How were you able to do the things you claimed to have done without borrowing and yet the state has about N16 billion in its account?
When we started, we had a simple approach to governance. First, we made plans and conceptualised what we wanted to do. I was an attorney general in the government of the late Yar’Adua and so I knew well how government operates. So I had a plan to move gradually in terms of development. I know that the country is littered with many uncompleted projects. Some roads have been built since the 70s but nobody cares to maintain them. I felt that there was need for us to deal with the projects that had not been completed. When you start a project and invest huge amount of money on it and you abandon it, the waste is colossal. I was committed to completing every project I inherited from the previous government. And the on going projects I met were colossal. For example, the expansion of the Katsina airport had just been awarded at the end of November, mobilisation was done in February and in April there was election and handing over. I stayed on the neck of the contractors, and that gulped two- thirds of the budget at that time. After that, we looked at the university project that was just awarded too. Obasanjo laid the foundation.
Then foundation was just laid. I told the contractors to sit with our officials and give me a timeline for the completion and the financial requirements. In 18 month, we completed that university. The Turai Yar’Adua Child Mortality Hospital was also just awarded. We had all kinds of projects, so by the time we were 18 months we targeted 18 month’s completion of all the projects. How did I manage to fund these projects? The university gulped about N11.8 billion and the hostels are quite modest. It took about N800 million but the roads were the real money guzzlers, especially where there are bridges and construction of culverts. We inherited eight road projects from the previous administration. I was getting about N3.4 billion per month. I had a salary bill of about N1.2 billion and with overheads it was about N1.5 billion.
So I had N1.9 billion to play with. I felt there was need to find additional sources of income and we tried to work on the issue of internal revenue generation. We made about N130 million monthly from internally generated revenue. And by and large, the revenue will always come from Value Added Tax (VAT) and others. We were able to get 14.5 per cent interests from pour deposits with the banks and so, we were making between N500 t0 N600 million from the deposits. Within eight months, we built about N20 billion reserves. From there we were able to calculate all our projects and we decided on how much we need to spend in a month on all the projects we are doing.
In one month we will decide that we are going to spend N1.5 billion, another month N1 billion because we know what is coming in from the federation accounts and other sources. Then we made sure we had professional people who did evaluation for us for the jobs. For example, a supplier of vehicles cannot have more than 25 per cent profit. Nobody asks you for a kobo as bribe. At the end of the day, I made sure no contractor had to see me to get a job. Once you meet the necessary procedure, you get a job; you get 40 per cent advance payment with a bank guarantee given to us. That explains why must complete your projects on time because once we give you a contract to build something and you have a comfortable profit margin it is expected that the project will not suffer hiccup.
When we started, we had a simple approach to governance. First, we made plans and conceptualised what we wanted to do. I was an attorney general in the government of the late Yar’Adua and so I knew well how government operates. So I had a plan to move gradually in terms of development. I know that the country is littered with many uncompleted projects. Some roads have been built since the 70s but nobody cares to maintain them. I felt that there was need for us to deal with the projects that had not been completed. When you start a project and invest huge amount of money on it and you abandon it, the waste is colossal. I was committed to completing every project I inherited from the previous government. And the on going projects I met were colossal. For example, the expansion of the Katsina airport had just been awarded at the end of November, mobilisation was done in February and in April there was election and handing over. I stayed on the neck of the contractors, and that gulped two- thirds of the budget at that time. After that, we looked at the university project that was just awarded too. Obasanjo laid the foundation.
Then foundation was just laid. I told the contractors to sit with our officials and give me a timeline for the completion and the financial requirements. In 18 month, we completed that university. The Turai Yar’Adua Child Mortality Hospital was also just awarded. We had all kinds of projects, so by the time we were 18 months we targeted 18 month’s completion of all the projects. How did I manage to fund these projects? The university gulped about N11.8 billion and the hostels are quite modest. It took about N800 million but the roads were the real money guzzlers, especially where there are bridges and construction of culverts. We inherited eight road projects from the previous administration. I was getting about N3.4 billion per month. I had a salary bill of about N1.2 billion and with overheads it was about N1.5 billion.
So I had N1.9 billion to play with. I felt there was need to find additional sources of income and we tried to work on the issue of internal revenue generation. We made about N130 million monthly from internally generated revenue. And by and large, the revenue will always come from Value Added Tax (VAT) and others. We were able to get 14.5 per cent interests from pour deposits with the banks and so, we were making between N500 t0 N600 million from the deposits. Within eight months, we built about N20 billion reserves. From there we were able to calculate all our projects and we decided on how much we need to spend in a month on all the projects we are doing.
In one month we will decide that we are going to spend N1.5 billion, another month N1 billion because we know what is coming in from the federation accounts and other sources. Then we made sure we had professional people who did evaluation for us for the jobs. For example, a supplier of vehicles cannot have more than 25 per cent profit. Nobody asks you for a kobo as bribe. At the end of the day, I made sure no contractor had to see me to get a job. Once you meet the necessary procedure, you get a job; you get 40 per cent advance payment with a bank guarantee given to us. That explains why must complete your projects on time because once we give you a contract to build something and you have a comfortable profit margin it is expected that the project will not suffer hiccup.
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