BY Agaju Madugba
The report last Thursday that the current debt profile of Kaduna state stands at about N73 billion may have rubbished Governor Nasir El-Rufais claims concerning the state of indebtedness of the area. In fact, covering El-Rufai’s activities may be a reporter’s delight. Beginning from late last year when he announced his decision to join the governorship race under the banner of the All Progressives Congress (APC) till he eventually emerged victorious at the polls, El-Rufai spat fire all the way, concerning the state of affairs in Kaduna.

At the slightest opportunity, El-Rufai would come short of shedding tears, lamenting how the immediate past PDP government had looted and mismanaged resources of the state.

Nasir-el-Rufai

He tells anyone who cares to listen that Kaduna is so much indebted to the extent that each person living in the state has a debt burden of about N15,000, including children yet unborn. Kaduna has a population of eight million people, according to the 2006 national population figures. “You do the calculation yourself,” El-Rufai would say, to determine how much the state owes.

“It is obvious that the present government has beaten our Kaduna state to the ground,”El-Rufai had asserted in April after he was declared winner of the governorship polls. Ordinarily, going by El-Rufai’s estimation, the immediate past Governor, Mukhtar Ramalan Yero, should disappear from the state after handing over to the former Minister of the FCT.

In his usual manner, few hours to the handing over ceremony, El-Rufai had described the Yero administration as comprising of people who did not helpt the state and people he would fish out after his inauguration.

Speaking at the Arewa House during a pre-inauguration lecture, El-Rufai had re-affirmed that, “the resources of the state have been looted and we will insist on accountability but we will not waste our time chasing those who stole small amounts of money.

We are not interested in in the pick pockets but we want to get the armed robbers among them. We will chase those who stole billions of Naira but we will forgive those who stole hundreds of thousands.”

However, at the handing over ceremony, El-Rufai was forced to admit that he was wrong in his assessment of the Kaduna state level of indebtedness. Receiving the handover notes from Yero, El-Rufai said that, “the situation is not as bad as we thought,” adding however that, “we will give the documents to experts to study.”

Yero had explained that Kaduna has external debt loans amounting to $234,416,052.16, equivalent to N46,062,745,245.51 as at December 2014. According to Yero, the internal loans comprise, N2,031,612,259.31 in bonds, N23,531,154,819.69 as contractors’ as arrears, N1,307,592,598.71 gratuity areas and N1 billion as CBN MSMEDF. Yero who also gave details of certain on-going road projects at various levels of completion, noted that, “in spite of other people-oriented projects executed by the outgoing administration, a total cash balance of N8.6 billion is being left in various accounts as at May 28, 2015.”

It may well be so, but less than 24 hours later, at his inauguration last Friday, El-Rufai returned to the path of lamentations, grieving over finances of the state.

According to El-Rufai, “Kaduna state is in a difficult situation. As soon as we have all the facts in coming weeks, we shall lay bare to you just how deep a hole we have dug ourselves in the past several years. But this much we already know.

Our finances are in shambles. Kaduna is the second most indebted state in our country. Our state is staggering under the weight of billions of naira in debt and other liabilities. As we all know, merely by walking the streets or seeing our neighbours everyday, the state of our state is abysmal.”

El -Rufais claim that Kaduna is the second most indebted state in the country may not be entirely correct as reports indicate that Lagos has a staggering N418.2 billion debt while the immediate past Governor of Kano state, Musa Rabiu Kwankwaso, left behind a debt of about N100 billion for his successor.

It would seem as if El-Rufai has a knack for crying wolf where it does not exist. Only about three weeks ago, as Governor-elect then, El-Rufai had dragged the Yero administration before the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC), through the defunct Transition Committee, over the N2.744 billion local governments 2015 SURE-P funds. In a petition to the EFCC, the then Chairman of the Transition Committee who has since been appointed SSG, Balarabe Abbas Lawal, said that, “I wish to therefore request that you urgently investigate whether the Sure-P funds are still intact, or if they have been spent without appropriation thus necessitating a belated approval from the House of Assembly to provide a legal means of retiring the funds.

If, as it is widely believed in the state, the monies have already been spent, it is crucial to determine the projects, the contractors and the procurement processes that facilitated such a deliberate hemorrhaging of public funds.”

As El-Rufai begins to call the shots from the Sir Kashim Ibrahim House, seat of the Kaduna state government, there is perhaps no doubt that he may come up with the actual state of Kaduna finances. It is also possible that at the end of the day, the much vilified Yero may turn out not to be the villain.