Katsina State governor, Rt. Hon. Aminu Bello Masari recently played host to LEADERSHIP Weekend and took time to answer some questions. He discusses his plans for Katsina State and laments the sheer stealing that took place in the state. He further denies having pact with the PDP in the state as he had never set his eyes on its candidate, Engr Musa Nashuni in his life
Katsina State is now 29 years since its creation. What is your assessment of the journey so far?
Well, Katsina State clocked 29 years on August 27. I think the state has come a long way considering the frequent changes of government especially at the inception where the first military governor was not up to one year before he was removed. The second one spent less than two years and was removed until we had the civilian leadership of Saidu Barda who also did not last up to two years. From there, we also had another military administration before finally in 1999, we had the first civilian governor that lasted for eight years on the platform of the same political party that lasted for 16 years. We have come a long way and have made some modest progress in some areas but certainly, we could have done better especially, based on the foundation that was earlier laid by our leaders. But be it as it may, we are still hopeful that there is light at the end of the tunnel.
The people of Katsina State are always ready and determined to put the state first. We were amazed when we came out even before getting the ticket to contest for the party. We invited so many technocrats, business men, senior civil servants at various level of government to come and participate and they came. They provided free service. Even after we won the election, they came and none of them was asking for a single kobo. They highest they were asking for is accommodation. These are people who are not looking for any employment but they gave us a lot of support in terms of repositioning the state. That was why we had a great success when we faced the people of Katsina state to brief them on what had happened and what we met, what we are doing and how we intend to reposition the state, during our one hundred days celebration.
What are the situation you met on ground and what areas do you intend to prioritise?
You see we named our mission as Restoration Project because at that time we knew that the levels of decay in the critical sectors are becoming more obvious. Just take the issue of education , agriculture, health, water supply, security and to a large extent, the issue of energy generation and availability. We know that there are so many areas that the state could have really assisted in making energy available to the people. So, we put our number one priority as education and we were right. Even before we came into office, we knew that from 1999 to 2013, Katsina State presented 250,000 candidates for WAEC and only 28,000 got five credits and above.
This translates to about a little above 10 per cent and this involves all Katsina State indigenes across the country. But upon taking over power, we are checking the records and comparing the performance of public schools. We found that 17,900 candidates from public schools sat for WAEC last year and only 370 got five credits and above. If you are presenting only 370 to compete with the rest of states in Nigeria, then you are no where assuming that all the 370 will make it to the final year in the universities or colleges of education. So, this is the situation that we found ourselves. Because of that, we carried out a survey to make physical assessment of all the primary school infrastructure because we are emphasising on the foundation, education. We visited 2,262 primary schools in Katsina State. We counted all the physical attendance where we found out that out of the registered pupils of 1.2 million, only about 690 are attending schools which means there is a drop out of about 40 per cent.
We also found out that virtually all of these schools are in need of either major or minor repairs as most of them are not habitable. In fact, 60 per cent of these schools needs major repairs as they have either blown-off roofs, collapsed building, complete absence of floors, doors or windows. So, really, the condition in the public primary school where the foundation education is, is so deplorable that out of the 693,000 pupils who attend schools, only 193 have chairs and tables. We have all of this in a brochure so that any one could see the real pathetic picture of education in Katsina State. The same thing applies to the health sector. We have a general hospital that has no toilet because all the toilets have collapsed. The patients and those managing the patients including hospital staff go to the bush to defecate within the premises of the hospital. This is a hospital that was built since the days of the old Kaduna State. Not a single building was erected by the government in this hospital since it was built. This is the picture of health centres across the state.
In agriculture which used to be the mainstay, where in the days of the native authority, agriculture and livestock was paying the salaries of the native authority, police, courts and the traditional rulers, resources from agriculture were used to build schools, health centres and secondary schools. This is a state that was entirely dependent on agriculture at a point in time. But all of these has changed and if the federal allocation was stopped for one month, the state cannot afford to pay salaries because we are totally dependent on the federation account. The actual revenue that would have been collected by people through businesses and agriculture are not being collected.
The state is in a complete mess. The same goes for all the other sectors you can think of. The water supply aspect is the worst because not a single addition has been made to water supply of the state. Not even a single litre had been added to water schemes that we inherited. Some were completed, probably upgraded since 1981 and from then to date, though all the towns that these schemes were serving had changed, the supply had gone down owing to decay of equipment, pipeline rusting and all these things. So, you can see that we have no sector that we can say we are pleased with what we met. Even the roads claimed to have been constructed by the government, none of them lasted two years. You construct a new road that cannot last up to two years! Just ask yourself what went wrong. Did you lower the standard or was the job compromised? So, that is the pathetic situation of the Katsina State of today; don’t be deceived by this new Government House. The building is a misnomer because if you look at the building, you will realise that something is wrong.
I think leadership should try to reflect the standard of lives of the people that it leads. Just imagine how much it costs the state government to power this Government House. You see what matters most is the authority not the building. So, you see, the house has been constructed and we have no choice but to use it otherwise it will collapse and cost the tax payers more if you don’t use it. I think there had been misplacement of priority and in some cases, outright stealing. Well, some of this stealing, immediately we form the council, it will take decision on it and those who took our money must bring them back. The issue is that, there must be punishment. We are insisting that there must be punishment so as to serve as deterrent.
It’s not enough to return money because no matter what you do, not all of it will be returned. But if there is punishment, that will be deterrent to those wishing to do same. By insisting on punishment, we are putting a break on ourselves. It is sad that between 2007 and 2015, the state collected from the federation account alone, the sum of N950 billion and collected internally generated revenue of N36 billion. If you put this together, the state made close to N1 trillion. But for a state that made almost N 1 trillion in eight years, there is nothing concrete to show.
If there is something concrete of say, N400 billion in Katsina, we wouldn’t be rated as the second poorest state whereas, based on the revenue being collected from Abuja, we are number nine. We are the worst in terms of poverty and are only better than five states which are ravaged by the issue of Boko Haram. So, if not for the Boko Haram menace in those five states, we wouldn’t be ahead of Borno, Yobe or Adamawa that are directly hit by the insurgency. So, the reality on ground is that we are not in good shape. The worst part of it, we inherited liability of N42 billion out of which N11.08 billion is pension and gratuity to state and local governments’ staff. Imagine somebody who worked for 30 years retiring without gratuity at the age that he can no longer learn any other trade. Today, we have unpaid gratuity of N6.2 billion for local governments and N3.2 billion for state civil servants who retired. We have unpaid pension arrears for state and local government staff whereas, a permanent secretary in the ministry of local government personally removed N9.5 billion. We have an account under ALGON where N11.8 billion of people’s money was deposited but over N7 billion of that money was removed cash. There are evidences from the bank. This money was taken away.
You just painted a grim picture of the situation you met on ground. What then are the immediate and practical measures you are taking to address this situation?
You know, based on our assessment, we need N20 billion to rehabilitate our primary schools. The amount does not include the teachers as that will cost us about N2.5 billion. What we intend to do is what we have already started. That we are going to break this expenditure in the next three to four years with each amount to be spent in a given year clearly stated. We also need about N23 billion for the secondary school education. In the primary education component, we are going to look at what the local governments are getting and how much we can contribute to bring up the infrastructure. What we are working towards is to have a primary school with classrooms that will accommodate 50 pupils. Based on the current statistics, we need 3,652 classrooms to accommodate the existing pupils.
In addition, we need to recruit 7,500 teachers who have teaching qualifications. Some of those teaching now lack teaching qualifications and others that haven’t attended any refresher course in the last 20 years. So, they are not in tune with what is on ground in terms of curriculum and current teaching method. In the health sector, we are working on how we can have a blue print that will help us conquer the situation by atleast 60 per cent. But then, in the whole of this, if in the process, Katsina people feel that there is any contribution they can make in order to help in the restoration of these vital institutions of our lives, they are welcomed. We will also liaise with development partners who are really interested in helping the state in the area of education, health, agriculture and water supply. We are looking at all options but the first option is the availability of resources to the state.
Does being the governor of Katsina State, which of course is the President’s home state, put any pressure on you?
Well, there is pressure and there is benefit. The pressure we have is that, the expectations on us as the home state of the president is too high and maybe, people will even assess the presidential performance based on his state which should not be so because the president is the president of the federal republic of Nigeria, not the president of Katsina. The other pressure is that, whenever the president visits, the whole state is hosting the president and you know, hosting the president is no joke. We are very lucky that he is a modest person. He is not after too much paraphernalia of office. He comes and goes, unless you are told the president is coming, you wouldn’t know.
What is delaying the constitution of your cabinet?
We are waiting for the House of Assembly to come back and if you wait for the next few days, you will hear all the names of those we are going to appoint.
Recently, the guber candidate of the opposition PDP who is challenging your election has said he was withdrawing his petition. Is there any deal that had been struck between you and the opposition party?
You know, they took us to tribunal on two issues. That of my election and the issue of my eligibility to even contest the election. And the reason they adduced for withdrawing their petition is up to INEC to defend itself. But between God, you and me, nobody has ever spoken to me. PDP has not spoken to me, I have not spoken to PDP. In fact, in my entire life, I have never seen Nashuni in person, in blood and flesh, I have never seen him. So, since I have never seen him, either through phone or through any other means of communication, I have never spoken to him in my life.
Source:Leadership
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