Zamfara State governor, Dauda Lawal, speaks to journalists on his experiences and challenges administering the state. Our Northern Bureau Chief, MUHAMMAD SABIU, brings some excerpts of the interview:
Could you share with us your experience since you assumed office as the governor of Zamfara State?
When we took over on May 29, 2023, we inherited a very dysfunctional state and what we saw cannot even be explained. We can only do a bit. In the first place, we met an empty treasury with just N4 million with a backlog of three and half month’s salary. For six months, there was no drop of water in the state capital. Electricity was disconnected in all government offices, including Government House. Our children in school did not write WAEC or NECO for two years and so many other debts that we had to start thinking of what to do. Not to talk about the gratuity and pension that was not paid since 2011 to the tune of N13.6 billion. When we took over, the minimum wage in Zamfara was N7,000, with so many other challenges and a very huge debt profile that we are still paying from the previous administration. There was not a single official vehicle to use, either as a governor or deputy Governor or any other person. Everything was taken away. So, we had to settle that three and half month salary— that was the first thing we did, that is, to clear that backlog. We had to pay N1.3 billion to settle the electricity bill. We paid KEDCO which is the supplier.
Having realised the condition of our students, we had to go into negotiations with WAEC and NECO. We agreed to pay WAEC N1.6bn in order for us to get the certificates of the previous students… Not to talk of the ones to write exams. We had entered an agreement with NECO, to settle N1.3bn in order to get the certificates of over 2 years. As a matter of fact, that 2023, our students did not write WAEC because it was late. We were fortunate they had an undertaking and we wrote NECO exams because it was sometimes in July. Within one week, we were able to restore water in the capital. There was no money for water treatments, in terms of the chemicals and most of the machines in Water board were obsolete, so we had to fix them. And we are able to restore water within one week or 5 days. And since then, there was never a day we went without water. And after negotiating with KEDCO and agreed to pay all the debt that was when electricity was restored in all the government offices.
There was a case in court over our property in Kaduna and we had to pay garnishee of N600 million to get that 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 a few non-functional air conditioners. Everything was taken away. That was the Zamfara we met. So, we had to really go back to the drawing board. At the same time, when we took over, we had 48 commissioners and 52 permanent secretaries. The first thing we did was to trim the ministries, merge them and we only have about 16 ministries after restructuring. We had to let those permanent secretaries go. We were able to maintain about 22 at the time, but a lot of them are retired now. So, we had about 17 or thereabout as we speak.
Don’t forget that we had children out of the country on scholarship; they are not settled. We had people in India, Sudan, and still have people in Cyprus that we are still battling to bring back home. About 90 students were sent to Cyprus to study, but after going through the whole thing, we realised that there was no agreement between the state government and the school. Initially, we settled about €200,000 for them to continue with classes. We sent the second batch of over N100,000,000 equivalent. Having realised the whole thing was suspicious, I sent the Commissioner for Education, Adviser on Economic Matters and Commissioner of Finance to go to the school and sit down with the authorities to ascertain the extent of the debt. They were not ready to cooperate. We realised we are just spending money. I’m sure you may recall that sometime last month; there we are a lot of issues on the Cyprus students. And we are still on it. Finally, what we have agreed to do is to bring them back and give them scholarships here.
In spite of the insecurity bedeviling the state, how did you carry out infrastructural development?
We made conscious effort to really make calculated decisions on what is best for the state because we have been in the news for the wrong reasons. Of course, insecurity has been an issue. For over 11 years, we have been having security challenges. So, we had to make a conscious effort to think of what to do immediately that will bring relief to our people. That was what informed our decision to create the Community Protection Guard that was backed fully by law, because we had to make the law by the state assembly. These people were fully trained in conjunction with all the security agencies like Army, Police, Civil Defense, among others. It is more like community-based group because we involve… from the 14 Local Governments of the state, having gone through the security training and so on—for them to be able to guard those communities and they have done wonderfully well.
Coming back to Almajiri school, having realised the gap in education and the nature of our people, we came with an idea. We raised the question: how do we have a synergy between government and the Islamic scholars? The most difficult thing was convincing them that we need to marry the two— and we gave them all the assurances that we are not trying to take away their usual Quranic schools but that we want to integrate modern education with Islamic teachings — having realised Zamfara is predominantly a Sharia State when Yerima introduced it. So, we came up with that concept and said let’s have a trial and construct one Tsangaya school. We call it Tsangaya School, and it’s built across all the three senatorial districts. We did one in Kaura Namoda; we have one in Gusau; the other one is in Gumi. The model is the same. That is why we have fully equipped those schools. It is not just about planning; we need to teach them skills, because we are introducing skills development for them to be able to learn skills if they don’t want to further their education, at least they have something to hold on to, so that they can sustain themselves. So, we did that in collaboration with the Ulamas and all the Islamic scholars before they even allowed this integration, which so far is working fine. We are still fine-tuning the process in terms of asking how we would provide a full scholarship. How do we feed them and how do we train them? So, we are doing that in conjunction with the Commissioner for Education, Science and Technology.
Now, other governors are calling to find out how we did it so that they can also integrate that kind of system in their respective states. So, sustainability in everything is key. We are making conscious effort to see the operation of the schools we have just started. We are seeing how we can improve on the system in terms of feeding, adjusting the curriculum, skills development. That is what we are doing now.
This is happening, despite all the security challenges I pointed out earlier. We don’t limit ourselves because there are security challenges that we won’t do anything. First, we understand what the root causes of the insecurity are. It’s a combination of so many factors. Poverty is key; the lack of education is key. So, as a responsible government, having realised some of the challenges, we began to address some of the challenges by engaging the communities right from the ward level to the local government level and the state level, to understand what we going through, despite the fact that this state is one of the most blessed in terms of solid minerals. If we are able to get it right, we don’t need to wait for the federal allocation for us to be comfortable and develop without limitations. If you are talking of gold, Zamfara gold is a hot cake. If you are talking of lithium, we have the highest grade of lithium. Name any minerals, it is in Zamfara. So, we have to begin to think of a way out, having realised this is where we have a comparative advantage. Then, we must capitalise on our comparative advantage to develop the state. That is why there is this engagement between the state and the Federal Government, realising that solid minerals are on the Exclusive List. So, there must be a synergy.
Why are you building an airport in spite of the challenges confronting the state?
Now coming to the airport, we realized no matter how we want to move fast, no matter how you want to bring investors, no right thinking investor will come to Nigeria, land in Abuja or Kano and drive for seven hours to come and invest his money with all the negative security reports. Insecurity has been a major concern, so no meaningful investor will take his money to come and invest in Zamfara, considering the fact he has to travel for more than seven hours to get to this place. We realised we need to open up the state, and the only way is to make transportation easier; where anybody can fly in. Initially, it was going to be just cargo airport, but we realised that we need to go beyond that. We say let it be a combination of both cargo, as well as a passenger airport. We have the domestic terminal and we have the international terminal and by any standard, I’m sure if you come to Zamfara in the next five months, you will see a different thing all together. So, the economic benefits cannot be overemphasised because we need to open up the state. That’s the only way you can bring meaningful investors. It is not only that. Right now, anytime I’m going to Abuja, I spend the whole day. on the journey. when I can easily fly to Abuja, attend the meeting and come back to be with my people. We take time, two days. I would spend one day, the whole day traveling to Abuja, when I finish it takes me another one day to come back to Zamfara. So honesty it’s a must if really we are serious and want to tap from the potential the state has at the moment. Otherwise, only very few people will stop by to come and see what we are doing when we have their money.
Apart from opening up the state, it provides employment. Because the airport, you have to employ people to work. Revenue generation is also something. Zamfara is an agrarian economy. By the time you go into an agreement with the Qataris, the Saudis in terms of some of these farming, believe me it is just a matter of time. By the time we are able to get it right, you will see the number of cargos that will be taking off from Zamfara. There was a time the Saudis wanted to build an airport, because there was a kind of short grass they needed and they found it here in Zamfara and they felt it will be an easy task for them to evacuate the grass to Saudi. So, we are exploring all those potentials and opportunities. Without the airport, you cannot think of that. It is important. In the entire country, it is only Zamfara that has no airport.
Where are you getting the resources to execute these projects?
People always ask this question:with meagre resources, how are you able to do that? As we speak, out of the N13.6 billion pension, we are able to settle about N10.4 billion. The remaining N2.4 billion will be settled in the next two months. So that we know we clear all the backlog. We are still paying debt, which is something we inherited. As a responsible government, the assets and the liabilities are all yours. So, as we speak, deduction is coming directly at source of over N1.2 billion on a monthly basis to settle the debt of the previous administration. But, we are not complaining; what we did was to sit down and ask what we should do to augment the shortfalls The Internally Generated Revenue of the state was N90 millione when we took over and 90% of the money was PAYE. So, we realised that something fundamental was wrong and we needed to block all the leakages and we made conscious efforts in blocking them. We gave ourselves a target that within six months, we want to grow the revenue from N90 million to at least N1.5 billion and thank God we have achieved that. Every day, there is an incremental change as far as IGR is concerned. We had to declare a state of emergency in education early January, having realised that what we saw, as far as schools are concerned, is an eyesore. Schools in Zamfara are always at the bottom; 36/36 and that is not good. Thank God now with the declaration of emergency, if you go round the 13 local government areas, primary schools alone, we have done over 300 schools fully reconstructed with furnishing and everything. We have done over 200 secondary schools across the 14 LGAs in the state, fully furnished.
Having realised also that in the entire country, it is only in Zamfara that is not having the required number of universities to accommodate our students, we are now building the Talata Mafara University, and the Audu Gusau Polytechnic. We have the College of Health Technology in Tsafe. Go and see what is happening there because while we are busy building hospitals and bringing in equipment, we also need manpower. We have to make sure we are doing something to ensure that even before we bring doctors, we have nurses that will be able to take care of both primary and secondary healthcare. So far, we have done the hospital, upgraded it from primary healthcare to a full hospital; fully equipped. We have done Maradun; we have done Kauran Namoda. We are now doing the Gusau General Hospital and we are now doing Tsafe. We are also doing the Yariman Bakura Specialist Hospital. We have upgraded that hospital to a teaching hospital because we have a university and very soon, students will be admitted to study medicine and they will need the teaching hospital for their programmes. So, massive construction is ongoing there in every aspect. We will remove all the old equipment and bring new technology into that hospital so that we will no longer need to go to Sokoto, Kaduna, Katsina or Zaria for treatment. Give us the next four months, you will see a different Yariman Bakura upgraded to a teaching hospital. In the past, if you drove into Gusau, you could not move up to 200 metres on a good road, but these things are changing. In the next three months, there will be a different Gusau city. We are very transparent and 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 have that we utilize in doing all these things.
Let me also confirm to you that every project you see ongoing, the funds are there. So, it’s an ongoing process within the last one year and seven months of our administration.
Apart from the attitude of people, the mindset of people is changing. Before if you come to Zamfara, you will see all the teenagers and everyone carrying one form of weapon or the other, but we’ve engaged them, provided, basic employment for them. The first thing we did was how do we take them off the street. Most of them don’t have skill we said come and do environmental sanitation and we will pay you; we are paying them.
All is an ongoing process and project. My team and I are always here. We spend most of our time in the Government House. We do have council meeting every week to discuss issue and what is the way forward for development of the state. The good thing is, everything is changing, and even the most difficult one’s mindset of the people is changing. People are beginning to realize even if government has the responsibility, they too have responsibility to the government.
Even the budgeting system, it wasn’t the usual way of doing the budget. We did bottom to top approach. Last year we sent the commissioner and a team to various Local Governments to get to understand what they want to do. Like I said in my previous speech, there are certain LGAs that don’t need roads; maybe what they are looking for is portable drinking water, schools and hospitals and we realized it and gave it to them. Here, we deficit in terms of road network and that is why we are doing roads. So, our budgeting system is bottom-top.
The members of Lakurawa recently denoted bombs in some communities along Dansadau. What is your government doing about the situation?
The situation is under control. We are investigating those behind this dastardly act. From our findings so far, it is not Lakurawa. But we are trying to unearth those behind. Security operatives are on top of the situation. Very soon we will make our findings known. The insecurity bedeviling the state will soon be over. But we are appalling for citizens to be vigilant of any suspicious moment and report to the relevant.
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