[size=18pt]How were you able to do the things you claimed to have done without borrowing and yet the state has about N16 billion in its account?[/size]

When we started, we had a simple approach to governance. First, we made plans and conceptualised what we wanted to do. I was an attorney general in the government of the late Yar’Adua and so I knew well how government operates. So I had a plan to move gradually in terms of development. I know that the country is littered with many uncompleted projects. Some roads have been built since the 70s but nobody cares to maintain them. I felt that there was need for us to deal with the projects that had not been completed. When you start a project and invest huge amount of money on it and you abandon it, the waste is colossal. I was committed to completing every project I inherited from the previous government. And the on going projects I met were colossal. For example, the expansion of the Katsina airport had just been awarded at the end of November, mobilisation was done in February and in April there was election and handing over.  I stayed on the neck of the contractors, and that gulped two- thirds of the budget at that time. After that, we looked at the university project that was just awarded too. Obasanjo laid the foundation.


Then foundation was just laid.  I told the contractors to sit with our officials and give me a timeline for the completion and the financial requirements. In 18 month, we completed that university. The Turai Yar’Adua Child Mortality Hospital was also just awarded.  We had all kinds of projects, so by the time we were 18 months we targeted 18 month’s completion of all the projects. How did I manage to fund these projects? The university gulped about N11.8 billion and the hostels are quite modest. It took about N800 million but the roads were the real money guzzlers, especially where there are bridges and construction of culverts. We inherited eight road projects from the previous administration. I was getting about N3.4 billion per month. I had a salary bill of about N1.2 billion and with overheads it was about N1.5 billion.

So I had N1.9 billion to play with. I felt there was need to find additional sources of income and we tried to work on the issue of internal revenue generation. We made about N130 million monthly from internally generated revenue. And by and large, the revenue will always come from Value Added Tax (VAT) and others. We were able to get 14.5 per cent interests from pour deposits with the banks and so, we were making between N500 t0 N600 million from the deposits. Within eight months, we built about N20 billion reserves. From there we were able to calculate all our projects and we decided on how much we need to spend in a month on all the projects we are doing.

In one month we will decide that we are going to spend N1.5 billion, another month N1 billion because we know what is coming in from the federation accounts and other sources. Then we made sure we had professional people who did evaluation for us for the jobs.  For example, a supplier of vehicles cannot have more than 25 per cent profit. Nobody asks you for a kobo as bribe. At the end of the day, I made sure no contractor had to see me to get a job. Once you meet the necessary procedure, you get a job; you get 40 per cent advance payment with a bank guarantee given to us. That explains why must complete your projects on time because once we give you a contract to build something and you have a comfortable profit margin it is expected that the project will not suffer hiccup.

sounds nice

macjive01:

Sincerely Muslims or rather northerner are pretty more upright n less corrupt (when dealing with their state) than most southern nigerians.


However, How on earth is kastina, a desert, of marginal population be getting 3.2 billion from fed while IMO state, a densely n highly populated, highly educated, peace-loving non-terrorist state that is part of the country's oil producing community gets a mere 2.1 ? Abeg GEJ use some sense here, that freaking revenue formula needs and has to b revived!




No wonder they have the time n liberty to be naugghty! 

^ On the bolded: nothing is changing anytime soon in that regard, as i don't think the President has the balls to correct such an injustice (as well as many other examples that currently exist in other spheres of our 'nationhood'). If he tries to, the core northern elite will kick up a fuss, point to this as proof of Jonathans' anti-north agenda and threaten a renewed wave of bombings. Though i feel Jonathan is trying to make things a bit fairer.

All this unfairness is as a result of them being in power, and using it (esp' under the military where they had little or no opposition to their actions) to greedily skew a lot of things at the centre to their advantage. Think of the customs; judiciary; police; army; federal civil service; efforts to manage/control the environment through massive construction of dams in the north, while environmental challenges in the south (eg:soil erosion in the south east and environmental degradation as a reult of oil exploration in the Niger delta) where left to the minimal efforts of state governments and divine intervention. The examples are too many to mention here.

I just hope we are witnessing a steady change in the way things are done in this country, so no section feels cheated and that they're carrying their burden and that of other sections who -even after 40 years of affirmative action and quota system- have not yet caught up with their more progressive neighbours down south

KnowAll:

^^

Mr Man Shut-up instead of you to give this Governor credit, you open your ye-ye mouth talking non-sense,  Mr Proudly Igbo do you know the Igbo Governors so far are SOME of the worse Governors we have tailing  the roguish Governors we had in the SW nobody voted for who have all been kicked out and swept  away for Good. Let us just pray Rochas perform. Instead of you to Give Governor Yerima credit you are talking of resource control.

Apart  from the 6 or 7 states that have oil, and probably Lagos state tell me one state which does not depend on the allocation from the FG. 

Blazing99:

Kudos to the Yar Adua transparent legacy. RIP Umaru Musa Yar'Adua. May your soul rest in peace. If u were alive I would love to ask you a question: Why Jonathan as an assistant?

Kudos to Katsina governor for his prudent management of the people's resources.
Does anyone know how much debt Lagos state owes ?

Demdem:

i see no wisdom in having such huge sum in hand and yet the majority of the people are in abject poverty. The money should be used to better the lives of the populace. However, its better to be kept than it finding its way to some crook's pockets.

Sincerely Muslims or rather northerner are pretty more upright n less corrupt (when dealing with their state) than most southern nigerians.

sleekman:

You see no reason for what? Are u smoking Garri? N500m to N600m interest isn't enough reason for u? I'll choose constant & planned development any day anytime over the borrowing other state govts do. If I'm a governor of Katsina y wuldn't I borrow frm d World Bank or IMF @ 3-5%, utilise the funds and keep deposting more of my allocation @ 14%. It seems we have better managers from Katsina. Buhari, Yar Adua & now this guy. All of them are adopting Buhari's model while he was @ PTF.