Date: 2018-01-25

For Governor Ahmed Abdufatah of Kwara State, telling states how to spend the Paris Club refund was a mere advisory because states have a responsibility to determine how they utilised money. He spoke with Politics Editors. Tobi Soniyi was there and presents the excerpts:

Do you think governors should be monitored on how they use the Paris Club refunds?

The Paris Club money is a refund to the states which presupposes that their monies had been taken in the past and is being returned to them. For us in the state we had expectations of this money and we keyed it into our budgeting system and it has since supported the execution of the 2017 budget. Why would you monitor people on how they execute their programmes? It is their money. If I borrow money from you today and I pay you back, would I tell you how to spend the money? I can only give my advice.

Like the president said they should pay salaries and all that?

He was just being suggestive because those were the pressures that were brought across to him by governors in making the request for their refunds. So, he was also advising that since some of you said you needed it to pay salaries, this is the money, just pay salaries so that they are happy' but that does not mean that it is to compel governors.

How far have you gone in making Kwara state an agricultural hub of the nation?

Agric, as you know is one area that has been supported by the federal government through various funding windows. As a state, we’ve taken advantage of all the platforms provided by the federal government. You will recall that we pioneered commercial agriculture through invitation of displaced farmers from Zimbabwe who came in to drive commercial agriculture here. As it is, we are happy that they have gone through their thick and thin and have settled down into three major consumptions largely: poultry, mixed cropping and dairy.

This is about your seventh year in office. Looking back, what are the things you feel you should have done better?

Largely, when you are coming into an office like this, you have very high expectations, high hopes of things you want to achieve. But don't forget that you are largely guided by a well- designed, methodically put together Medium Term Expenditure Framework (MTEF) keyed into our budgeting systems. And most importantly, we have looked at an aggregate of what the needs of our people are and we've worked out the financial model to suit into these. As it is, I will say I am happy with some of the areas we've been able to achieve and made impact in areas of health, water supply, roads and most importantly, we’ve impacted on the basic education level too.

As it is, we have been challenged financially. It is not unconnected with the fact that we are all heavily reliant on the federally allocated funds. But I am happy to let you know that we have changed our revenue base and have since changed our funding window and improved the way and manner in which we are carrying out our expenditure in Kwara State. As it is now, we don’t have the luxury of time but the modest achievements we've had, have since keyed into our revenue base and our programmes are being carried on despite the paucity of funds that we are faced with in the country today.

We understand that you are one of the states paying salaries as at when due, how have you been able to do that?

The financial challenge started kicking in around 2013-2014 and this prompted our senses to look at other areas where funds can be assessed. The first thing we did was to look internally. We reviewed our revenue generating platform. We changed the people, we changed the process and we changed the technology to drive the process and this saw the movement of our revenue from an annual accrual of N7 billion to about N17 billion. That automatically created some level of headroom to carry out our expenditure- both recurrent and expenditure, hence our ability to support salaries and also carry out capital projects as you see them going on right now.

Are you grooming anybody to succeed you and do you think your party, APC has performed well to merit another term in 2019?

Firstly, at the state level, what drive governance truly are strengthened institutions. As it were, in addition to our desire to ensure that our programmes as encapsulated in our budget are carried out to the letter, but most importantly we are strengthening the institutions that will support governance. These are the areas that drive good governance and deliver service. So, with the arrangements that are in place, we are sure that those who will come in with the strengthened institutions will begin to see the need on how to carry these things out accordingly. So, there is no fear about who is coming in to take over from us. On the issue of status at the federal level, you and I are not unfamiliar with the fact that there was a major shift from the PDP to the APC, and truly, APC came with a lot of expectations. However, the attendant circumstances at the time the APC government was being ushered in, especially the drop in the price of crude oil affected the economy.

In trying to gauge what APC has done so far, from a modest perspective, I think it has done well because it had so many facets to tackle. It has the facet of ensuring that institutions are working, ensuring that resources are available to drive programmes; there is a huge deficit of infrastructure especially in energy and roads. These are very critical to development and growth. So, by and large, getting to create platforms that will bring these things into the right platforms to allow governance to move on was quite herculean. I will say that modestly, the APC government has achieved and it requires some time to build on what it has achieved as platforms to give the desired impact that will truly change what people’s expectations are.

What are some of the legacy projects you administration has put in place in the last seven years?

In the last seven years, we have approached developments from a very strategic perspective. Firstly, we broke down our systems into Human Capital Development which can even drive our infrastructure. In the area of Human Capital Development, we looked at the tertiary institutions and we sought to enhance engineering in the state university. As it is, we have been able to build a brand new engineering vomplex to give a proper platform for engineering studies in Kwara State University. Of course, in the secondary schools, we have not only renovated quite a number of our classrooms, we have also been able to ensure that teachers are available on the agreed ratio basis to teach the pupils. I am happy to let you know that we have been able to translate this into an increased percentage of students that are passing at the right level to close to about 64 to 70 percent which is quite new and a major achievement for us here.

In the area of health, we modelled five general hospitals across the state, one of which was the Ilorin General Hospital which hitherto was the University of Ilorin Teaching Hospital and since they moved out to the permanent site, they left a carcass there. We have since transformed this into a first-class general hospital that is centrally located and serves our people. And most importantly, it is fully equipped and it fully complements the University of Ilorin Teaching Hospital in terms of service both in material and personnel. We have also worked in other areas of the state especially in Kwara North where we remodelled a general hospital in Kaiama. We also remodelled the hospitals at Share, Offa and the one in Omu- Aran also remodeled. Of course, we have a plethora of basic health centres that have also been worked on but these ones are very critical because they are the secondary level of healthcare service delivery.

In terms of roads, we have done roads across the 16 local governments. Some are being rehabilitated, new ones are being done. We are carrying out what we call the diamond underpass, which is going to be the first of its kind in this environment. But most importantly, the roads have touched every local government, township roads, state roads linking communities, farmlands and several other areas too numerous to mention.

What is your reaction to the call for the creation of cattle colonies?

I think we need to sit down and truly look at what is going to work for us as a country. We must first recognised that the cattle herders are Nigerians whose interests have not been truly looked into in the light of the services that they render to the national economy. We require a very responsive agricultural policy which must be wholistically pursued and must carry everybody along to ensure that nobody is left out. I am sure that by the time that we are able to sit down and look at what practises are done in other parts of the world we would be able to domesticate something that would suit our interest and will suit our peculiarities. But one thing is clear, the way and manner we used to do it in the past is not going to work again because the space is getting smaller, the population is growing and we require optimal land use in such a way and manner that we will begin to get the right benefit. Most of our lands especially for agriculture is not optimally utilised. So much land but with very small output because we have not improved on the way and manner that we are going to create inputs and expect outputs; i.e. based on education, types of seeds, types of herbicides. All these things would need to be reviewed wholistically so that we begin to see optimal land use to generate maximum wealth and also create space for cattle herders in such a way that they would see the benefit of improving over and above what they are doing today. Everybody knows that the movement of cows from one location to the other is very tiresome and most importantly, does not give us the kind of benefit that we are supposed to get from the cattle. By the time they move from Point A to Point B, they are almost emaciated.

Given the mutterings within the party, should party chieftains who defected from PDP to APC decide to return home to PDP what would you do?

It is an unlikely scenario, but don’t forget that because we run an inclusive system, the followership decides the direction they want us to go to. If they insist that they want to us to remain, we remain; if they want us to go, we go. When we decided to leave the PDP for the APC; it was an inclusively designed position. Inputs were taken from the ward to state levels before we took the decision we took at that time, but I must tell you that as it is today, we are comfortable with where we are and we have not seen any basis why we should leave the APC.