By Henry Umoru

Governor Mohammed Abubakar of Bauchi State, in this interview, says the Speaker of the House of Representatives, Yakubu Dogara, shunned the moves to make peace with him.  Abubakar also speaks on the bailout funds to states, security vote for governors and the alleged poor funding of the All Progressives Congress (APC), the ruling party at the federal level.

His journey so far

I was a very little person but, from age 24, I became a big man if you like to describe it that way because I was heading a department in then Bauchi State House of Assembly. I was the head of legal drafting , the chief legal adviser to the House of Assembly. From that point, I have not looked back.

I am saying this for you to understand that God has been kind to me. I wasn’t a rich man before I became a governor, but I was a very comfortable man and there was nothing I wanted that I could not do.

That was the point  I decided to take the plunge because I actually grew up in    this state.  Bauchi was two years old when I graduated in 1978. After my NYSC, I had to come back to my state to work. I rose through the ranks until I became  the director of civil litigation and then director of public prosecution before I became attorney general  under two different governments.

So I have known the best period of my state. I was also here when the development of Bauchi became retarded but when it started retrogressing, I wasn’t in government,    but I knew it because I used to come home for holidays. This was what gingered me to come into politics and attempted a rescue and I try as possible to be transparent in my running of the affairs of this government and to deliver on my promises despite the economic crunch in Nigeria.

Why he approached the House of Assembly for N4 billion loan

When we took over, the first thing I was confronted with was the labour unions that went    on strike because workers were being owed  four months salaries. I called the labour leaders and we sat down and convinced them to return to work because the strike would have affected even the transition process.  They agreed and went back to work and we took over government.

So it was incumbent on me to find ways  of settling the outstanding salaries and, for that reason, I had to take a loan because there was no single kobo in the treasury. For three months they were collecting money from the federation account and carting it away in the name of security vote. I needed to pay salaries. We took over in May. The rainy season had started.  No single bag of fertilizer was procured. I needed to procure fertilizer. The annual pilgrimage to Saudi Arabia was in the offing and time was of  essence  to make certain payments otherwise you lose out. So these three things had to be done within a short time.

I was working for two weeks with the former House of Assembly. I called the Speaker to my house. At that time there wasn’t a single appointee of government, except the Head of Service whom I inherited from the former government.

So we sat, myself, the Speaker and the Head of Service, and I told the Speaker to get the House to approve a resolution to enable me borrow N4 billion so that I could use part of it to pay salaries, part of it to procure fertilizer and part of it to finance Hajj operations.

Three or four days later, the Clerk of the House wrote to us conveying the resolution enabling us to borrow the amount  we requested for.

The second issue is that I obtained a loan without an exco resolution. The provision of the Constitution of  Nigeria was that executive power resides with the governor. Another section of the Constitution says the governor shall appoint commissioners and sit with them periodically to determine the direction and policies of government. The Constitution did not envisage a vacuum, The law abhors a vacuum and I gave anticipatory approval for that loan to be taken. I wrote it clearly, ‘anticipatory approval is hereby given, please initiate a memo to exco for ratification when the exco is constituted’. So ultimately the exco ratified it.

But before I did this, not only did I read the Constitution, I also read the Fiscal Responsibility Law which we have domesticated in Bauchi. So there was nowhere where I am prevented from exercising my powers as governor. So these were taken care of. Salaries were paid, we procured 10,000 metric tons of fertilizer which we distributed to every ward in Bauchi, and for the first time fertilizer was taken to the common man, and then we were able to finance Hajj operations.

On bailout funds

The Federal Government  gave what is known today as bailout for the payment of outstanding salaries. Bauchi State got 8.6billion Naira to pay the salaries.  Outrightly we used that N8.6billion less N88 million at the initial stage and we offset the outstanding salaries completely. For this labour both Bauchi and national wrote us letters of commendation.

So when we did this, we had N88million remaining. The VC of the state university came to me to say they too had outstanding of N70million which was given to him, leaving us with  N18million.

After a few months, the same VC came back to me and claimed that his visiting lecturers needed to be paid more and I ordered for the outstanding amount to be paid to him. I had a dedicated account for the bailout.

On Paris Club loan refund

On the Paris Club loan refund, we received  N12.7billion. At that time, we owed  state government workers one month salary and local government workers two months. So, I  told the Accountant General to pay the outstanding salaries. Some people say we are not doing anything in Bauchi. But what they do not know is that Kano is the most populous state in Nigeria and it has 44LGAs but it has a workforce of 92,000.  Meanwhile, small Bauchi with 20LGAs has 105,000 workers on its  pay roll. This outstanding salary that I said we used the Paris Club money to pay arose from my attempt to verify these civil servants to know the actual number of civil servants in Bauchi. But I met  a brick wall,  entrenched interests that take away about a billion naira from the earnings of the state every month in the name of ghost workers, together with detractors of Bauchi who made  it virtually impossible for us to get to the bottom of the problem.

In addition, Bauchi is one of the states that pay above the national minimum wage. Our minimum wage is N18,500 on which, every month, we spend N5.1billion  and from the time I took over till date there is not more than 3months I collected over N5billion a month. Today I am proud to say that Bauch does not owe workers.  Despite the economic crunch in Nigeria, we have  been able to make progress, because our internally generated revenue  hovers around N250 – 300million, yet we have been able to achieve. For the first time in the history of the state, government owned estates are being rehabilitated.  We are rehabilitating roads in the metropolis.

We are also rehabilitating secondary schools in every nook and cranny of Bauchi State.

We have built  new solar powered bore holes all over the state. We have empowered our youths in several respects. We have trained them in computer programming. So far we have trained 400; 200 in Tafawa Balewa University, 200 in our own university. In the past, we suffered  distraction, yet I have made up my mind  not allow myself to be distracted. At the inception, we chose agriculture as one of our cardinal focus.

We believe we can use machines to attract our youths because you remove the drudgery from farming there is no way you can hope to attract these youths into agriculture.

One thing I am thinking of doing is constructing an 18-hole golf course in Yankari Games Reserve and we are setting up a spa based on the Wiki warm spring which is a very rare gift from God. This spring maintains a constant temperature of 31.2degree Celsius come rain come shine and it is clear that the water is medicinal. In Bauchi, we have the Zarada Hotel, with structures that by the time insurgency is over,  you have a structure and it is good. What remains would be to turn it into a three to five-star hotel. So we have a potential five star hotel, with 200 rooms and all the other facilities like swimming pool, tennis court, meeting halls and the rest.

The only College    of Medicine and Midwifery we have, was handed to the Federal Government  by the last administration free of charge which was ill-advised. The Federal Government is stronger than us so why should you take something and hand it over to them. Now we are left without any training institute for nurses and midwives.

So we have completed a new College of Medicine and Midwifery and we already have accreditation and are admitting this year to commence training.

In Abubakar Tatari Ali Polytechnic, when I took over, there was only one course accredited. Today, it has 80 courses accredited, including 8 degree courses that have been introduced and they have been approved in conjunction with Abubakar Tafawa Balewa University of Technology.

Still on School of Nursing

The former government didn’t give out the School of Nursing only; they also gave out the Specialist Hospital  because the two were together so that a medical school can be based there to give room for the establishment of a teaching hospital. That in itself is not bad, the fact that they wanted to attract a teaching hospital. What    I am saying is that the Federal Government is the giant, why would a tiny Bauchi State now be dashing the Federal Government anything? Let them come, they want to establish a teaching hospital, yes, we are willing to provide our specialist hospital as the nucleus for the teaching hospital,    but you have to pay, but we need to now replicate a specialist hospital for the people of Bauchi, that is the medical facility that everybody attends.

Why the strong opposition against him by the Speaker, House of Representatives, Yakubu Dogara, and others?

The answer is the ambition to become the governor of Bauchi. My argument is that now is not the time for that, now is the time to work for the people of the state. By the time we are ready to begin politics, everybody is free to come and aspire for any office. When I was not governor, I contested along with seven other people for the ticket of the APC. I was the underdog. When    I visited the headquarters of my party for the first time to see the National Secretary, he told me they didn’t know me as they only knew of two aspirants from Bauchi. He mentioned  their names and I said it was because those people had access to the secretariat and they were always on the pages of newspapers showing themselves as the leading candidates of Bauchi while we were going to the actual people who would do the electing. So I am not afraid of anybody who wishes to contest for any office but now is not the time. Now is the time for us to put our heads together and work for this state and, when the time of politics starts, everybody can aspire.

I told people at one point that some think they are denigrating me, they are doing this against me but they are not in reality, because if my wish is to be the governor of Bauchi State, God  has already answered that, it has gone down in history. So it is not me they are denigrating, it is the image of our state. Our state has never been like this, we have never had it so bad and we are not the only state that has that kind of people. Every state in Nigeria has members in the House of Representatives, senators, but none of them is doing what they are doing.  So, it is essentially ambition but they are free to aspire.

I don’t know whether they are ganging-up to support a particular candidate, but each one of them is harbouring an ambition, and the fact is: Is it true that I am not delivering from what you have seen? I hope you have the opportunity to go to other states for you to compare what you have seen in Bauchi State.

His relationship with Dogara, other politicians and the APC at the national level

The party in the state is intact, it is behind my government recently. As far as relationship with the party at the national is concerned, I was recently at the multi-purpose hall for the closing ceremony of veterans that are into a championship which attracted 34 teams from all over Nigeria when the National Chairman of the party called me and said he had  decided to call an emergency meeting of the governors for Thursday and therefore asked me to call my colleagues. I think that is an indication of the confidence between the national arm of the party and myself.

And  politics is a game of numbers. I went to INEC to obtain some figures. The constituencies of some of our antagonists do not have more than 70,000 registered voters. My ward has 69,000+.. And these people by the time they finish their hullabaloo in Abuja and the time comes for politics, it is here that this politics is going to be played and, at that time, there wouldn’t be any gang-up because everybody will go to his constituency and answer his father’s name. So what they are doing is mere grand-standing. They have some money to spend, so they are using that money to engage in campaign of calumny against their state because that is what they are doing essentially. But I assure you that the party is intact, our relationship with Abuja is fantastic.

Any window of reconciliation with the so-called enemies?

At every opportunity, I have said that they are our children; if they do a rethink, we are willing to take them back; we cannot wish them away because they are our children. Let me tell you a secret, at 2pm today, I had a meeting with some heavyweights in the state who took it upon themselves to intervene – big names; in fact, I went to them, I didn’t ask them to come and it is all in the hope of reconciliation. Before then, there was nothing that I did not do. I have sent committee after committee and at one time the entire working committee of the party in Bauchi, to  Abuja  to call these our children, ask them what their problem  is, their grudges.  All the attempts failed. The first class Emirs in Bauchi invited them to come, they did not. They set up a committee of three under the Emir of Misau, they went to Abuja to meet with them, but nothing came out of it. So everything I could do including getting some big names like Maitama Sule to intervene, he invited the Speaker and spoke with him, but the Speaker refused to heed. We have done all and we are still doing more, and my reason is simply because I am the leader; if there is peace in the polity, it is me that will enjoy it most. I am interested in peace and development in this state.

On whether the national leadership of the party has done enough

The problem is not a party problem because there is no problem with the party in Bauchi. The national leadership has intervened. Last week, we announced a fact-finding committee. We are expecting the committee here. When they come, we will insist they do what we have done and more, and see for themselves, do their fact-finding and then we will avail them opportunity of sitting with the party hierarchy here and clear for them where there is any problem in the party.

Kaduna State governor says there is need for state governments to disclose their security vote. Do you subscribe to that?

In the first place, governors have no security vote; the state, yes, has security vote, but it is not controlled by the governor. The security vote is controlled by the permanent secretary, security. In every state, there is permanent secretary, security and there is a security committee  comprising the governor as Chairman and all the security chiefs operating in the state as members. There is the Deputy Governor, Secretary to the State Government, Head of Service, the Chairman of the Traditional Council is the Emir of Bauchi. These are members of the Security Council.

You said you receive about N5billion as your monthly allocation while your current expenditure is higher than that amount. But you have done a lot of job, what is the magic?

There is no magic really. Apart from the bailout for salaries, the Federal Government gives each state a N10billion infrastructure loan guarantee from the Excess Crude Account. What you have seen  is prudent utilization of that infrastructural loan. The projects of course are far above N10billion, even the first phase of the roads we  started constructing is worth over N20billion.

We made up our minds from day one that the money meant for bailout of salaries we will use it for that purpose, if it is for infrastructure, we will use it for that purpose; we will not divert a kobo and put it in another place, that is the magic you have seen out there.

The APC at the national level is cash-strapped and one of the reasons is that major stakeholders in the party, especially the governors, have abandoned their responsibility to the party. What is his reaction?

I am not in the position to confirm or deny the fact that the party at the national level is cash-strapped. Secondly, I believe it is not because governors have shirked their responsibility, but it is because a formula has not been agreed upon. You know obviously that there is no way we can use public resources to fund political party. The national leadership of APC, I know, at one time, that a formula was recommended, but because of one reason or the other, the major organs of the party have not been meeting regularly, and the consequence is that the  formula has not been agreed upon. So, like I said of the meeting the Chairman is calling, maybe we might see light at the end of the tunnel after that meeting.

On plans for the Green House Project

Right now, Israelis are easily the best people in orthodox farming method in the world because they took a desert and turned it into green. There are so many things that go with the ones we discovered. I have a world renowned Israeli consultant right now working with my Ministry of Agriculture.