Dr Muyideen Akorede is the Senior Special Assistant on Media to the Kwara State Governor, Alhaji Abdulfatah Ahmed. In this interview with NICK UWERU and WOLE ADEDEJI, the governor's aide explains the intricacy surrounding the bailout money from the Federal Government and why the generality of Kwarans must see the current cash squeeze across the country as an opportunity to expand the economic base of the state. Excerpts:

The federal government released bailout funds for sal­ary arrears. There have been different stories as to the handling of the funds in different states. In Kwara, what is the situation like?

We have been very lucky compared to other states be­cause our level of arrears have not been that high. As at the time the bailout came, we were in two months ar­rears to state workers. That was why our bailout of N4.3 billion was one of the lowest in the country. But on the back of that, federal government also restructured our N15 billion loan from commercial banks into a 20- year bond at 14 per cent. Now these loans were taken for be­tween 20 per cent and 24 per cent. We were paying out about N700 million a month. With this restructuring, our monthly commitment on loan has come down to N206 million. This means, we will be saving about N500 million. But let us not forget that the N4.3billion is also a loan at 9 per cent. But unfortunately the bailout for the local government councils has not been released.

So the bailout funds for the Local Governments were supposed to be separate?

What other states did according to what we gathered was that they combined the outstanding at the local gov­ernment councils and the outstanding at the state level. Some of the requests were sent back and some, well, I don't understand the dynamics. The reasons we did ours separately is that when you take a loan from federal gov­ernment, they do what they call irrevocable standing payment order, ISPO. This means that, whenever your money from FAAC comes, it is deducted at source. Since this was a 20 years bond, we had to clear which tier of government would have its money deducted because in future, if another party emerges, they may start argu­ing that we have taken all their money. Indeed, the lower tier did not take any money from federal government. The federal government has now paid our component of it, that is the N4.3 billion. The local government com­ponent of that money is N5 billion. But that is yet to come. But as of Friday, September 18, the governor still spoke to CBN to expedite action on the money.

So you envisage that with the arrival of the money, all arrears will be cleared?

The state arrears have been cleared. Only outstand­ing salaries are that of the tertiary institutions and oth­er revenue generating agencies. The state government's position is that those stand alone agencies are revenue generating and should not rely on state government for subventions. Unfortunately that tradition has been es­tablished over the years. The governor is trying to rem­edy that. The strategy here is that they have to get them down to sound footing, supply them what they need and from there they can be self- sustaining. For some of them, there are still one or two months outstanding.

But some have pointed out that the bailout may just be a stop gap measure given that, most states like Kwara generates low IGR. Are there measure being put in place to make sure that the financial squeeze that brought about the bailout never arises again?

In Kwara, we see the situation as an opportunity to expand our financial base. In 2013, the governor saw this problem coming when the United States, US and China started looking out for alternative sources of en­ergy. Then he started telling the Board of Internal Rev­enue, BIR, to increase the IGR. At that point we were still at about N700 million. They kept coming back with excuses that, that was the best they could do. The gov­ernor then instituted a desk review of the money collec­tion process. We discovered that we were losing about N5 billion annually, either through leakages or money going through the wrong pockets. We went to study what other states have done and discovered that they were not relying on civil service structure to drive rev­enue collection. This is because; you cannot give a civil service person a target. Some of them may achieve it, but you cannot put a sanction in place. You can't sack a civil servant because he didn't meet target. So, the gov­ernment then said that since the BIR have consistently failed on its N1 billion revenue target at the time, it went to the state house of assembly to abrogate the set up of the board and instead, set up the Kwara State Internal Revenue Service, KWIRS. It is still government owned. But it has new terms of service.

So, in this instance, you come on and sign up to new terms of service. So the feeling that when you get into the civil service only death can remove you does not arise here. So you come on and sign up to new terms of service. If you don't meet up with your target in three months you are gone. It is just like the banks. The banks just give you target and if you can't meet them, you are sacked. We are still changing people, process and tech­nology. So the target for the new board when it comes on board in October is an initial N2 billon per month. And it is achievable.

Now, the impression out there is that Kwara is a civil service state. Have you identified any key economic ac­tivity in Kwara that could raise the revenue of the state?

The day Shoprite opened in Ilorin, they generated N12 million in one day. Well, it may be because of the novelty of the experience. Obviously that would have tapered off. But for me, the fact that a single store in Ilorin can generate such amount of money suggest that amount of money in circulation in the state. If you go to the banks and check with them how much they put in their ATM each day, you would be shocked and then people take the money, finishing it every day from the machines. So with this impression, the view that Kwara is a civil service state is no longer valid.

Still on tax, people's perception often inhibits the best intention for collecting them. Are you doing much to ducate people on the need to pay tax?

Definitely. We do radio programmmes, we do phone-ins and what we heard consistently is: 'What have you done with the ones we have paid'. We hate to admit it, but there is a certain amount of trust deficit between the people and government. I am sitting here and I know what the governor's aspiration is for our people. I know the things that have been done and when we say it, you still hear people say that we are lying. I understand why they say such things, it is not because they don't like the governor but because over time, they have been let down by previous governments. What we have done now is to set the agenda. It is not a question of whether they will pay taxes, it is a question of how. People are worry­ing about multiple taxes. People worry about where the money will go. People worry that this agency will collect for local governments as well. So people say, you people will be taking local governments' money. So, the conversation is still going on. The way to go now is that when we are doing one project we put it there: 'tax payers' money at work'. And there will be a lot of transparency. Every money collected every month will be published and the cost of collection too. If, for instance we collect N1 million from Offa local government, we will publish it. So the people of Offa can go and meet their chairman to account for how he spent the money.