Abdullahi Umar Ganduje is the governor of Kano State. At a Media Round-Table with journalists covering activities of the All Progressives Congress (APC) in Abuja, the governor spoke about his plan to establish a rice pyramid to replace the old groundnut pyramid the state was known for. He also pledged he would never reduce workers’ salaries despite the challenging economy. KEHINDE ABDULSALAM was there. Excerpts:
How does Kano plan to diversify in view of the economic realities in the country? And what is the cost of governance like in the state?
Thank you for the questions. The second question on the cost of governance and how much we have been able to save, we have saved a lot but it isn’t easy to quantify in terms of facts and figures but two things are very important; first the attitude towards governance by the administration and by the people and secondly, the physical reduction in the cost of governance. I have reduced the ministries from 19 to 14; I slashed the salaries of political office holders by half. So by simply arithmetic you will know that things have been reduced. Also, I established a new project payroll, all our contracts are been publicised, all our council deliberations are been publicised, so you can see the issue of transparency in Kano and definitely that is leading to the reduced cost of governance in Kano State. Efforts of diversification of Kano State I told you that in agriculture we have taken three areas that we have comparative advantage; the production of wheat, rice and tomatoes and all these we have people that are ready to partake, people that are ready to purchase and the farmers are ready and we are providing an enabling environment and what we have discovered is that agriculture shouldn’t be limited to raining season alone and therefore, we are utilising our dams, we have over 24 dams in the state and we are using them. Just last week, I distributed 5,000 water pumps and we distributed to the actual farmers because I told you that it is our point of duty to visit all the irrigation clusters and in process I measure the size of the farmers by geo hyping and tagging the farmer so every farmer who is involved in the cluster we know the size of his farm, we know the amount of fertilizer he requires, amount of insecticide he is requiring and also we have reinstated our fertiliser blending company, it is now working 24 hours. We have spent over N500 million and the fertiliser we are producing is much better than any fertiliser that is being imported because the fertiliser we are producing is based on the chemical nature of the soil in Kano state so I assure you. We have rice millers now and I was surprised when we visited one of the rice millers one lady came from Lagos looking to purchase 50 trucks of rice but the company could only provide 25 and another came from Enugu looking for 30 trucks but the man said he could only give 10 trucks and he has the raw market and any farmers who has produced rice or wheat he is ready to buy. So you see how farming is lucrative and very soon we are establishing rice pyramid which will replace groundnut pyramid in Kano and I will invite you for the launching of the rice pyramid in Kano. If you look at the philosophy behind the minimum wage, it wasn’t because Nigeria had too much money that is why the salaries of workers were increased, it was because workers were still suffering. In Kano State we don’t intend to reduce the salaries of workers what we do is that we use our cost to generate revenue. We use them to help us to fish out what we are supposed to collect from the rich people and that in itself will be a way to sustain us and we are trying very hard and we have told them that we are not reducing this salary.
On security I do know that Kano State used to be a very violent state. You met virtually with all stakeholders in security, did you also meet with Igbo community because I do know that you used to have inter-tribal wars; did you at any time meet with these people too?
The Igbo community, the Yoruba community and any other tribes in Kano, I want to carry them along and I will like to inform you that two months ago we connected in an interface conference which was done live and it consists of all private nationality, all religious groupings and we will continue to coexist and I have constituted a permanent interface committee where there is a meeting from time to time. Also to show that those who are staying with us in Kano are mainly those living in Sabon-Geri and I made it a point of deliberate policy to provide some facilities in Sabon-Geri. Right now, we are constructing a road and very soon we will start constructing another in Igbo road. I was there and the celebration is very high; in fact, I no longer call them non-indigenes, I call them indigenes of Kano State with primordial claims from where they come from. That is their new designation.
Kano State used to be one of the states with high turnout in terms of education and judging from the falling standard that we have across the country today, what effort is your government putting in place to ensure that the state is returned to its original position in terms of education?
Falling standard of education is an issue all over the nation. Quality is always challenging quantity and in Kano State we are doing very high; we have involved inspectorate group which is in charge of quality control to ensure that standard is maintained but you know in maintaining standard takes a lot of time before the measurements is noticed, so I can’t precisely tell you that in terms of arithmetic that the standard has gone from this level to that level; it is something that will take a lot of time, something that will take a lot of input, the quality of the teachers matters, the instructional materials matter. There are so many variables we have to put in place and we are doing that.
Can you give us an idea of where you are coming from in terms of Internally Generated Revenue and what the reformation of that board have brought and some figures, how much the board is bringing now?
I just talked about revenue generation. We had a lot of oil money from the last administration and at that time we didn’t emphasise on internally generated revenue but they say necessity is the mother of invention. Now that we are in a necessity we are now inventing. Before now, we could hardly get N1 billion as internally generated revenue but I assure you now from the beginning we have over N2 billion because some infrastructures are just been laid on the ground and some technical advisers, some are collecting money from landed properties, some from rented properties, some from vehicles, some from registration of business premises, we have taken all the sectors and put technical advisers and they are working hard to see how we will increase the internally generated revenue in Kano.
How do you view Local government autonomy in Kano?
We always meet with them; but one thing is that some of them can’t even pay salaries so we have to augment what they are doing. So it isn’t only the autonomy that matters but autonomy and augmentation. I think now in Nigeria it is called modern autonomy because if you are relying only on autonomy some of the local governments will shut down and it is something you work together to generate revenue, you give them what is their entitlement according to the constitution and also if they are in trouble you bail them out.
The last federal administration invested so much on Almajiri schools, I want to know what the state of the Almajiri schools are now, have they really contributed to the development of education in the state?
Almajiri schools; the last Federal Government introduced it but the school is not well articulated, it is a wrong policy. For example, in my village, we have these schools, it is only 50 students and in Kano we have over 3 million Almajiris and the number of Almajiri is almost a problem to the number of school children. So the issue is not creating a school. If you are creating an Almajiri school that is abnormal, who will like to be tagged Almajiri? Is it that after completing your studies your certificate will be tagged Almajiri? And later in life you will be called a graduate of Almajiri school, which means you were an Almajiri? So it has some social problems. What we are adapting is integration, the Almajiri are integrated into the normal school system and from our investigation most of the Almajiris in Kano came from other parts of the Northern states, from Chad and Niger. So we have concluded that the Almajiri schools should be integrated into the normal school and any mallam who is coming with over 200 children from another state should allow the children to be integrated in the school or he should take his children back to his state. I think that is a more sustainable idea rather than building schools; how many schools can you build? It is difficult; so it is better you integrate it. I wrote a letter to Mr. President and I told him the statistics of the Almajiri and I told him the method we have taken but that will require a lot of money because you need more infrastructures, more teachers, more materials for teaching and so on but that is a starting point.
Administration of Kwankwaso embarked on a lot of infrastructural projects in the state and people were worried that those projects accumulated a lot of debts to the state. Can you let us into the debt profile of the state and how you are coping with it?
When we were in government together we had a lot of money and we started a lot of mega projects that couldn’t be completed, we had a lot of debt but having a debt isn’t a crime because whatever we expended on is in public interest and it is my responsibility to complete all the abandoned projects. There are some projects abandoned during the administration before Kwankwaso. For instance, two mega hospitals were abandoned for over 10 years and now we have started to complete those projects. Many rural roads were abandoned for almost 10 years now I have taken time to complete them; so I don’t believe anything should be abandoned especially infrastructure because when the project was taken, it was taken under public interest and it is a waste if we don’t do that.
KEHINDE ABDULSALAM
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