Keynote Address by Malam Nasir El-Rufai, Governor of Kaduna State, at the 3rd Town Hall meeting of the APC Kaduna State Government; Kafanchan, 05 September 2015
PROTOCOLS
I welcome you all to this Town Hall meeting with the good people of Kaduna South senatorial district. We give all gratitude to God for bringing us today to Zone 3 for the third Town Hall meeting your government will be hosting since we were sworn-in. We have had similar meetings with the residents of Zones 1 and 2, as we discharge our democratic duty to report to, and to listen to, the people who elected us. We value engagement with our people, and we shall continue to hold these town-hall meetings monthly, rotating the meetings around the three senatorial zones in the state.
We once again thank the people of Southern Kaduna for their role in electing this government. Since the elections, we have been back in Zone 3 in happy times as well in moments less so. We had the privilege to launch our fertilizer sales in Kachia. We enjoyed the reception organised in Kafanchan to honour our deputy governor. And we visited and mourned with the people of Atakar Kingdom over the sad loss of lives from a brutal attack. The heart-rending story we heard in Atakar further strengthened the priority we accord to security.
We are back today to present a report of our service thus far. You elected us to undertake fundamental reform, to change the way government works, to solve problems and to invest the resources of the state in the public goods of security, education, healthcare, and jobs for our teeming youth.
Permit me to outline where we are on the road to doing the things you elected us to accomplish:
Security:
Security operations: We convened our very first meeting with the state security council on 30th May 2015. We were eager to start addressing the problem of insecurity in parts of Southern Kaduna and the Birnin-Gwari /Giwa axis. Based on the security assessments, we moved towards agreeing a comprehensive plan with the governors of Kaduna, Sokoto, Zamfara, Katsina, Kebbi and Niger States to address the serious security challenges in the forest ranges of Kamuku and Kuyambana that stride our respective States. With the full cooperation of the Federal Government, security operations have since commenced. Criminal gangs of cattle rustlers are being smashed. Livestock, including about 6000 heads of cattle have been recovered.
Agwai Peace Committee: We are happy to report that the committee on the causes of insecurity and conflict in Southern Kaduna has submitted its report. The report of the committee that was chaired by General Martin Luther Agwai is being studied, and a white paper will be published to guide the implementation of the recommendations.
Traditional Rulers’ Network: A high-powered committee chaired by the Amir of Birnin Gwari has just submitted its report on this issue. We are studying the report as part of our quest to enlist the intelligence and security networks of our traditional institutions in the service of security for our communities.
Governance
We held our first Executive Council meeting on Monday, 17 August 2015. Our 13 commissioners have since taken charge of the 13 ministries, down from the 19 ministries we inherited.
Treasury Single Account: we are the first state government to implement this system which ensures that public funds are traceable, easier to audit and available as a whole instead of atomised bits lying in isolated accounts. We asked all banks holding KDSG accounts to close them and remit the balances to the CBN by 21 August, preparatory to the TSA becoming operational by 1 September.
We have slashed overheads by 60% across board as we seek to do more with less.
Our deputy governor and I have tried to set an example by taking a 50% cut in our salaries and allowances.
Your government has also decided to save the monies hitherto spent on feeding, gifts and pilgrimage. Our state simply cannot afford this expense any longer.
Biometric verification:
Our government is conducting the second phase of the biometric verification of its employees. The first phase helped us save nearly N120million in just one month. We will not relent until there is a perfect match between the real number of public servants and those who get paid.
Apart from verifying persons, we are also checking the actual status of schools. We are collating reports on the phenomenon of ghost schools.
Tax Reforms: We are studying the options to improve our internally generated revenue and reduce our dependence on federal allocations. Our deputy governor and I are committed to not drawing our full pay until our IGR exceeds federation account allocations for at least three consecutive months.
Transparency: Your government has decided to domesticate the Freedom of Information Act in Kaduna State. We have forwarded the bill to the House of Assembly for passage. We have also signed up to Open Budget, a web-based tool that enables you to track what we are doing with your money.
Health:
One of the first actions of this government was to convene a healthcare partners summit to pool funds and ideas for improving healthcare outcomes for our people. We secured the support of the donor community and businesses active in that sector. We are working on the following health projects:
Hospital Modernisation: Kaduna State has signed a Memorandum of Understanding with General Electric Healthcare to modernise our primary health centres and public hospitals. Both parties have committed to identifying the specific needs of the centres and hospitals, so that modern equipment can be installed to improve the diagnosis and management of patients.
Primary Healthcare: We will be implementing the Primary Healthcare Under One Roof (PHCUOR) concept. We have therefore sent this framework as our first Executive Bill to the State House of Assembly. We will fully equip at least one primary health care centre in each of the 255 wards in the state, and at least one general hospital in each of the three senatorial districts. In addition to providing better facilities, we would be recruiting more doctors, nurses, midwives and technologists for our improved hospitals.
We have signed the 2015 Kaduna State-UNICEF 2015 work-plan. The state government is ready with its counterpart funding for the agreed initiatives in healthcare, nutrition, HIV/AIDS, water, sanitation and child protection.
We have installed two dialysis machines and have repaired three dialysis equipment at Barau Dikko Hospital. We hope to take delivery of four other dialysis machines to be installed at our general hospitals in Kafanchan and Zaria.
Job creation
We realise that try as it may, the government can employ only a limited number of persons. Mass job creation thus relies on attracting investments. We are doing this vigorously.
Shopping Mall: Modern retail enterprises help to improve the shopping experience for consumers and create jobs for suppliers, farmers and workers. The malls retail giants occupy thus become centres of tangible and intangible economic activity. We believe that our people also deserve this experience. We have signed an agreement with UAC Property Development Company (UPDC) to build a shopping mall in Kaduna. The mall is scheduled for commissioning by December 2016.
Hospitality Industry: We want Kaduna to be a centre for domestic tourism, and an outstanding venue for national and international conferences and other events. We have therefore advertised for investors interested in developing five-star hotels.
Kaduna Cabs: We have initiated a scheme to revive taxi services in our major urban centres, starting with 200 branded, air-conditioned cabs in Kaduna. Prospective owner-drivers are expected to deposit about 10% of the discounted price of the vehicles and pay the balance in installments over a period of four years. About 120 of our youths have now been short-listed for training with a view to empowering them as owner-drivers in due course.
Local Government Reforms
We have appointed interim management committees for all the 23 local government councils in our state. As we pledged during the campaign, we have announced that the state government will not touch a kobo of local government money.
Land Recovery
Public institutions: Your government has demonstrated its resolve to protect the integrity of the land on which public institutions such as schools and hospitals are sited. We are reversing the impunity that led important personalities to conclude that they could take school or hospital land for private purposes.
Government is therefore recovering such lands to preserve the security of such institutions, and safeguard their ability to expand, which are the reasons they were allotted such size of the land in the first place. Appropriate notices have been issued to people who have built on such plots. We thank the public for the widespread support they are giving to these recovery moves.
Education:We have commenced the process of recruiting teachers by advertising for teachers in the core subjects of Mathematics, English, the Sciences and information technology. We shall also be training our teachers to remedy the skills gaps revealed by the teacher audit. Comprehensive school repairs and the provision of furniture, water, toilets are about to commence across the state.
Clean Kaduna: We have launched the Keep Kaduna Clean Campaign. This entails public enlightenment as well as enforcement measures and an improved system of public waste management.
Infrastructure
Zaria Water Project: We have briefed and secured the support of our lenders and development partners for accelerated completion of this project by early 2018. We are negotiating a sustainable payment plan to clear the contractor arrears. We are also working on plans for a Kaduna Water Expansion Project, as well as the rehabilitation of other small town water schemes across the state.
Rural and community development: Under the leadership of our Deputy Governor, we shall be mainstreaming the Pampaida Millennium Village as a viable model across our rural communities. It will have components to improve education, healthcare, rural roads and the farming activities that engage most of our rural residents.
Enterprise Zones: We have advertised to invite developers for Enterprise Zones around Buruku, Marraraban Jos and Tafa. These zones will comprise trailer parks, restaurants, workshops, hotels and other economic activities. The goal is to transform areas of traffic nuisance into places of economic vitality based on the needs of the road transport industry.
Textile Revival: We are collaborating with the Federal Government, current and potential textile investors, and the states of Zamfara, Katsina and Kano on a package that stimulates the value-chain from cotton farming to textiles production and garmenting.
What we intend to do
Based on our manifesto and campaign pledges, your government will be implementing the following measures to improve the welfare of our people:
Land Reform: Your government will assist land owners to have security and be able to unlock the wealth in their land by formalising and registering their titles. We will computerize all the land records and implement the Kaduna Geographic Information System starting with Kaduna, Zaria and Kafanchan metropolitan areas. This is to ensure that our people get Certificates of Occupancy for all their plots of land and improve the security of their landholdings.
Urban Development: At the moment, the three major cities in Kaduna State – Kaduna, Zaria and Kafanchan are no more than glorified local government headquarters. This administration is developing a master-plan to transform these cities into modern urban centres with every conceivable facility like improved transportation, traffic management, leisure and shopping facilities, recreational and neighborhood centres. This process will involve the creation of thousands of jobs in several sectors.
School Feeding: We have taken a firm decision to vastly improve the feeding of students in our boarding schools, starting from this September. We will start with boarding secondary schools.
Pensioners: It is unacceptable that retired people should face pension headaches after a lifetime of work. We shall take steps to resolve this matter, ensure that pensions are properly-funded and pass an updated law to make pensions a sustainable undertaking by committing the state to an improved contributory pension scheme consistent with Pensions Reform Act 2014.
Physically-challenged persons and the destitute: We have a responsibility to every section of our society, including the physically-challenged. Our duty is to train every willing person to acquire the skills that can help them be productively engaged. We neither believe that destitution is a profession nor will we condemn anyone to the misery of begging. Rather all our rehabilitation centres will be retooled to impart viable skills and we shall have a microcredit scheme to assist people to start-up their small businesses after undergoing training. We have had to effect some emergency measures to take beggars and hawkers off the streets in response to the recent security issues, but we shall abide by the commitments we made during the campaign. We appointed a Special Assistant on Persons with Disability to drive this component of our agenda.
Township Roads and Street Lights: neighborhood and township roads in our major urban centres are being earmarked for upgrading to the extent we can within this rainy season. More extensive work will begin as soon as the rains are over in all the local government headquarters in the state. We shall provide street lights, brighten up our cities and thereby help deter crime.
Transport: our multi-layer transport architecture will be executed over the next four years by God's Grace. That includes preparations, studies and projects to put in place:
-The new Cabs scheme and expanding the project to Zaria and Kafanchan,
- A BRT system for mass transit starting with Kaduna metropolitan area,
- A major project to establish Kaduna-Zaria rapid transit system between Shika, Samaru and Zaria through and within the Kaduna Metropolis and up to the Refinery, and
- A new bus and truck terminals in Kaduna, Tafa, Mararaban Jos, Kafanchan and Zaria.
Direct Youth Employment: Our drive to recruit 50 youths per ward in the next four years to work in some government agencies – as traffic, environmental and sanitary inspectors will commence this year with about 10 persons per ward. We have reconstituted the board and leadership of KASTELEA to enable this process to start soon. These job openings have been advertised. Applications are now being sorted this week, and shortlisted candidates will be invited for interviews.
Conclusion
We have have been elected to bring change. Not merely to change the names and the faces of those who lead. The mass of our people recognize that the old way has failed them. It is our duty to shine the light, to show that our state can be better than what it has been and to chart a path towards a better destiny. We cannot do that if we continue to do the things that have failed our people.
We do not regard poverty as an excuse for doing nothing or letting things remain in a bad way. The duty of leaders is to fight poverty,rescue people from it and improve the standards of their lives. Our people, no matter how poor they may be, deserve to live in a secure society, where law and order thrive, where they are free from disease and squalor, where their lands have secure titles and their children can go to good schools and decent hospitals.
In three months, we have been unrelenting in sending signals and doing things to show that we shall serve our people by doing the things that are necessary. We were not elected to do nothing, or to perpetuate the dismal circumstances that made our people to reject the old order. We have taken fertilizer out of the hands of the cabals; we are rescuing state accounts from the multiplicity and opacity that aid corruption. We are executing the Treasury Single Account. Our public service is bracing up for more realistic budgeting in the shape of zero-based budgeting.
We ask for your unflinching support as we take and implement difficult decisions. We may make mistakes, but we shall make amends when we err. Let us march together to make change real in the lives of our people.
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