Lawal: Zamfara Was a Dysfunctional State When I Resumed as Gov
GOVERNOR DAUDA LAWAL OF ZAMFARA STATE, IN THIS INTERVIEW, SPEAKS ON THE VERY BAD STATE HE MET THE AGRARIAN STATE WHEN HE ASSUMED OFFICE IN MAY, 2023 AND HIS CURRENT MOVES TO IMPROVE THE LOTS OF THE STATE AMID GROWING INSECURITY. JOHN SHIKLAM BRINGS EXCERPTS:
How do you meet Zamfara state when you took over as governor on May 29,2023?
Let me give you a brief of how we started when we took over on May 29, 2023.
We inherited a virtually dysfunctional state and what we saw cannot be explained. In the first place, we met an empty treasury, we met about N4 million with a backlog of three and a half months salaries of workers.
For six months, there was no drop of water in Gusau, the state capital. Electricity supply in all government offices, including the Government House, were disconnected.
Our children in secondary schools did not write WAEC and NECO for two years. Gratuities and pension were not paid since 2011, amounting to N13.6 billion. There were so many debts and we had to think of what to do. When we took over, the minimum wage in Zamfara state was N7,000. I inherited a huge debt profile from the previous administration.
We had no single official vehicle either for the governor, deputy governor or any other government official. Everything was taken away.
The first thing we did was to settle the three months’ backlog of salaries. We paid N1.3 billion to restore electricity. We had to negotiate with WAEC and NECO to address the situation of our secondary school students. We paid WAEC N1.6 billion to get certificates for the previous students.
We also went into agreement with NECO and paid N1.3 billion in order to get certificates for over two years. As a matter of fact, in 2023, our children did not write WAEC because it was late. We were fortunate, we wrote an undertaking and they wrote the NECO exam sometimes in July, 2023.
There was no money for water treatment, most of the machines were obsolete and we had to fix them. Within a week, we were able to restore water in the state capital.
Our residence in Kaduna was garnished in court, we had to pay about N600 million to take the property back.
As we speak, we are still trying to fix our liaison office in Abuja because everything was taken away, including curtains. The only thing we met was non functional air conditions. That was the Zamfara we met.
How did you confront these challenges?
When we took over, we had 48 commissioners and 52 permanent secretaries. We trimmed down the ministries to 16 by merging them. We reduced permanent secretaries to 22, some have retired and we have about 16 now.
We have our students that were studying outside the country on scholarship and were not settled. We have our students studying in India and Sudan, we still have students in Cyprus that we are still battling to bring home because the whole thing was a scam.
Over 90 students were sent to Cyprus to study, but after going through the whole process, there was not even an agreement with the state government and the school.
Initially, we settled about 200,000 Euros for them to continue with classes. We made a second payment, but after we realised that the whole thing was a scam, I delegated the commissioner of education, my adviser on economic matters and the commissioner of finance to go to the school and ascertain the extent of the debt, but the school was not willing to cooperate. We realised we were just spending money. We have agreed to bring the students from Cyprus and provide scholarship for them in Nigeria.
Amid the security challenges facing the state, you seem to be thriving pretty well?
Insecurity is an issue. For over 11 years we’ve been facing the challenge, so we have to make conscious efforts to see what we could do to bring immediate relief to our people. That was what informed our decision to form the community protection guard backed by law. Those recruited were fully trained by security agencies – Army, DSS, police and civil defence. It is community- based because we recruited them from the 14 Local Government Areas of the state. They have done wonderfully well.
You have established three Almajiri integrated schools in the three senatorial zones in the state to address the issue of out of school children. How are you getting the cooperation of stakeholders in this direction?
Having realised the gap in education and the nature of our people, we thought of how we could synergise with Islamic scholars.
The most difficult thing was convincing them that there is the need to combine Western and Islamic education. We gave them the assurance that we are not going to take away their Qur’anic schools but to integrate Western education with Islamic teaching, having realised Zamfara is a sharia state.
We came up with that concept and decided to give it a trial. We constructed three Sangaya schools in the three senatorial zones of the state- one is in Kaura- Namoda, one in Gusau and another one in Gumi.
We are also going to teach them skills for them to be able to be self-reliant if they do not want to further their education. They should be able to have something doing to sustain themselves after completing the school. We did that in collaboration with the Ulamas and all the Islamic scholars before they allowed the integration, which so far is working fine. We are still fine-tuning the process in terms of how to give them full scholarship, how to feed them, and how to train them.
I am happy other governors are calling to find out how we did it so that they could also introduce it in their states. Sustainability in everything is key. We are making conscious efforts to see the operations of the schools. It is an ongoing process in terms of feeding curriculum development, and technical know how.
Will you say insecurity has limited your performance as governor ?
We didn’t limit ourselves because of security challenges. First of all, we understand the root causes of the problems. So, many things are responsible – poverty, illiteracy, etc. So, as a responsible government, having realisedsome of the challenges, we begin to address some of them by engaging the communities right from the ward, local government and the state levels to first understand the implication of what is going on.
Our state is blessed with solid minerals which if we are able to harness, we will not be depending on federal allocation.
If you are talking of gold, Zamfara gold is hot cake. If you are talking of lithium, we have the highest deposits of lithium. Name any mineral, it is in Zamfara. So, we have to begin to think of the way out, having realised this is where we have comparative advantage.
We must capitalise on our comparative advantage to be able to develop the state. That is why there is this engagement between the state and the federal government. Solid minerals is on the exclusive list, but the land belongs to the state. So, there must be a synergy, which is an ongoing process.
You are constructing a big airport in Gusau, what are the economic benefits of such project to the people?
We realised that, no matter how we want to move fast, no matter how we want to bring investors, no right thinking investor will come to Nigeria, land in Abuja or Kano and drive seven hours to Zamfara to come and invest his money with all the negative security reports. Insecurity has been a major concern, so no serious investor will take his money and come and invest in Zamfara the fact that he has to travel all the way for more than seven hours.
We realised we have to open up the state and the only way is to make transportation much easier for people to fly. Initially, it was just a cargo airport, but we decided that we should go beyond that by making it a combination of cargo and passengers. That is exactly what the airport is. We have domestic terminal and international terminal. It is a world standard. I am sure if you come to Zamfara in the next five months, you will see a different thing all together. The economic benefits of the airport cannot be overemphasised because that is the only way we can bring investors to the state.
Anytime, I am going to Abuja, I spend the whole day travelling when I can easily fly to Abuja to attend meetings and be with my people if we have our airport. It takes me two days to and from Abuja. If we really want to tap on the potential of the state, then air transportation is very important.
The airport will also create employment for the people. It will add to revenue generation. Zamfara state is an agrarian economy.
By the time you go into agreement with the Qataris or the Saudis in terms of importing some of these farm inputs, you will see the number of cargoes landing in Zamfara.
There was a time when the Saudis found some special grasses here which they needed and wanted to construct the airport to enable them evacuate it to Saudi Arabia.
All these potentials and opportunities will not be explored without the airport. In the entire country, it is only Zamfara state that has no airport.
How did you get the money to do all these projects considering the bad state of things when you assumed office?
People have always asked me how I have been able to do all these things with meagre resources. As we speak, out of the N14.6 billion pension, we were able to settle N10.4 billion. The balance of N4 billion will be settled in the next two months. We are still doing our best because it is something we inherited. As a responsible government, the assets and liabilities are all yours.
On a monthly basis, N1.2 billion is being deducted from source to settle the debts we inherited from previous administrations.
We are not complaining. What we did to augment our earnings was to improve our internal revenue generation. When we took over, internally generated revenue was N90 million. Ninety per cent of the money was PAYE. We realised that something fundamental was wrong. We made conscious efforts to block revenue leakages and we started putting things in place.
We set a target and within six months our revenue generation increased from N90 million to N1.5 billion. Every day, there are incremental changes as far as revenue generation is concerned.
We had to declare a state of emergency in the education sector in January, 2024 because the schools were eyesore. That is why Zamfara was always at the bottom of the statistics. With the declaration of state of emergency, there has been improvement.
We have reconstructed over 300 primary schools and provided furniture. We have done over 200 secondary schools across the 14 local government areas fully furnished.
Having realised that in the entire country, it is only Zamfara that does not have the required number of universities to accommodate our students, we are now building the State University in Talata Mafara as well as AuduGusau Polytechnic. We have the College of Health in Tsafe, which we are transforming. While we are building and upgrading hospitals, we also need man power. Before bringing doctors, we should have nurses who will take care of both primary and secondary healthcare. So far, we have upgraded Nasarawa primary health care centre to a full hospital, we have fully equipped Maru General Hospital, we have rehabilitated and equipped Maradun and Kaura Namoda General Hospitals, we have done Tsafe.
We are now rehabilitating the Yariman Bakura Specialist Hospital, Gusaubecause we have upgraded it to a teaching hospital.
We have a university and very soon they will start studying medicine. If you have medical students, you need a teaching hospital.
By the time we finish upgrading our hospital we will remove all obsolete equipment and replace them with new technologies so that we don’t need to be going to Sokoto, Katsina or Kaduna to seek medical attention.
You have rehabilitated and constructed many roads under the urban renewal programme. You may have taken some loans to do the projects?
A – In the past, you cannot move 200 metres on a good road in Gusau, the state capital. But things are changing. In the next three months, we will invite you to come and see a different Gusau.
We are being transparent, we are being accountable in terms of our resources, and the good thing is that up till today, we have not borrowed a dime from anywhere. It is the resources that we got that we utilised to execute these projects. For every project that is ongoing, the funds are available. The mindset of people is changing.
