Kwara State Governor, Alhaji Abdulfatah Ahmed recently featured on a monthly media programme tagged: “Governor Explains”. He spoke on numerous issues affecting the people of the state including the N23 billion bond proposed for collection from the capital market. AROWONA ABDULAZEEZ was there for Nigerian Pilot. Excerpts:
Recently, there was a fatal flood disaster in areas of Ilorin metropolis. What is government doing to avert re-occurrence?
The issue of flood is something which is almost coming to stay with us largely resulting from the global climatic change which has resulted in the increase in the level of rain recorded all over the world. Kwara State and indeed Ilorin is not an exception. What this tells us is that we must begin to check those things we have put in place in the past to ensure proper drainage of water flow. As it is, you will recall that most of the projects that government has been carrying on, especially road construction we’ve always ensured that they are supported with right concrete drainages. In other words, they are designed to ensure that water flows very freely. However, our people, due to non-compliance with environmental laws, block the drainages or build houses on drainages or we don’t allow drainages to properly exit to bigger drainages where water can freely flow. In the process, you see blockages and these blockages will not manifest until when there are heavy rains. The heavy rains stop the water from flowing normally. And water creates its own way if the way created for it is not passable. When it creates its own way, it flows into areas that are not designed for it, i.e., it begins to flow into people’s house. It begins to flow on the road to compromise structures and constructions.
What this tells us is that we must learn to adhere to the basic process of environmental management of our drainages. For instance, all gutters must always be cleared. Government is doing everything it can. As it is today, we have set up a Flood Management Committee. Their responsibility is to go across all the nooks and crannies of the State, especially the metropolis where drainages have been blocked, either as a result of disposal of waste or structures and remove all these to ensure water flows freely and not cause havoc for people. So people must recognise that our non-compliance and adhering to basic environmental procedures has allowed water to flow in a manner that goods and properties are destroyed. One big solution to this is that we must adhere to this by ensuring that we do not allow gutters to be blocked. During environmental sanitations, when we remove sand and other rubbish from gutters we should ensure that they are moved away from there and disposed appropriately. If they are left by the road, rains will fall again and wash them back. These gutters will get blocked. Once they get blocked, more rains will come and they will now flood our houses so the solution now lies in our ensuring that all gutters are made to flow freely without blockages. So government’s responsibility by setting up this committee is to go round and ensure that all blockages are removed. If there are houses that are blocking this right of way of water they have to move away for right of way of water; otherwise we will continue to suffer problems of flood. We should remember that the rains are not going to decrease again. From the global change that we have seen across the whole world, either in the UK, Asia, Australia, everywhere, we see that flood is increasing as a result of global meltdown, so more rains are expected to come. The only solution to this is to ensure that all blocked drainages are desisted and people are stopped from dropping additional rubbish into gutters. So, we must be each other’s keepers.
Your Excellency, all the environmental laws in Kwara State are deemed adequate in conformity with global best practices but there appeares to be a problem of implementation and sanctions.
To a very large extent I agree with you to the extent that there are environmental laws. As it were, we have compliance issues, especially with respect to making our drainages silted and fill with rubbish. That is one area; we will now move to the next level of compliance, because it is becoming a serious problem, especially when it is resulting into endangering lives and property. The next level will be to ensure compliance in ensuring that drainages are not tampered with and water is allowed to flow freely wherever government has spent money to make waterways to flow freely.
Sir, can you give us an insight into the state’s infrastructural gap and what government intends to fill?
Infrastructural requirements by the people for growth and development is a thing that ordinarily government should not take for granted but unfortunately infrastructure is something that we have not maintained in the past. This has resulted into the decay which we have today. In the past 20 to 30 years we’ve been building roads, constructing bridges, culverts but we’ve not been maintaining them. In the process they get spoilt and we have to start all over again.
The most critical part of it is that the infrastructural requirement in roads, water, energy, education, health, agriculture is huge. By time we did an assessment of the infrastructural requirement of Kwara State, to bring the State to a fully functional environment with the all the needed infrastructure that will make a State go on normally, we found out that there is a huge gap. To put those things in place, it will cost us about N300billion. By the purpose of things on ground we know that we cannot raise N300billion. But as a government that has a tenured time to stay to drive governance we must see how much of the N300billion we want to do in our own time. That prompted us into looking at the sources of funding. Where are the sources of funding? Of course we know that we get the federation allocation which comes in every month; from where we pay salaries and carry on other recurrent expenditure. Is this enough to do capital projects? Obviously, it is not! It means that we have to look for other sources of funds that will enable us do our own portion of the capital projects. We, then, expect that other governments that will come will continue from where we stop. Until one day, through a successive well-articulated transition, Kwara State will gain the benefit of not only getting full infrastructure, but also the build-up of one infrastructure over another through successive governments.
Is it true that the next bond the State is going to take is N23billion?
Yes!
Some of your opponents believe that some of the projects that you want to implement under this bond, such as the Ilorin water reticulation scheme should have been carried out under the previous bonds. Can you explain what appears to be the duplication?
I will explain to you. When you have capital projects you cost them. The costing will give you a specific figure. For instance, Ilorin metropolis water project was costed at N7billion. There is no way we will be able to raise N7billion in one single bond, except we want to do only water and we don’t do anything else. But as long as we want to do water; we want to do electricity, we want to do agriculture, we want to do hospitals, then we take whatever we can take, resulting from what we can pay back at that time.
And then we jump start the project and the project will now take us to either10 per cent, 20 per cent, 30 per cent, 50 per cent, 60 per cent conclusion after which we now take additional money to complete the project. If you have big projects, you need to phase them, they will go beyond one to two bonds. If you take the Ilorin metropolis reticulation projects for instance, the first amount that was designated for that project in the bond was N4billion. That was in the first bond that was taken, the N17billion bond. When you take N4billion, how much do you have left out of seven? You have N3billion. When I came in I took a loan out of which I used N1billion to support the Ilorin metropolis reticulation project. That takes us to N5billion. We have still not completed because we still have N2billion to go. That is why we intend to raise another bond to take additional N2billion and complete the project. When we raise monies it does not mean that the money will take the project from A to Z. It may take it from A to W or from A to X. then somebody will or something else will take it from that level to completion. That is why you see our projects will jump started
Your Excellency, there is also the concern about the period and the debt burden; given the fact that basically it is the federal allocation that provides much of the State revenues. Can you give us some enlightenment on the repayment profile and the time frame?
The sources of government funds are three: federation allocation, Value Added Tax, VAT and Internally Generated Revenue, IGR. Most of the federation allocation inflows go into the serving of salaries and wages and other monthly commitments. So our VAT and IGR is where we try to see how to carry out capital projects, but they are too small on their own to continue to use them on the projects that we have.
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