. This we have done through our industrial promotion efforts. All these will eventually bring income to Kogi and the state would be able to pay its workers and meet up with its responsibilities. There are other economic benefits that will accrue to Kogi State in due course given our efforts. We are promoting small and medium scale industries, creating conducive environment for enterprises in the state. We have reformed land allocation and administration policy in the state. This is meant to promote agriculture and encourage investors in the state. The reforms took care of land allocation and the bureaucracy associated with it. All of these have made it easier for people to come and establish in the state and promote industrial growth. In the last three and half years, we have been able to promote the establishment of cement factory. The foundation of the cement factory was laid about two and half years ago.
The tourism centres in our state are being refurbished and renovated. The historical artifacts are be being rehabilitated to promote tourism and generate income for the state. It will increase the IGR of our state in the coming years and become regular source income for the state in the years ahead.
These are some of the things we have done for the economic transformation of the state.
Your Excellency is seeking a second term in office. In the past, incumbent governors were given automatic ticket, but you are going into primaries with others to secure the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) ticket. Some claimed that the PDP leadership demanded N 1 billion from you to get its support for your ambition. Is this true?
The issue of automatic ticket has no place in the PDP. The only person who has in a way got it in the PDP was the immediate past President of the country, Dr. Goodluck Jonathan. It was automatic in the sense that he was the sole candidate during the primaries and he was the only presidential candidate. The others withdrew before the day of the primaries. That, to an extent, was the only semblance of automatic ticket. Normally, in the contest for leadership of the state, people show interest. Those who show interest see the incumbent as a challenge and because you are incumbent, your second run for office is not as free. You are restrained until you are in office again. So, you don’t have the same space like those outside. You don’t have the same opportunities, as those who are outside, in terms of issuing statements. You are restrained, you have a lot of restriction because of the position you are occupying. That is why you see lots of people coming out to contest. But, all must go through the primaries. Even when nobody shows interest, you must go through primaries. It is a “yes vote” or “no vote” that determines whether you get the ticket or not. I don’t know of any provision in the PDP constitution that gives automatic ticket to anyone. It is the party leadership that pronounces it.
On the issue of the PDP and the National Working Committee demanding money from me, that is a matter to ponder about. Whoever is insinuating that the sum of N 1 billion was demanded from me is evil, it is lie. It is part of the evil machination by people who don’t want progress. In Kogi State, we don’t have N1 billion to give anybody, I can assure you about that. Having paid our workers up to date and embarking on infrastructure development, I can tell you that we don’t even have N 1 million to give to anybody. And nobody has ever asked me for N 1 billion, including the NWC. What will I get from the chairman to invest N1 billion just to earn a ticket? So, let us be realistic, when some of these things are said, we should question the logic in them. So, it is just a figment of some people’s imagination. There is no basis or foundation for it.
How are you preparing for the forthcoming elections?
With regard to the Presidential election, the three senatorial districts were won by the All Progressive Congress (APC) in Kogi State, it was basically because of Buharimania. It is a movement which many people boarded the train. That is why we are where we are today in the state. It is not that the PDP is not doing well in the state. The PDP is on ground, it is a solid party and has added value to the lives of the people. We have structure in every local government, we have structure in every ward and we are confident we will win by the grace of God in the next election. And if I may correct other wrong impression, the PDP won majority of the seats in the Kogi State House of Assembly election. That is a reflection of the fact that once you remove the Buharimania out of the equation, PDP is solidly on ground. We are winning the next governorship election. As regards to performance, of course you will not expect my opponents to praise me. They will always find something wrong. What we do as a sitting governor, our opponent will always see something bad in them.
Your administration has been accused of not performing…You measure performance in context to the fund available to you. For instance, we are trying to build flyovers in Lokoja, which they cost at about N 4.6 billion. In a state like ours, getting N4.6 billion is a major challenge. In some states, this is nothing. Our average income per month is about N 3.2 billion per month. Our salary base is about N 3 billion, so we have challenges. But, if you look at the money that has come into the state during my tenure, you will agree that we have performed in term of development in the state. We have done well with the fund available to us. The projects are there for you to verify. These are comments from our opponents, and you will remember the contest of my coming on board, that people who lost out despite our effort at reconciliation, have continued to hammer us. Some went to court, with two of them ending up at the Supreme Court. Some of them are still in court despite the fact that we are approaching another election. In such an environment, they only look at what you have done wrong, but the reality on ground, is that we have performed. We have followed due process and we have done well within the resource made available.
In this period of cash crunch, how are you reducing the cost of governance? Could you also shed light on the debt profile of your State?
In the effort to reduce the cost of governance, we have eliminated many area of waste as you can see. We are focused on ensuring that government business is done transparently well and in a competitive way. We are ensuring the completion of projects being executed and prompt delivery.
On labour matters, we are very sensitive to the nature of our state; it is a civil service state. We ensure that the issue of down-sizing does not arise, trying to accommodate as many workers as we can within the resources available. We are blocking leakages and ensuring prudent management of resources available. For any project that we embark on, we properly cost them and award them to competent and reliable contractors to execute for us.
We are also trying as much as possible to improve our IGR. Our financial system is now computerized, reducing papers work and waste. The funds that is accruing from this will go a long way to benefit of the state.
We have a very low debt profile. We have overdraft of N1 billion, we have about N1.5 billion in term of money that is taken as counterpart funding for primary education. We have a bond that we subscribed to in the capital market amounting to N20 billion, from which we have drawn N8 billion so far. We are using the bond money for the tourist projects, most of the projects are at about 40 percent completion. We still have close to N12 billion to draw. We are in the process of doing that. That is our debt profile so far.
Some governors appealed to the Federal Government for bailout, but some said it is a loan. What is the real position?
There are different elements on the bailout. Many states have fallen behind in the payment of salaries to their workers. This became a national issue. The Governors met and approached Mr. President on the matter. Governors did not use the word bailout, we went for financial restructuring. The governors were not disposed to that word ‘bailout.’ But two elements that I would recall are that there were some monies that came from the Nigerian Liquefied Natural Gas (NLNG) money. That money was part of the dividend and part of the tax. It is the money that comes into the Federation Account, and is shared among states on the basis of revenue allocation formula. Some people took that as bailout. In the presentation to Mr. President, we asked for short term loans for states that will be extended to five or seven years’ repayment, so that states will be able to accommodate the payment of salaries and restructure our finances. More so, the tenure of bond in Nigeria is seven years; the Federal Government bond is within 20 and 25 years. The issue of direct bailout was not agreed to, it was money to pay workers and restructure our finance.
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