•Anti-grazing, kidnapping laws’ll ensure peace in Benue

By Peter Duru

Benue State Governor, Samuel Ortom, at the weekend interacted with journalists on his stewardship in the last two years. He listed lack of funds and insecurity as his greatest challenges but concluded that in spite of these he recorded what he described as milestones in several sectors. Excerpts:

Gov Samuel Ortom

WHAT were your expectations when you were vying for the office, what did you see when you came in and how has it been?

I will not say I’m regretting or disappointed with what I saw on ground but honestly, I met a deficit treasury amid very high expectations from the people.

I met a deficit treasury and having salary arrears, pensions and gratuity of over N69 billion was quite tasking. Almost all the institutions of government were grounded – schools were on strike; primary schools, Benue State University and several other unions were on strike.

To contend with this, the first thing we did was to seek for an approval from the House of Assembly to borrow N10 billion as a cushion for the hardship that salary earners were having. We all know that Benue State is a civil service state.

There is agriculture but the people are doing it at a very small level. So, the civil service is the main economic driver of the state and once salaries are not paid it becomes a very big challenge.

Very big challenge

We were able to borrow money to take off and since then we have been battling to see how we can clear salary arrears. The Federal Government came in with a bailout. We had wanted them to bail us out with N69 billion but only N28 billion was approved – N15.5 billion for the local government and N12.5 billion for the state. These we paid to workers and because of the screening we undertook, we were able to save at the state level more than one billion naira which we re-injected into the treasury for other government activities. At the local government level, we were able to save up to N1.4 billion after the screening.

So, it has been a very difficult problem – trying to update salaries of workers in the state. But one thing that we have noticed also is that there is a cartel, a syndicate that is responsible for the over-bloated wage bill we have. We have set up various committees and they are working. From the interim report that was submitted to me two weeks ago, there is a clear indication that we’ll get it right this time because one tenth of the work force was screened using previous payments for a period of one year and three months and the committee discovered that N1.4 billion was being siphoned through ghost workers. So, I believe that by the time they round up their work, we will be able to get it right. I believe having a wage bill at the local government level of N3.7 billion is a big challenge. And at the state level, when you put it together, it is N4.2 billion. So, you are talking about contending with N7.8 billion for a state like ours.

In the actual sense, at the local government level, we get an average of N2.4 billion from the Federation Account; at the state level we get an average of about N2.5 billion. So this becomes a very difficult problem. But there was also this arrangement from the Federal Government – the budget support fund which is an average of N1.1 billion that comes in to support.

So when you put all these together, there is still a short fall contending with N7.8 billion. This is what has been responsible for the arrears of salaries we have today. At the state level, we have four months, at the local government, we have seven months. And we are working closely with the labour unions in the state and that is why you’ve not seen strike in the civil service, the reason being that we’re transparent.

Whatever comes in from the Federation Account, from the IGR; we put it on the table and we are able to make distribution with the knowledge of the Labour Unions. At the local government level, it was the unions that suggested that since what comes in cannot take local government staff and teachers, they would sacrifice. For every month, you pay either teachers or local government staff and that is what we have been doing.

Achievements so far

Despite all these, by the grace of God, we have been able to achieve milestones in several sectors. In education, we have done so much. If you look at what is happening at the primary school today, we were able to secure a loan of N3.8 billion to match with the counterpart funding of UBEC and we have N7.6 billion and we are executing about 740 projects in various primary schools in the state – renovation of dilapidated primary schools and construction of new blocks and provision of instructional materials to various primary schools. Some of them are completed while some are on-going.

On insecurity, we discovered that politicians bought weapons and gave to many of our youths to help them prosecute the elections. I was attacked during one of my outings during the electioneering campaign to Kwande Local Government. Criminality was going on in all the local governments.

Killings, assassinations, kidnappings and armed robbery were the orders of the day and we felt that for the kind of thing we were planning to do, it would be difficult for us to be able to execute them. For me, I was coming from the background of the private sector and I felt that it will be important at a critical time in the history of Nigeria, knowing fully well that we will not have enough infrastructure, we needed to woo investors to come into the state and it was a big challenge. No investor will come to Benue State if he knows that his investment will one day be destroyed or he will be killed or he will be kidnapped and so on. And so we took on this matter of security very seriously and the wisdom we applied initially was to invite the young men especially those who were involved in these criminal acts by granting amnesty to whosoever will be ready to surrender his arms. And it was successful. More than 900 of these youths came and surrendered their arms and we were able to receive more than 700 guns, explosives and ammunition.

What’s the problem between you and Governor Wike?

Me too I was confused because we were very friendly when we served as ministers of State under President Goodluck Jonathan. But I think the problem was when my party sent me to Rivers for a re-run senatorial election and we went there and campaigned. He said why should I come to Rivers to campaign? I said, well we are in different parties now and you can also invite your own party to Benue but I decided not to join issues with him. I think he was deliberately trying to draw me into something but whatever it is; he can insult me but I’m a Christian and I’m told as a Christian not to pay back. Whatever he has said against me, I have decided to keep quiet about that and I’m not offended.

Apart from finance, the issue of herdsmen appears to be your biggest challenge…

The issue of herdsmen too was a big challenge. I inherited it. It was there before I came in. While serving as a minister in 2013, my ancestral home was destroyed by these herdsmen and more than 52 of my kinsmen were killed in one day. They were killed in Gbajimba which was under siege for some days; the militia group came and they dealt with us. In fact, the entire Guma local government was under siege. It was  amazing. Our people did not participate in rustling their cattle but we were accused that the cattle were rustled within our area and so these militia men came and took on the helpless and armless people and killed them in that area.

By the time I took over, more than 13 local governments were under siege. Some local governments were taken over completely by these herdsmen. So the point was that we were able to control the criminality that was going on among the youths through the amnesty programme, but the herdsmen were a big challenge.

Though I appreciate the fact that, some of them had issues with criminal elements in our society coming to rustle or steal their cattle and kill the herdsmen. But each time they came, the militia didn’t go for the real target, they go for innocent people. So, it was a big problem controlling these criminals and then the herdsmen.

On the other hand, the herdsmen come with their cattle and encroach into people’s farmland and crops and when they complained it resulted into fighting and it became a very big problem.

So, we decided that the only way out is for the herdsmen to continue to breed their cattle but they will have to learn the modern way of breeding cattle, which is ranching and this is what is being practiced globally.

And that was what motivated us to send an executive bill to the Benue State House of Assembly to make a law to ban open grazing and successfully, the bill was passed about two weeks ago and I signed it into law on Monday, May 22.

We believe that that will put to rest all these issues. The Fulani men are free and any other person is also free to secure land in Benue State and ranch their cattle for peace to reign.