Date: 2012-07-09

Kwara State Commissioner for Information and Communications, Prince Tunji Morohunfoye in this chat with newsmen on achievements of the state government in its first year in office highlighted pertinent areas of focus of the administration. He also spoke about the much awaited report of the NNPC on the oil ‘findings' in a part of the state as well as speculations that the state is broke. BIODUN OYELEYE was there.

In the last one year of this administration, how has the government impacted on the life of the people?

In the first instance, we need to understand clearly that we cannot separate the administration of the last eight years as an entity. We tag ourselves as continuity government. You have to give kudos to architect of modern Kwara. We are building on what he had done. It is going to be difficult for me assessing the government in the last one year because what we have is a continuity of a seamless government.
Basically, what we have been able to achieve in the last one year is a continuation of projects we started in the past eight years. We started some new projects as well which is a continuation of the vision of the architect of modern Kwara.

This is where we are, and for clarification, the architect is Dr Bukola Saraki. We thank Almighty God. We have done a bit on infrastructure, a few things in health, we have done quite a few things in agriculture. We intend to pursue the agricultural thing into full macro level, to be able to benefit us both at the medium and small scale level enterprises and, of course, the full blown commercial agriculture.
I believe we have given a good account of ourselves considering the revenues that accrued to this state in the last one year. Without sounding like a broken record, we are on number 33 on revenue ladder. 
The reality on ground is that our needs and necessities increased tremendously than in the last eight years because of development that had come into Kwara. A lot of strain on current infrastructure, like water, electricity, road network etc, but we have been able to provide transformers to alleviate some of these problems. With success comes a lot of other things and stress on the current infrastructure is due to the success we have achieved in the last eight-nine years now.

What do you have to say on late payment of salary of workers of local government which some people have said created impression that the state is broke?

That is an oxymoron; that the state is broke and yet is able to pay salary. If we are broke we would not be able to pay at all. For the avoidance of doubt, Kwara is not broke. What we had was that allocation from the federation account coming in late. The last time we had an issue like this was when we had an interswitch problem for the transfer of fund, that the local government got money late and lots of things happened in parastatals too. There has been a gross reduction in the federal allocation and this is not only in Kwara State but every where in the federation. The governors forum would be tackling the lateness of the federation account allocation in due course.

There is no way a state can cut local government out in financial dealings without giving them what is due to them. This is because local governments are autonomous part of the federation. Local government, state afterall are autonomous. Don't forget that a member of Joint Allocation Committee for the state is in ACN, an opposition party. If anything goes wrong the Offa local government boss will be the first to cry out because he doesn't belong to our party. There has not been any issue. He understands that the allocation came in late for everybody.
On the issue of being broke, Kwara was rated among the top healthy states by CBN a couple of months ago. Basically, insolvency or being broke has a lot to do on rating. And, on the N10billion we took from commercial bank, the bank assessed our ability to pay the loan. What we have is an irrevocable standing payment order on money we collected. We are still healthy.

There are complaints in some quarters that this government is only signing MoUs while yet to execute projects to show for it?

If you want to do anything right, you should be able to take all the necessary steps, more so, when you have a different government in place. The arrangement has to be properly put in place. The problem in the country is that a succeeding government saying the predecessor didn't do something well and then discontinue the programme even when it is beneficial to the people. Some people do it out of ego. A lot of these MOU programmes went to the state House of Assembly which made them regular and properly entrenched in the Kwara State Law. The MoUs are the first steps towards making the right choices and decisions.

If you don't sign MoU, you can't get it right. First was the Vasolar consortium that's supposed to take 20,000 hectares of land to plant rice. we plan to give them 5,000 hectares per year to be able to assess what we are doing with the company. Opposition will just hear 20, 000 hectares they won't find out that we are doing it in phases, this is to make sure we safeguard our investment. The projects will surely come into fruition. Infact, if we are just MoU government, how many other governments have signed these MoUs till date? None of them. 

People believe the government had taken the right steps more than any one else. Look at cassava production, the federal government has enforced that we must include certain amount of cassava in bread that we make. The federal government has signed MoU with Kwara State government on same issue. Importation of rice will be banned before the end of this year, and we have already planned ahead for that by bringing in consortium of rice producers into the state. We will import cassava chips and MoU on that is already signed, with the federal government hopefully backing us with incentives.

With Absorption of 1,000 newly recruited workers into the state civil service how do you plan to pay salary of workers in view of the reduction in the federal allocation?

We are making diversion into other avenues. IGR, foreign direct investment, to generate more income from small and medium scale to be able to tax them and bring in money for the state. We are properly positioned to do this. As it is right now, we have the cargo shed, we are finishing up with the refrigeration aspect because we intend to export agricultural products. The cassava market is so large, as China is the greatest importer of cassava as they can't plant it. So, we intend to key into this and be able to export cassava from Kwara State, including rice too and generate a lot of income. We are also positioning ourselves in skill acquisition. We have positioned our technical colleges to come up with innovation on skills we have in Ajase-Ipo. We are looking at a situation whereby our youth will be gainfully employed and exported to other states of the federation; for instance, graduates of the aviation college.

What has happened to the plan to have campuses for Kwara State University (KWASU) in Kwara South and Kwara North?

We will take things step by step. It took Unilorin over 30 years to move from temporary site to the permanent site. We need to be patient. We had not even had the first graduation from KWASU. A lot of people had taken political position on the matter, which is totally unfair. If you look at Kwara State's economy and the internally generated revenue, we need to be very careful to allow things develop over time. If you look at some of the things we do in the country, you see we do them without proper planning and thus they eventually get damaged, for instance, some new generation commercial banks. We need to know that development must be progressive and all the campuses will get operational within a clear period of time.

What is the situation of things on oil discovery in Aran-Orin area of the state?

I won't even go as far as say discover. Rather I would say what we have had to be determined by the NNPC. We have to follow the normal due process for them to come over and establish what was discovered whether it is crude oil or not, or leaked pipeline, or facility being vandalised. We don't want to pre-empt the investigation of the NNPC. Something was discovered in Aran-Orin, I agree with you, but the information that came up on the issue was not properly processed.

The normal due process is that the NNPC will come, they have a particular arm and geological arm to establish the amount, the quantity, type and all before we can come out on specifically. We only need to wait for the outcome. The Kwara State government has decided to follow the due process and wait for the outcome.