‘My administration is partnering Dangote Group in competitive agricultural development’

Last weekend, the administration of Governor Muhammadu Badaru Abubakar of Jigawa state mark it first 100 days in office, in this interview with Adeola Ajakaiye, he enumerated some of the achievements recorded by his regime within the period, as well as other initiatives embarked upon to diversify the economy of the young state.      

Q: Your Excellency, could give us an insight into issues that lead to your election as governor?

   Thank you for your compliments. Well, first and foremost I believe there is a wind of change blowing all over the country, In Jigawa state, and like other parts of Nigeria, the citizens were tired and they really wanted change, and having ran before in other political party, such as AC N as governorship candidate in a race that was a very close the citizens of the state this time around decided to give us the mandate to govern the state because of the confidence they have in us. As you know there was a complete difference in the attitude, and the way we conducted our campaign in the All Progressives Congress, and with the way the PDP, the party in power before did their own, we took things easy and left whatever might be the outcome in the hands of God.  The past governor has done quite well in the area of infrastructure, the main issue today in the state is poverty, and the people of Jigawa state believed that nobody can solve the problem of poverty, and unemployment that they grappling with than a businessman, who is an employer himself, I think that was what help the people to think properly in their quest for change, they know they need someone who understanding the working of the economy, and somebody who understand the reality on the ground.

Q: Jigawa state came into existence over two decades ago, would you say you are satisfied with the pace of development?

  Well compared with other states created along with it in Nigeria, I will say it is not doing badly, but compare with Global Standard, I will say I am not satisfied. Our infrastructures are not as terrible as what we say, as well as our educational sector, although there are set back, but compared with most state in the north, the situation is not very bad, and there is the possibility that it can get better. Looking at the poverty index, we are always counted among the last 10 and that is not helpful, generally when you compare the state with other states in the north where we are situated, I will say that Jigawa has not done badly these years.

Q: You talked about poverty as being the main challenge facing state, and Agriculture has been identified as a sector that has the potential to create jobs, how does your administration intend to leverage on the sector?

In diversifying an economy one must explore an area where it has comparative advantage, and in Jigawa our comparative advantage, and area of strength is agriculture, this is why we take it as one area of  major focus, we believed doing agriculture in the old fashion way will not help us, so we have decided to do competitive agriculture, and we started this by first inviting big players in the agriculture sector, who do agriculture business in a big way and scientifically, for them to come and play in the agriculture sector competitively this was done with the realization that the smaller farmers do not have the strength, machineries, technology, and knowledge to do farming for competition, and we are losing competitiveness in this country fast, we use to be competitive before in Groundnut, Cocoa, Cotton, among others, but today because of lack of concentration and research we are losing competition very fast, so we decided to invite big time players that have the knowledge of the business, that will invest in agriculture ,and do it professionally, competitively, and scientifically, and one of the big time players we invited was Dangote Group to produce rice in Jigawa at competitive price. And we are working with the Dangote Group to increase our yield of rice per hectare, our yield per hectare during the raining season in Jigawa is about 1.4 to maximum 2 tonnes per hectare, the world average is between 7 and 10 tonnes, with Dangote we would attempt to reach the world average, we know that if we continue to produce at 1 to 2 tonnes per hectare, we can never be competitive, and we can never grow rice for our market and compete with imported ones that are being dumped on us, so we have to do it big, and luckly we have signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with the Dangote Group to produce rice in Jigawa on a rice value chain,  from planting to retaining, the company will be cultivating 16,000 hectares, and as well as develop an out-grower scheme using the same technology, and the same arrangement to produce another 16,000 hectares and together that  will give us a total of 32,000 hectares of rice which  will be going through Dangote Rice Mill, the company will be the retailer, and marketer of the rice that would be produced, so the whole rice chain is achieved, and this will be produced competitively, and the moment we start getting 7 tonnes per hectare, other players, particularly, the small farmers will be encouraged to replicate the technique in their production process in all other locations of the state, and this we believe will help move farming to the place it suppose to be.

Q: Apart from Dangote, are there other big corporate players your administration intends bringing into the agriculture development programme?

Well, Lee Group is already on the ground we are commissioning his factory sometime in December, this year, and the factory will be employing about 200 to 300 workers, and there is going to be an extension over the years. The company is also planning to go into sugar, and seasoning production and we have also being talking to a lot of international corporations for them to come and invest in the state. We have being working with Olam Group in the area of sesame- seed production, and exportation, we are also working with Nestle in the area of production of corn and sorghum for their own use. We are talking to almost everybody, so Dangote is not the only group we are talking to.

Q: Your administration has been in the news of recent, over what you described as the poor financial state of Jigawa, could give us an insight into the state of finance of the state?

Well the challenge of poor finance is a problem all over the country, not Jigawa state alone, before we came to office, Oil which Nigeria depend upon was been sold at between the range of $110 to $120 per barrel, today it is being sold between $40 to $50 per barrel, definitely the revenue of the state has dropped, but we have being managing to carry out all the functions of government under this difficult circumstance without failing, what we did when we assumed office was to first invite all the head of Ministries in the state to discuss the situation, and look at the expenditure profile of government, especially to look at areas that required amendments, so as to help free resource for critical government activities, without compromising quality, and we have succeed in doing that and as it is today the state is running well, we are paying salaries and other wages as at when due, we are meeting our commitments, and when things get more stabilized we will do much better.

Q: What about the #9.8 billion road contract revoked recently by your administration?

Yes, when we assumed office we met an on-going projects worth #92 billion, and with the kind of money we are getting now, even if have to stop paying salaries and do nothing  it will take us 6 to 7 years to conclude the payment of the cost of the projects, the contracts that will revoked are those that have not started, and before taken this decision I set up a committee to examine those that can continue immediately, those that needed to be put on hold for now, and those that are not needed in view of the present financial reality of the state, by God`s grace we would finish all the on-going projects that were started before we assume office, and the two contracts that we cancelled was in respect of none performance, we have some contracts that were supposed to be finished in 12 months, and 6 months into the life of the contract, the contractor have not executed up to 10 percent of the job, so we saw the need to cancel those contract and probable-ly re-award them to a more serious and competent contractors that can do the jobs well and on time, I think this is the situation we are today, until we receive the outcome of this committee that is when we will be able to discuss with our people, analyse, and then we will take a position on whether to continue with projects, or  whether not to continue , since all the facts are there, this is an open government If there no money to do projects we will not do projects, if there is money to do projects, we will do projects it is simple as that, everybody will know, we will bring the issue on the table for everybody to see, it is their state, and they will make the choice.

Q:  Do you support the issue of bail out for states, and is your state among those seeking for it?

The bailout is for states that have arrears of salaries to pay, those that cannot pay salaries with the present money they are getting from the Federation Accounts, probable as a result of the loans they obtained from banks, and when banks effect deductions because of the loans the state cannot meet their salaries obligation to their workers. So those loans have been taken over by the Federal Government and spread for so many years, I think between 10 to 20 years so that the deductions will be less, and the governments will be able to meet their obligations to their workers, and the second leg of the bail -out are those states that have arrears of salaries that have not been paid, for them to be able to paid they were given additional loan, luckly Jigawa is not among them, so the initiative is for states that have arrears of salaries, or huge bank loan that will need some restructuring.

Q: Is Jigawa indebted?

Government loans not too many, and the bank loans are not something that we cannot manage or spread over a long time, like I said we took over huge public debt totaling about #118 billion been cost of on-going projects, loans from banks, vouchers  approved by the previous government waiting payment at the Ministry of Finance, and retention money.

Q: One of your electioneering promises was to re-position the state Civil Service, what step have you taken in this regard?

When we assumed office I was very open I invited the leadership of the civil service, and we were holding meetings almost on a daily basis with the Permanent Secretaries, and top functionaries of the service, and I asked them to suggest how they think we can improve the civil service, I asked them to discuss openly and freely, and issues were raised, and this lead to the plan to reduce the Ministries and Departments from 17 to 13, I also formed a committee of 6 Permanent Secretaries, and 2 Directors, DFID was also represented, and my own team, with the mandate to take a critical look at my proposal for the reform of the service, and marry it with what reform they will be proposing, and come out with a blue print for the Service. And they agreed that the Ministries should be reduced to 13. After that we also set up another Committee made up of the civil servants themselves to draw out a sketch of all the ministries and come out with the number of workers on the pay roll of each of the Ministries, this is to let us know the actual number of public workers in the state, their area of professional specializations, so as to know the areas where we have enough of them, and where we have less, and to identify those who are idle, so that we can re-train and send them to areas of need, and that is what is going on, we have started that already. We have identified that we need more hands in the agriculture development areas, we need more Extension workers, about 120 of them are needed, and we are picking from the idle staff identified, and we are re-training them, and putting them back to farm, we plan doing the same in the area of teaching, where we have identified shortfall in teachers, we also have shortfall in medical area, so what we are doing is to get the right people at the right jobs, get people in the area of excess to areas of need, so for now the era of earning salary and doing nothing is over in Jigawa state.

Q: What is happening to your youth and women empowerment programme?

Well from experience, as a businessman I have seen several empowerment programmes carried out by state governments, elected public officers, they train people in several areas of vocations, make big ceremony to announce it, without taking into consideration, if the environments where the trainees are situated actually need their service, or the products to be produce, if example, here in Dutse, the requirement for let say tailors are 20, and you trained 100, and give them 100 sewing machines, and they cannot find jobs to do they ran into trouble, so what we did in Jigawa today is to do a demand analysis, to see the demand for the vocational services, before fully roll out our intervention programmes, we have several of them in the pipeline. However, of recently we came out with a Goat Rearing Scheme for women and widows in the rural areas of the state, the scheme has been tested run under my personal foundation before introducing it, and we have seen it as a very effective way to help rural women, and as you know the demand for Goat will continue to be high, because people will need the meat, people will need the skin, and the shit for Fertilizer, and that is the advantage of the Goat Rearing Scheme, the goat produces twice in a year, easy to manage without any complications, and the rural women can do a back yard rearing without problem, and have seen it work in other countries, so we believe this is the first step to help rural women. And we have also initiated a programme to assist the local restaurant operators in the state, we provide them with efficient cooking stoves that will reduce their cost in their cooking, and we have also provided funding to boost their business, this we believe will help increase their income, improve their sanitation, and quality, this programme is out to help the beneficiaries, and the society at large to improve the health sector, the less the people get sick through what the consume, the better for them and the society.  In addition to these programmes, we have also set up a Committee to go around all the Local Government Areas to identify rural businesses, trade, and vocations that can be supported by government to make the people sustainable and self reliance. We want to be involved in meaningful empowerment programmes; this is our understanding of what an empowerment initiative should be.

Q. What can you pinpoint to as your administration `s major achievements in past 100 days?

Our major achievement in last 100 days have been in the area of security, we have relatively maintained security and safety in the state with less or none bridges, this a big achievement. The second major achievement was the healthy relationship between the government, and the Nigeria Labour Congress, we have maintained an open interaction with the Congress, and by extension with the civil servants in the state. Thirdly, was the way and manner we have been able to manage the affairs of government in the face of the dwindling financial resource from the Federation Accounts, doing this entails a lot of cost saving measures and my private sector background great assistance in this regard. We have saved a lot money from overhead cost, from the issues sponsorship of Pilgrims to the Holy Land, we save a lot of money particularly in this area. We have brought a lot of innovations in the management of the affairs of the state. We have put in place initiatives that will help empower the citizenry, take for example the Dangote project in both rice and sugar, I am sure by the time the projects matures, in the next one and half years thing will get better, through the projects we have targeted a minimum of 200,000 direct jobs, and since we signed the MoU with Dangote we have kept to the timeline, not a single hour has been lost on what we planned to do, until today, we will continue with that and things will get better for the state. Also in the area of empowerment we have sensitized the citizenry for them to understand what we know to be empowerment, which is empowerment with demand. In the same vein we have study the situation in the area of education and already we have identified where the difficulties are, and need assessment has also been conducted, we require about 1,500 teachers which we are going to employ and some are going to engage for the purpose from those been re-trained in civil service. We have done a lot in the area of health, we are today fixing all Water Work Schemes,  both the ones in the state capital, and rural areas, we intend before the year runs out to ensure that all the waters works in the state operates optimally, and efficiently, and next year we will start building new ones