Handling of state’s finances
In spite of the situation I met on ground, I am the only governor that carried forward N15bn to the next year (from 2015/2016). Of course, there is the N20bn loan by the Infrastructure Development Bank which you all know about. When we came, I knew there would be some difficulty on the way, so we controlled our spending. Spending in the government house has dropped by 70 per cent. Since I came into office, I have not chattered a jet. These are some of the sacrifices we make to save money and be ready for the present danger. Also, let me tell you that no one believed that we would continue to pay salaries but today, we support our local governments to pay salaries and help them make their legal deductions. This is the situation in which we find ourselves.
On the economy of the state
When I came in from the private sector, I knew and believed that for us to change the lives of people in the state, we have to change the economic dynamics of the state. Our internally generated revenue (IGR) is less than N200m and it is collated from the ‘pay as you earn’ taxes from the salaries which we pay, mostly. So, the only way out was to empower people to be able to sustain themselves with businesses which will grow and improve our tax base. This is the reason why we have floated the rice and sugar cane production scheme to create more than 200 direct and indirect jobs. We are also looking into and taking agriculture seriously because that is the only way through which we can have comparative advantage and become a reference point for those who need to catch up. But even in agriculture, we are faced with a few challenges like high-cost of production, high cost of maintenance and the cost of manpower. If, for example, I take rice, the average farmers cultivate 2.5 tons per hectare while the global average is between 7 and 8 tons per hectare. The Thais, our competitors, are cultivating between 7 and 8 tons per hectare and Brazil is doing between 9 and 10 tons per hectare while Australia is cultivating about 11 tons per hectare. How do you cope with that? If you spend N10 to get 2 tons and they spend N10 to get 10 tons, how do you compete with them?
All these talk about feeding ourselves and trading some abroad, our brothers abroad are very stiff competition. For us to be able to produce competitively and avoid a situation in which the imported one becomes cheaper than the ones we produce here, we have to ensure that the factors of production are not exorbitant. These are the issues we are currently addressing. This is why we are currently aligning with Dangote to boost to production; that is why we need massive investments.
Already, Dangote has begun the pilot scheme here and good enough, we are now getting between 6 to 7 tons per hectare. That is almost four times what our farmers could come up with before now. This, I tell you, is the technology we are trying to marry with our farming, to make our agricultural sector smart and productive.
On wealth creation
In addition, we believe that we have to empower people, but the empowerment structure that we inherited is not based on demand. Why should you teach 100 people carpentry and you do not factor in the number of carpenters you need in a particular city? If you have a city which needs 100 carpenters and you churn out 200, whatever these needed 100 would have made will now be split in two and they become under-employed and the circle goes on and on. What we try to do which is different from that initial plan, is to factor in demand, look into every village and dwelling, see what they have, what they lack and train people to fill the missing voids. We have to do this to ensure that these people earn their N18,000 minimum wage monthly.
Like I said, the major focus is to create wealth, a localised economy which will further support the state. If we continue on this path there may be respite because oil has no future and the price of crude will continue to fall due to new technology developed to make the exploitation and refining of oil far cheaper than it used to be. Worse, more countries are opting for other forms of energy which do not leave so much destruction in its wake. Also, when you have more supply and less demand, the price will continue to crash. Perhaps, in the next 10, 20, 30 years, oil will be obsolete and not relied upon as it is today. If Jigawa State does not shape up, it will be in terrible shape, I tell you. So, our focus is to create an economy which will give us the necessary edge to keep the state going when crude oil becomes history.
On infrastructure
The moment I stepped in, we assessed all the water schemes in the state and embarked on massive reticulation, spending as much N700bn to do this. Now, we are embarking on setting up water provision projects in new areas. We fix the ones we have and set up new ones, expanding the scope gradually to give everyone in the state water.
We have spent close to N10 billion to carry on the projects we inherited and more.
As for power supply, we have connected a lot of towns that have not seen light in 20 years to the national grid. Now, they had no light, either because the cables were destroyed, the transformers were not purchased and fixed, all that is done with now and ll those towns are connected and they have steady power supply.
On housing, we believe that we have to develop a model which will help our teeming population in the state to be able to own their houses in our local governments. We are working with the Federal Mortgage Bank of Nigeria to developing low cost houses. The housing units of two bedroom flats will cost no less than N1.5 million to enable our workers in the local governments afford them. We have done the research, costing and have purchased all we need to start work to a great degree; all we are waiting for before we begin is to get the nod of the Federal Government. We are doing this so that a medium salary-earner can be able to own a house and pay for the next 15 to 20 years, without hassles. When compared to the models we had some years ago, where you build houses of N5 million or N10 million for people who earn very little, this is a better plan, we think.
In the area of health, we have a project which will see each ward get a health facility in the next four years. Even the existing hospitals we have are not professionally staffed because most of the doctors are in the city and would have nothing to do with rural areas, because of the demand.
To correct the imbalance, we have a nursing school with accreditation to train 100 nurses but this is inadequate so we have started another nursing school which has begun quite small, but will grow over time. From this school, we will get about 100 students who will go train as nurses and midwives abroad. We will spend close to N7 million to train a nurse in our own facility but the training abroad is in a school where the nurses who are sent to Saudi Arabia and the United Kingdom are trained. The training costs about N4.7 million, so it is even cheaper to train them over there. Now, back here, we try to do the selection based on each constituency and develop them so that after training, you have to support and work for your people for two or three years and then help train others. This way, the cycle goes on and we keep training them. The programme is designed in such a way that we keep fresh ones coming so that per adventure the older ones decide to go away after some years, we will not be left in the dark. In our hard-to-reach areas, we will have nurses and midwives and continue building the necessary infrastructure for all the wards, knowing that we have the proper staff in them. The same applies to doctors; we interview and then select 60 students of medicine and surgery who will go to further their studies in China. We choose two from each of the 30 constituencies which we have, with the agreement that after training, they will work for us in that locality for some years. If we do this successfully, the issues we have with medical workers going to hard-to-reach areas will not be there.
This is what we are doing in health; vigorously trying to pursue and reduce the manpower deficit which has threatened our health sector over the years.
We have also asked our teachers in the primary schools to choose those who can be mentored, so that in the long-run, we will have our young people who studied medicine and surgery resident here and working for us for a few years.
In order to tackle the infrastructural challenges of the hospitals, we are currently upgrading two hospitals; we are renovating and taking care of these hospitals one at a time. We will do that to all the major hospitals in addition to equipping them properly.
On empowerment
In the area of empowerment, we have set a project in motion for widows in the rural areas. We give them three goats to breed at no cost and really, it costs them nothing to rear the goats. The gestation period is about 6 months thus, in one year, one she-goat would give birth twice. Some even give birth thrice. That is the best way to empower rural women. We chose 20 widows from each of the 227 wards for this scheme. Now, this solves the problem of demand for goats’ skin. It has been on for some time in the state and we want to continue with it. This has worked in many countries and even in my personal foundation.
Also on empowerment, based on the demands in each locality, we support 1,200 young people, based on scientific approach. The different places have different degrees of acceptability to certain businesses, so we carried out a reconnaissance survey and decided that if we do sponsor you for a business, it has to be one which has a great degree of certainty to flourish and be profitable. This is an on-going process. What we tell the young people to do is to develop their business plans and bring it to us and as long as it is convincing and sustainable, we’ll approve it. We don’t want to train someone and give him grants to start a business and after a month or two, the business collapses because originally, it was not a sustainable one.
On education
For education, when we came in, we offered our universal basic education counterpart funding of N700m and got the federal government to bring its own share. Currently, we are renovating the schools, pulling down old infrastructures. For the first quarter of 2013, we have received the counterpart funding and that job will be awarded this week or next. Before we move on to that for 2014, we hope to get the N700 million or N800 million from the federal government, so that we can add our own counterpart funding and undertake renovation of another set of schools; replace the chairs and a number of other things within them. In addition to all these, we must realise that the major challenge we have is the quality and the quantity of the teachers. Seeing this, we decided to go on massive teacher-training by buying 1,000 tablets, in order to see how much we can rescue the dwindling rate of success in the final ‘O’ level examination. The last time out, only 4.5 per cent of them managed to get the necessary 4 or 5 credits, including mathematics and English. Also, they tend to score higher in NECO than in WAEC. We pay about N600 to N700 million as their fees for these exams and it is only fair that they pass both exams. Seeing this, we decided on a crash programme; we decided that the most brilliant from each school would be selected and given each of these tablets, with all the lessons in the curriculum, past questions and answers and marking system, so that the student can keep track of his scores. If this succeeds, we said to ourselves, within three to four months, and they excel in WAEC they’ll train others, then we have a blueprint. We did this, it turned out to be a very beautiful experiment, but we were not exactly happy with the performance. Also, we discovered that we could not just get up and fix an issue which developed about eight years ago in three or four months. The situation is so bad that in some schools, there are onlt two teachers, the headmaster and Arabic teacher.
Therefore, we concluded that to be able to tackle the problem well, starting from the primary schools would be a wiser approach. We took the same approach to the primary schools but we had issues; no one wanted to go the hinterlands. The teachers preferred the cities and even there, the quality is not good enough. Nevertheless, we are working on an e-class, where we’ll have all the lessons prescribed by the curriculum in the tablets for the primary school students. The lessons herein will be prepared by professionals in the system. Because of the Internet, we can only get these things into the tablets and not get it in real-time. This is achievable.
Also, we are trying to begin the pilot scheme with 20 or 30 schools in hard-to-reach areas, and then we record what happens and continue to try out other areas. We need help so fast. Look at where our education was back in the day and look at where it is today, when an SS3 student cannot understand a question in the WAEC or NECO examination. The challenge is so much that sometimes, I think that it requires a serious miracle to get better. Worse, it has affected us all. Most of those who passed through those village schools are not proficient; some can write, but when it comes to communicating, it is a huge problem.
On the Jigawa airport
It is very wrong for anyone to infer that I abandoned the Jigawa airport project because it was started by my predecessor. My major challenge with it is about the creation of air routes, that is something which I do not believe in; spending N27,000 for 60 people three times in one week to support traffic development on a route which has been in existence for over a year. How can you develop routes for over a year and you cannot sustain them, yet you continue to take people’s money and claim that? However, all other repairs on the airport are going on; the lighting, the roads and other minor stuff. What will you do with the airport if the planes are not there? If the planes are not landing…but the planes are landing, but I am not in support of people taking taxpayers’ money to subsidise a route for almost a year-plus, yet, the route has not developed as much as it should. Sometimes, all we have is one passenger, yet, we pay for all the other empty seats three times a week. All this ‘shouting’ is all about that subsidy; we cannot continue to pay when there is no traffic but we will continue to use the airport. Pilgrims will be lifted from here this year and we won’t have to go to any other airport but I do not see the need in spending people’s money on traffic when it should build up automatically. I cannot create traffic when there is none and we cannot continue to pay for it as a state. The thing is this; you have to develop the economy and stabilise it to warrant the movement of people. When we create some very profitable businesses or tourist attractions in the state, no one will be aching for traffic because people will know that there is a business which needs to be invested in or a tourist attraction which ought to be seen.
However, I will not allow the people’s wealth to be wasted in the name of traffic subsidisation. No, I will not spend this kind of money daily to support an airline that brings in only one or two passengers per flight or the only time it probably takes more than two is when my team and I are off to somewhere or if there is an occasion in the state; that way, we have about six or even 10 passengers.
The route is undeveloped for a reason. People around Kazaure and Hadejia will prefer to go book their flights in Kano, because they have choices there, it is shorter and they can get a few things done. Most of us are already ‘married’ to Kano, because some relatives live in Kano and it is more commercially viable.
What we intend to do with the airport is create activities which will draw people to the airport. If that works, there is possibility to continue (even if it is for six months). Second, we are discussing on how we can use the airport as an agricultural show-centre.
At one time, it was even muted that we wanted to sell the airport, and I asked “sell it to who?” It is not even commercially viable and who wants to buy such a venture with not-very favourable aspects? I assure you though that we are working on the airport. If you go there, you will see work going on on the run-way, the lights, convenience and lots of other things. We have to complete it; it is ours.
On agriculture
The second state in which Dangote’s tomato-processing factory will come to after Kano will be Jigawa. Kano has 500 hectares for tomato production but right now, I have 200 hectares for tomato farmers in the state. They are working with Dangote to learn and the government is subsidising the transport so that we can learn how to produce according to best practices. What we produce at this initial stage, though, will not be ready for export, the farmers have collected the seeds, have attended the training and we are working with Dangote Tomato Factory in Kagawa to help our farmers before he comes in. He has already put in request for the citing of a tomato packaging factory. We are doing the same with sorghum and sesame seeds, in order to complete the whole value chain. There is a lot going down right now.
Also, in agriculture, we want to take 5o hectares per ward (maybe 10 hectares from four or five villages), bring in extension workers to provide them with better seeds and extension services and training, to ensure that they learn first-hand how to go about their farming. We are trying to move our wards into action by moving into the demonstration farms. Based on the result we get, we now involve the farmers, take a hectare from 10 villages, provide the farmers with certified seeds, agro-chemicals and fertilisers, even the mechanisation will be provided on credit and when the harvest is made, they sell their goods and pay us our money and we move on to the next village in subsequent years. This will work, because we work with them [the farmers], we have their documentation, we have the information about their farms and the various sizes, information about the crops they are growing, as well as a lot of other information. This will help us distribute the fertilisers and prevent all the ugly stories which come with its distribution. What we are doing is complete revolution of agriculture in the state.
Except we discover, by some miracle, a jackpot, sustainable agriculture is the only means for this state to survive. There has been so much talk about rice farming and all that, but no one has ever wondered if the farmer will have anything left after he takes the bank loan, finances his mechanised agricultural system and all that. Our role is to help the farmer make that calculation; that if he borrows, he will not be chained to the loan, that if he finances his scheme, he will not be stuck and sell his produce at exorbitant rates. For him to even do this, you have to ensure he gets great yield, controls pests, gets affordable labour, reduces the cost of production and sees how to make the farmer competitive.
On Islamic Development Bank loan
Jigawa inherited a discussion going on with the Islamic Bank for the loan of $32m to develop agricultural potentials, especially, irrigation agriculture and the road network for the farmers to bring out their goods from the farms. Most of us are not in a hurry to collect money but first, we have to take note of our situation. It will be stupid to continue discussions about that loan, knowing that the state is barely surviving. What you need to do is to get your act together and know exactly what you need to use the loan for. People rush to get these loans because they are almost interest-free. True, different states are working hard to use these loans for income-generation activities within the state but at the long-run, you will have to pay back. Alternatively, we are trying to bring in the private sector, because the government does not have to do everything. What most of the governors in the North are doing is trying to invest in solar power, in order to create jobs for our people and get power into our states.
On girl-child education
The education of the girl-child in Jigawa State is totally free, from nursery to university. In addition, we have classes where we try to bring all the children in school to train them for one or two hours, so that we can better the lives of families who still use their children for labour. You can arrest the children or the parents and they will still be on the roads tomorrow. What we try to do is to relate with their plight and see how to develop more programmes to attract women to education. We even provide books and other stationaries to encourage them. The bottom line, though, is to encourage the parents to support them and see the need for their education, in order to ensure a better or brighter future.
Agenda for the state
My biggest agenda is to create a sustainable economy for Jigawa and agriculture is one way we hope to achieve this. We want to shift reliance on government, create industries for people to earn and pay taxes for government to also earn. My motivation is to see how I can change the economic fortune of the state.
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