2015 PRESIDENTIAL RACE: I can REPLICATE Kano SUCCESS FOR Nigeria — KWANKWASO Governor Rabiu Kwankwaso of Kano State is among the contenders for the presidential ticket of the All Progressives Congress (APC) ahead of the 2015 general elections. Kwankwaso, in this piece, unfolds his agenda for Nigeria. By Soni Daniel, Regional Editor, North Today I look at Nigeria and I feel sorry for the high level of insecurity and other challenges that stare our nation on the face and I feel that something urgent must be done to address the rot in the system. Nigeria cannot continue to operate as an orphan in the comity of nations having been abundantly blessed with human and material resources to be a global leader. I can replicated Kano’s success story for Nigeria I believe that I can change the sad story of Nigeria to something of a celebration if given the opportunity to lead. I have the confidence that I can replicate the Kano magic for Nigeria. Today, Kano is proud that I came to the scene in 2011 and change the landscape for them. *Kwankwaso Despair and hopelessness have been replaced with happiness on the faces of the people of Kano. Dilapidated public institutions have been replaced with new ones while the poor have been integrated into the system and given a means of livelihood and taken off the streets. Today, as a result of my leadership in Kano, I have succeeded in establishing three brand new cites known as Kwankwasiyya, Amana and Bandirawo in addition to constructing three monumental flyovers that have helped to remove the traffic snarl in the metropolis. I have also provided 220kms of dualised and electrified roads to all the 44 LGAs of the state translating to 5kms for each of the councils at the cost of N80 billion. To get the city running without power failure, I have signed and MoU for 35 Megawatts Independent Power Project at Challawa and Tiga dams at the cost of N14.2 billion solely from the state coffers. Free, compulsory education Under my administration, we have made education free and compulsory from the primary to the university. Behind that we have a special post graduate training programme for graduates who pass out with First class or Second class upper grades. So for our graduates, all you need to secure further training by the government is to pass with at least a second class upper. For those who are reading medicine, we engage them as workers on G/L 7 while they are still studying. When they graduate we send them abroad to study in specialised areas so as to become specialists and more useful to the society. So far, we have trained 501 youths for postgraduate studies abroad at the cost of N1.8 billion. Another set of 100 youths has been dispatched to Jordan for Piloting and Aeronautical Engineering studies at the cost of N1 billion. Another 100 of our youths are studying Medicine in various universities abroad at the cost of N1 billion. One hundred others are pursuing courses in Pharmacy overseas at the cost of N800million while 100 females are studying Medicine with specialisation in Gynaecology at the cost of N1 billion. At the same time, while 25 have been sponsored to study Marine Engineering in India and the United Kingdom, 14 others are undergoing various courses in Technical Education at Bradford, England. The second batch of our 502 youths sponsored by my administration to pursue their PhD courses abroad is doing very well in their chosen institutions across the globe. We are spending at least N2.8 billion on them. Overall we have set up 37 micro finance firms and 44 educational institutions to help the people of Kano to actualise their dreams in life. These things are being done because we believe that the people must be made comfortable for the government to elicit their support, goodwill and cooperation to succeed. We place premium on our people and we will continue to do more to advance their interest and well being because without them there can be no government. That is why I have established two first class universities in Kano to continue to provide knowledge for our people and citizens of Nigeria. These two institutions are designed with the future in mind and to remain as centres of excellence at all times. How sanity was restored on Kano roads The Kano State Traffic Road Traffic Agency, KAROTA, was set up to restore sanity in the state. Many residents of Kano fear them more than any other thing because I gave them instruction to arrest anyone, no matter their position once they flout traffic laws. I told them also that if you arrest any commissioner or top government officials for contravening traffic rule and they dare mention my name that they should double their penalties. The agency is working well. Nobody, who likes themselves, would want to beat traffic in Kano because they understand the implications of such an action. If you catch anybody and he mentions my name double their penalty. That has helped KAROTA to keep the traffic under control. Empowerment for all Now you have seen that there is no beggar among Kwankwasya. We have enough jobs for all and if you don’t want to do any work, just go to your house and die. It is your own business. You cannot hope to be getting cash from me. We have trained people on how to struggle for their daily work and people have keyed into it and it is working for them. Everyone wants to do something in order to earn a decent living instead of begging on the streets of Kano and we are happy about that. What we did by banning street begging or Almajiri, is paying off today. People are talking of producing things by themselves. We believe we have done well and we will continue to do more for the people. Almajiris off the streets of Kano We have a child labour law in the state and it is meant to protect the children and give them a better future. We want to prevent a situation whereby some people, who have money, go into the villages and take young children to their houses and use them as slaves while their children are going to the best of schools. We have stopped that in the state and anyone caught using children as slaves will go to jail. Anyone who took someone’s children and does not intend to train them in school like their own children should return them to their parents without wasting time. We want a situation whereby the poor children will go to the same schools with the children of the rich ones in our midst. We have established many institutions to provide opportunities for all to actualise their educational goals. We abolished Almajiris because it constituted a nuisance to all and contributed to the rising crime rate in the state. We have given loans to go into business and run other projects that would help them live happily. No borrowing since we started working for Kano In terms of security, we have also improved on a lot of things to strengthen the Government House and other places in the state and promote peace. All these things we have done them without borrowing money. The state government has done them without borrowing from within or outside Nigeria. It is our policy not to borrow any money. In fact, even the N77 billion we inherited as debt, we have only N20 billion outstanding. We have also exited from the $200 million we inherited from the World and bank and other creditors. We got out of the debt traps. Why Kano people are happy, comfortable Some of our landmark projects are being financed through the money we have saved from prudent management of our resources. One of them is the power generation scheme, which is costing us N14.4 billion, the flyer over and others were done with our earned resources. We took some measures to assist us to get to where we are today. Before we came here the payment of salaries was a big problem. Before we came here no civil servant was sure when their salary would come. But now nobody cares about it because it is promptly taken care of by my administration. At any given point in time, we have at least one month salary set aside in the treasury for the workers. We have also taken some measures to ensure that we have enough money to prosecute our projects and programmes. One of the measures was to cut down overheads. When I came in I discovered that overhead constituted a very serious source of wastage because ministries that received the money were just using formula to share it among the commissioners, permanent secretaries and other senior government officials. Then I decided to use the 2003 amount I was paying to the respective ministries and parastatals instead of 2011 and we calculated and discovered that the difference was over N500 million a month. So, I decided that we should go back to the 2003 benchmark. Even though some commissioners struggle to get an increase they often fail to convince or prove what they claim when they come to the State Executive Council. So we are saving over N500 million a month and we are able to save about N6billion a year. In fact, that amount is the cost of one of the flyover bridges in the state capital. That is one of those long flyovers. No First Lady Office in Kano We also saved money by not allowing the Office of the First Lady in Kano. We know that a lot of money is being spent in that office elsewhere but we in Kano believe strongly that whatever the first lady should do, is what the Ministry of Women Affairs is doing and there is therefore no need to duplicate such functions in the state. We just need a good commissioner to do the job and get a good wife and keep her at home to manage the home front well. That is what we are doing here and everybody is happy. Our families don’t go to ministries or to go and bother any commissioner. And I don’t encourage any friendship of our families to come visiting her so that we don’t run into crisis. By the time your wife begins to benefit from a particular commissioner- whether good or bad-hmm
Posted on: Sun, 05 Oct 2014 07:19:02 +0000
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