Alhaji Abdulfatah Ahmed is the 6th Executive Governor of Kwara State. He served the immediate past administration in the state as the Commissioner for Finance and later redeployed to the Ministry of Economic development and planning and has since expressed his determination to transform the state from a core civil servant to an economic viable environment amidst merger resources. During a media chart with journalists in the state, he spoke on transformation agenda and other issues of national importance.

Excerpts:

Your Excellency, education is an area where great successes have been recorded in the last one year. Today we enjoy free education in primary and secondary schools and a reduction in tertiary institution fees. But, what specifically is your administration doing to arrest mass failure in public schools?

Yes, education is one area that has been very critical, not only for the state but for the country. We all see the general down trend in the education sector as reflected by the results of our children during the NECO and the senior secondary school exams. That was why it became expedient for us to have a complete transformation of the education sector. This led us to the fact that our Colleges of Education that are supposed to provide the basic man power requirement at the basic education levels, also requires having teachers that are trained to do that job. That saw us reforming the Colleges of Education to where they are supposed to be. The Colleges of Education that are set up largely to train teachers that would teach at the Basic and Junior Secondary School levels were almost becoming degree awarding institutions, to the extent that they moved on by leaving their primary responsibilities and taking more of outreach courses for other institutions outside the state so that they were able to earn additional funding. If this funding they were earning were used to drive the primary focus for which the school was set up, it would have been alright. But it has led to loss of focus. That was why we had to stop those outreach programmes for degree awarding that was threatening the focus of the school and allow the school to go back to training teachers in primary education. The model that came out from the College of Education, Oro is now being replicated in Ilorin and Lafiagi.

The focus of Colleges of Education is to train teachers. It is an academic institution. But unfortunately, more money is being spent on non-academic staff than the academic staff. Changes of focus allows improper utilisation of funds and that is why the main focus would begin to suffer from funding and this is why we have decided commence a re-engineering of the colleges of education to take them back to the focal level where they would begin to turn-out teachers for basic education. This will see us ensuring that for them to take any other programme outside their focus; they must be seen to understand the focus of the school.

Sir, what are you really going to do to make sure that government executes all these monumental projects as enumerated?

We have very few states in Nigeria that transited smoothly as Kwara. We emerged from a government where we were part and parcel of policy formulation and implementation. We saw how the last administration took the aspect of development up to the level when we took over exactly a year ago. On the strength of that, we developed a policy trust on critical areas that affect our people on roads, youth development, health, agriculture, education, water, energy and of course security. Our desire to pursue development from these premises is largely due to the fact that resources for development are very scarce. And for you to begin to have impact on the people, you must have a planned process on how to allow these developmental programmes to flow. That takes us to a strong development, planning process, which sees us articulating how we intend to reach our people in terms of infrastructure. We don't have all the resources we require. If we have all the resources we required, government itself would have been very easy. But why it is difficult is because we are required to clearly optimise allocation of resources.

We have made it clear even at the inception of this administration that all communities that did not have capital project would ultimately have capital projects reaching them and we are moving on. Those who did not get electricity in the last administration are getting during this administration. So we see development as a modulated programme which implies that as we are moving on there are plans for every community to benefit from every government activities. So between you and me, every project we say we are going to do would ultimately be executed over the period of time that we have to spend as a government.

We must be able to create a re-doubling process that is, funding going to the desired areas. We have outlined all areas we want to do in roads, in water, in schools, in agriculture, energy and of course in health. All these areas have shown that one project or the other would be executed and each of these projects would be carried on as we have planned it and that resources are made available for their execution. So it is a continuous programme. Communities should be very confident that a sense of hope is being rekindled as it was the desire of government to ensure that every community has access to a pre-planned capital projects outlined in the programme.

However, like I keep saying we do not have enough resources to carry out all of these projects at the same time and this underscores the importance of continuity in government.

We are also trying to create a synergy between the state and the federal government. Only recently, I was going to Erin-Ile, we passed through Ajasse-Ipo and Offa. The road is very bad. It is a federal road. It is our desire to see that this road is done. I had to send in another save-our-soul, SOS message to the President that this road is becoming a dangerous road to Kwarans. Unless this road is fixed, it is going to serve as a source of insecurity and of course it will serve as a source of economic loss. People find it difficult from that part of the community to pass to other parts of the state.

Some of these federal projects that are not getting proper attention from the federal government are major problems for the State. Kwara State has no resources to fix them and they are competing with our own projects. Even when we struggled to repair some of the Federal roads, it's been difficult to get a refund. The Ilesha Baruba-Chikanda road is good example in this regard. We are yet to get a full refund of what was expended on the road. If that money was re-funded, I can embark on another federal road.  So those are some of the challenges we face and unless we get a strong commitment from the federal government, it would not be easy for us to take on federal projects. That we know that we would not be able to get refund. But as a state, we are very concerned about it because this road actually serves our people. The Gbugbu-Patigi, Kaiama-Kisi, Egbe-Eruku roads are some of the federal roads in the state requiring urgent and immediate attention and where we have sought federal intervention.

Is there an existing synergy between you and the local governments to actualise your lofty dream of living better than you met it? What is your administration doing in ensuring that we have enough car parks in the state?

The first thing we did when we came in was to devise this concept that made local governments to buy into our policy. We have our budget packaged into a medium term. We define a Four Year Developmental Programme across critical sectors that affect our people. We got information during our electioneering campaign periods and put them into documents which we will use as a basis for providing infrastructure, drive the economy, give good governance and most importantly for human capital development for the next 4 years. This shared provision is now being shared with the local government. We had a platform where the local government have been made to see that we desire to work on the same pace in terms of given specific target; especially in areas of roads for instance. That is why you see that we had to source about N1billion on primarily our rural roads. This is designed to complement what each local government is doing on roads. We have been able to support the development of primary health care institutions which are primarily responsibility of the local governments.

But we as a government have also taken advantage of funding windows coming in from the MDGs to ensure that the grassroots health institutions are supported in terms of infrastructure, in terms of drugs, in terms of personnel and we expect the local government to take ownership. That is why in the last administration local governments were asked to build accommodation for all those refurbished or newly built health institutions at the local government levels. The whole essence is to see that there is a common and shared vision in driving the policy that we have agreed and worked into as it affects our people.

So I will let you know today that for every project that is carried out by the local government, they are designed to be sent to the ministry of local governments who will ‘common size' them against our policy thrust and ensure that it is also captured as what is being carried on at each location so that we don't have duplication of such projects in the same location. So there is a kind of compartmentalisation that is going on between the state and local governments because it is the only way by which you can optimally distribute infrastructural needs to the people.

Now Ilorin, as it were, is a fast developing city. Largely by choice of providence, we found ourselves being able to accommodate a lot more people from different walks of life and different nationalities in Nigeria. But the most important thing is that we are faced with the responsibilities of pressure on our current infrastructure, that is, infrastructure on electricity, water, roads, health and education. But we are up to the task, because we have a clear planned process to meet up with the increasing population and demands. On the issue of motor parks, it is ideally the responsibility of local governments. So we have requested for a good understanding by local governments so that they must be able to have the establishment and management of motor parks not only for the sake of ensuring orderliness, but most importantly as a source of revenue generation.

Sir, on the sovereign wealth fund and the clamour for a new revenue allocation formula, why are governors not comfortable with the proposal on this?

You see the issue of sovereign wealth fund in a very simple term is designed by the federal government to save for the raining day; that whatever comes in as excess rather than been left alone in just any bank, it could be put in an investment that would grow it and also keep it as a reserve for raining days. In a very simple term that's what it implies. But the question is at the point of designing it what should be saved for the raining day. I think there wasn't a proper platform for everybody to participate and agree on how it should be done. That is where the major problem came from. Our belief was that at the time of decision making to create a sovereign wealth fund, which is very desirable for any system that has a plan for the future, it should have taken the other tiers of governments that are also stakeholders into the decision making process and the design of the management process so that it rekindles a kind of sense of hope that we have all jointly agreed to put in something aside for the future.

These are critical issues on ground right now. The idea of revenue sharing has always been a very thorny issue. Some of us believe that the people are at state levels. That is to say 774 local governments' areas are where the people are and that is where the bulk of the revenue should go to. It is that simple. Whatever the federal government is doing can be carried on a policy basis. And then you work with a synergized methodically designed process that sees the federal government working hand-in-hand with the state governments and you begin to see the impact of whatever the federal government is planning on policy level at the state levels.

One area the federal government has gotten it right is the area of education. I will tell you why. Look at the funding of the Basic Education under the Universal Basic Education, UBE. What they do is to make funds available to states where states would counterpart fund those funds. They give you N100 you match it with your N100 and then you execute projects that you both understand and agreed at the critical area you are spending money on and the state takes ownership of that project. So that is why there is hardly any nook and crannies of the country you go to, you don't see one classroom or the other under SUBEB.

So if you do like that for water, health, energy, agriculture and for other areas you begin to see the real impact being felt by the people. But if you want to control centrally from Abuja, how does it work? It's a two-way thing. It is either government cedes some of these responsibilities to the states, that is in terms of may be water resources and agriculture for instance and probably education. Give it to the states and then the monetary part of it should also be ceded to the States. So that states would now carry on responsibilities of delivering those services. But the federal government must be involved in policy formulation because it has to be nationally agreed upon on how our education policy should be defined. How our road policy should be defined, how our aviation policy should be defined. It should be centrally designed and at the point of designing, all of us must have a buy-in and agree on what that policy should be so at the point of implementation, we all will be speaking on the same page. Federal government can now support states with its own counterpart funding or you cede responsibilities to states and monitor to ensure execution and you also create what you call an impact measurement mechanism not an input-output mechanism which would show that we have move from point A to point B.

Unless you create a mechanism like that you will not move forward. You begin to see that federal government is spending so much on certain programmes that are also being done at the state and at the same time the impact is not felt by the ordinary man. The working relationship between states and local governments has to be re-defined. The concept of changing revenue formula is not largely about reducing the 52 percent even if it is reduced and added to that of states with the correspondent responsibilities it is very sweet. But it cannot be done like that, it can be done in this method of synergising with states and agree on milestone to be attained under a clearly spelt out policy on critical areas that affect our people where we can only carry on well at the states and local government levels.

You have enumerated a lot of things in the Sovereign Wealth Fund and other issues; could you just tell us the major challenges particularly in the areas of youth employment, agriculture, water and education that your administration has faced so far?

Youth employment and empowerment has been a major cornerstone of this administration's policy thrust. Strategic infrastructure and human capital development are major components of our programme of shared prosperity. The major challenges in these areas are that our targets are all encompassing but resources are scarce. We want to deliver so much with the little available resources. That is why we have prioritised our projects.

The issue of youth development is very critical in the country. We see how this has almost become a security issue, especially in the northern part of the country. We saw this immediately we came in and that was why we created an enumeration platform for our youths. Such that we needed to know those youths we are planning for knowing full well that they make up of more than two thirds of the state and that if there is going to be any meaningful planning, we must capture them as part of the group that requires to be planned for. We came up with a unique Bridge Empowerment Programme after enumeration of about 35,000 youths who registered. We now have them compartmentalised into skills, by age, by locations and most importantly also by capacity to become entrepreneurs. We have since come out with different programmes that begin to absorb them into different compartments. For instance, 1000 of them have just been absorbed into the mainstream of the state's civil service. We would be harnessing all vacancies and key some of them in. Quite a number of them have been absorbed at the federal level, courtesy of the support we have from our representatives there, that is, Chairman Federal Character Commission and also the Commissioner in-charge of Kwara/Niger under the Federal Civil Service Commission. These vacancies in the past were just allowed to be replaced with just anybody.

So we now have a structured process where vacancies would likely be desired. We now look at our teaming youth that require employment and structure them and move them from the bridge. Don't forget that 2000 of them have firstly been engaged under the Kwara Bridge Empowerment Scheme from which the 1000 were engaged in the public sector and others in private sector. Those in the public sector, for instance, would now be moved from the bridge to the proper employment where the gap required to be filled, and we can take others that were not on the bridge to join those who have been engaged.

Also we have skill acquisition centre. We said it several times that we will be setting up a skill acquisition centre at Ajasse-Ipo. From day one, we have it in mind that we are training people that would have jobs in the oil and gas sector, in the marine sector, in the civil engineering sector, in the electrical and refrigeration in line with what the National Employers Consultative Association is looking at and the point being created by these gaps. So that is the reason why we are taking our time to design the kind of school we are establishing. We must be able to ensure that the funding is available. So our youths would continue to be supported. Don't forget that we have made some money available under the cooperative scheme to encourage our youths to be clustered into cooperative groups that would be self guaranteeing and we have made N250m available for them to be used as funding as entrepreneurs. Another N2560m is on the ground. Of course we have some money for those in agriculture. About N500m would be disbursed after being compartmentalised into cooperative groups and fixed into the value chain that would see money going in and coming out.