Kwara State Governor AbdulFatah Ahmed, in this interview with ABDULLAHI OLESIN, speaks about the state’s concept of ‘shared prosperity’. He also gives reasons why governors do not buy into federal government’s plan to have a sovereign Wealth fund, insisting that saving up the money in the face of current governance deficit is tantamount to postponing the evil day.
Your Excellency, what informed the recent launch of a new logo for the state?
The new Kwara State logo was to bring a sense of belonging and, most importantly, it tries to showcase our diversities, of our resourcefulness and our strong desire to move forward as a people for progress, growth and? development. You see, in trying to see how to move the state forward, it is usual that you create a sense of belonging where people would have a common goal, a common understanding that would be a buy-in on what development would be like.
The essence of the logo is not unconnected with the current happenings in Nigeria. The current economic and social environment the people find themselves has led to a process whereby our differences are being taken negatively as a country.
Government needs to recognize that moving any system forward is a deliberate effort, and not a spontaneous one. It is required we come together as a people and agree on a shared vision on how we intend to see the next level in development and how the benefit would get to the people.
Under this shared vision, there has to be deliberate effort to take our differences as strength, to use it as a source of pride rather than as a difference that would create problems among the people. So, as Kwarans, we want to see ourselves despite our diversities; we want to see our diversities as a strength that if we bring diverse environment together to create a hybrid. It is supposed to come out stronger where there would be shared vision, and understanding of what the future would look like.
For Kwarans, we have found ourselves in the middle belt part of Nigeria and endowed with a lot of natural resources. This became necessary for government to come out with a unique platform that has a shared vision, that is, if you look at the logo today, it tells you that there is agriculture, there is abundant surface water which could serve our economic prosperity.
This has seen us evolving a strong desire to move Kwara under a shared vision to a level where our children would see themselves as one, see themselves as moving the economy that would continue to propel the future of the environment forward.
The concept of the shared vision is what has been put into a vision to develop into the logo.
It is a reflection of not only that Kwara is available for prospective investors, but a deliberate effort to create a peaceful environment, to create a vision that would be shared by the current and future generations. The logo is like a summary of the concept of shared prosperity.
The shared prosperity is like conglomerate of every aspect of what it takes to drive our system forward. For you to have prosperity, you must have the capacity to harness the available resources and be able to design them into a platform that would create a picture that everybody can see and be able to create a sense of hope for Kwarans.
As a country, people are beginning to lose hope because of the economic situation and the breakdown in infrastructure. But Kwara wants to rekindle the sense of hope by taking advantage of what the state is endowed with. Kwara has a very fertile environment that supports agriculture.
Government responsibility is to move the current subsistence farming to commercial level as about 70 percent of the people live in rural areas practising subsistence farming. Kwara is positioned with the logo to make life better, taking cognizance of the need to develop human capital resources, infrastructure, good governance and driving the economy which are all consolidated into the shared prosperity.
How do you intend to meet Kwarans expectations on execution of some capital projects?
We have developed a policy trust on critical areas that affect our people on roads, youth development, health, agriculture, education, water, energy and of course security. Now don’t forget the fact that our desire to pursue from this angle is largely to the fact that resources for development are very scarce. And for you to begin to have impact of the people, you must have a planned process on how to allow these developmental programmes to carry on.
That takes us to a strong development planning process, which sees us articulating how do we intend to reach our people in terms of infrastructure. We don’t have all the resources we required. 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 optimize allocation of resources.
Our defined priorities are being carried largely from our desire to drive the economy. This is what is informing the choice of one project over another.
We have made it clear even at the inception of this administration that all communities that did not have a capital project would ultimately have one, and we are moving on. Those who did not get electricity in the last administration are getting during this administration.
So we begin to see development as a modulated programme which implies that as we are moving on, there are plans. That is why we outlined all the roads we want to do, but that does not mean that we want to do all the roads at the same time, but it will create a sense of hope in our people; that development is gradual based on available resources.
So, our first responsibility was to complete all ongoing projects to let people know that our programme is to ensure that there is no project that is abandoned. In carrying on and completing all ongoing projects, we now move to the new project we have outlined largely chosen on our outlined priority. 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 are taking cognizance of capacity building largely on information from our funding windows, because the desire for more is not enough, it is driven by the capacity to access funds and you and I know that these funds are very scarce. We must be able to see how to allocate the funds, how to access these funds to augment whatever is coming from the federation allocation and what is being generated internally.
So between you and me, 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 we 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 all the monies we require. Unfortunately there are some of our projects that are federal projects and we are trying to see how we create a synergy between the state and the federal government, because as it is now there is some level of disconnect.
Recently, I had to send in another save-our-soul (SOS) to the federal government specifically to the President that the Offa/Erin-Ile road, which is a federal government 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. So, some of these federal projects that are not getting proper attention from the federal government are major problems for the state. Kwara has no resources to fix them and they are competing with our own projects.
Even though when we do them, there is no assurance that we are going to get our money back. So, we are trying and I know the federal government has come up with a programme,? trying to give us a level of assurance which would allow states to carry out federal roads and then get reimbursement.
But a typical example is the road we did in Baruten, in Ilesha Baruba-Chikanda road, up until this moment, we have not gotten the money. We are only paid half of what we expended on the road. If that money has been funded, I can embark on another federal road for instance and then complete it and I would be paid back.?????????
Another one is the Gbugbu-Patigi road; we have been doing something on that. These are very critical roads. Kaiama-Kisi is another critical road, another federal road. You can see the Egbe-Eruku road is another very serious road, all federal roads, and they are in such position that the capacity of our resources cannot meet their needs.
But if the federal government agrees to refund us fully, I can borrow money to do those roads. That would be the easiest thing for me to do, but the fear is that I borrow money, mortgage the future of the state and the federal government does not repay me – it is going to be a double jeopardy for us.
But on the general terms, we will spend our own time and energy in ensuring that our role of putting together state and local roads are put together under our shared prosperity programme and under our defined priority in ensuring that we drive the economy of the state.
What is your administration doing to arrest mass failure in public examinations?
Yeah, education is one area that we have been very critical, not only for the state – even for the country. We all see the general down trend in the education sector as reflected by the results being recorded by our children during the NECO and the senior secondary school exams. We know that their failure is not resulting from what we have done at that level.
It moves way back to basic level and that was why it became expedient for us to have a complete transformation of the education sector. Which led us to the fact that our colleges of education that are supposed to provide the basic education at that level requires to have teachers that are trained to do that job. And that saw us reforming the colleges of education back 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 are able to earn additional funding.
If this funding they were earning were used to drive the primary focus for which the schools were set up, it would have been good, but it has led to loss of focus. That was why we firstly had to stop those outreach programmes for degree awarding that was threatening the focus of the schools and allow the schools to go back to training teachers in primary education, and you saw the model that came out with (college of education), Oro, which was now being replicated in Ilorin and Lafiagi.
Part of what led to the loss of focus was the bloating of the workforce. Traditionally, there is a ratio that is supposed to be maintained between academic and non-academic staff. And this would aid in driving the schools along the proper focus.
But you find out that most of the schools along the line had loaded their non-academic staff over and above academic staff, to the extent that we sometimes get confused as to the focus of the schools.
The focus of colleges of education is to train teachers. It is an academic institution. So largely there should be every three academic staff and one non-academic staff, but the reverse is the case.
So more money is being spent on non-academic staff than the academic staff. Changes of focus allows improper utilization of funds and that is why the main focus would begin to suffer from funding and this is why we have decided to create what we call 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.
Is there any collaboration between the state and the local government, especially in the execution of road projects? And any plan for erection of more motor packs given the fact that Ilorin is expanding by the day?
Thank you very much. The first thing we did when we came in was to devise this concept of local government? to have a buy-in into our policy. You see, we have our budget packaged into a medium term. We define a four year developmental programme across critical sectors that affect our people.
We have got information through our electioneering campaign periods where we captured them into documents which we will use as a basis for providing infrastructure, driving the economy, giving good governance and most importantly for human capital development for the next four years. This shared provision is now being shared with the local governments.
We had a platform where the local governments have been made to see that we desire to work on the same pace in terms of giving specific targets, especially in areas of road construction, for instance. That is why you see that we are deliberate to source about N1billion on primarily 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. The primary health cares are actually the primary responsibility of the local governments.
But we, as a government, have also taken advantage of funding windows coming in from the Millennium Development Goals (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’s 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 projects that is carried on by the local government, they are designed to be sent to the Ministry of Local Governments to ensure commoness in what is being carried in 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 again by which you can optimally distribute infrastructural needs to the people.
Now, Ilorin is a developing city.Save for the peaceful environment, 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, 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’s demand.
On the issue of motor parks, it is ideally the responsibility of local governments. So we have requested? 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.
The plans are already on ground, except that there are few resources coming in as a result of shortfalls, but between you and me all the local governments have the platforms that can transmit or translate the motor parks into revenue generating outfit.
Adequate motor parks would be made available while illegal ones would be moved to the legal areas where they would support orderliness for commuters.
Why are the governors not comfortable with the sovereign wealth fund (SWF)?
The sovereign wealth fund, in a very simple term, is designed by the federal government to save for the rainy days; that whatever comes in as excess, rather than being left alone in just any bank, it could be put in an investment that would grow it and keep it as a reserve for the rainy days.
But the question is, at the point of designing it, what should be saved for the rainy days. I think there wasn’t a proper platform that everybody participated and agreed to how it should be done – that is where the major problem came from.
It was a decision of the federal government and knowing full well that these monies have inputs from the states and local governments,? our understanding 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.
So, that is where the first problem came from. The second problem now was that we are finding ourselves in a very serious economic situation. The level of revenue inflow that is commonly shared every month is not stable enough to support the current needs and we have not come out with a unique process that would ensure that part of what should go into saving must not be done at the expense of current needs.
You see, the whole process requires a proper strategic approach because if we have a problem today, and we are not solving it, we are postponing the problems and at the same time we are saving money, the money we are saving would be worthless in the final analysis.
We have typical problems of infrastructure today: our roads are not good; there is no water, there is security problem; we need to support agriculture; our schools needs classrooms; we require to buy textbooks; we require to build health institutions – and the money we are going to use for these is being saved for the future, don’t forget that we are still moving these problems to the future, too.
So in the final analysis, the savings would be a mockery, unless we come out with a process that allows us to take care of current needs and jointly agree on what the saving should be like.
If we are not talking about infrastructure; we are not talking about roads, water, energy and other things at the local government levels; if there is excess, then we can agree that the excess be saved for the future.