In this interview with? DONATUS NADI, Nasarawa State Governor, Umaru Tanko Almakura, speaks on how the nation’s governance is not serving the common man well. He also discusses the contentious issue of retirement pension, saying it? has a negating effect on youth empowerment and job creation.
What are your greatest challenges with respect to job creation and youth empowerment?
It borders on the available resources at our disposal because these salaries and wages never go down. The demands increase all the time because of the emoluments; you have to pay the wages. Anybody who has reached the normal time for retirement would not retire from getting his salary every month. I don’t understand this; where will government get all the money to employ new people?
??? The people we are talking about, these youths we are providing empowerment are not fools; they are not animals; while we are talking about empowering them, we should give them jobs, and permanent jobs, not just to talk to a graduate or somebody with a diploma like an animal who should be trekking to the farm. You know, this is a national issue, unless this issue is redressed from Sokoto to Cross River, from Oyo to Maiduguri, we must suffer these bad policies from people who have worked, who have earned some living, who have been able to help government to reach certain standards, who have also benefited from employment over time. They? should be content with their gratuity and people should plan many years ahead. The new pension scheme is the best thing, rather than the state committing its resources in the payment of pension for people who have left service. Someone who has left service for more than 15 years, the same salary is being paid to him; but there are people that are just graduating, who want to start a life, who would want to contribute their quota to the development of the society, who want to move the country forward by what they have learnt, but they have no jobs and government has nowhere to get the money to give them the jobs. That is the futility of that government policy, and until that it is redressed and reviewed, the issue of unemployment will be with us for a long time to come. I hope you understand what the point I am trying to make: I am not against people getting their entitlements and I am the first governor to implement the new minimum wage and, in fact, that was even turned by my people into salary increase, that is the matter for another day.
So, I am worker compliant; I am labour compliant, I am a lover of service and what is good and at the same time, I am a lover of even development and holistic development. And that is why my government has started correcting the anomalies by getting the exact number of workers.
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You promised to empower the youths during your campaign and they are complaining that after two years running now, they have not seen this empowerment. What do you have for these youths?
That is a wonderful question. I am just about one year four months in office, and talking about youth empowerment, as far as I am concerned, we have empowered the youths as much as we are capable of doing. We have in the pipeline another fundamental move for empowerment of the youths that will be total and permanent. I empowered the youths by paying school fees and examination fees for every child in Nasarawa State who is in secondary school. I have been able to give scholarship to those in professional bodies like those in law school, those studying medicine and other categories of learning.
We have also provided some positions by making sure that we brought in the youths. Look at my political appointees, from the commissioners up to the special assistants or even personal assistants, these are people that are within the bracket of 40 and 50 years. You can see that that is youth empowerment.
?? The fundamental thing we want to do now is to provide employment for 30 youths in every one of the 136 wards in the state, and if you calculate the figure, it is about 4,380 that will be empowered. I am not talking about helping youths by taking them to the farm and back; this is not empowerment. So, as far as I am concerned, we are working gradually and surely we are not given to deceitful values; we want a? very realistic approach to youth empowerment.
?? In fact, before we go on skill acquisition, we are going to quarantine them for one month in an orientation camp so that they will be able to prepare their psyche and mind to comply with the vision, ethics, value and discipline that this administration takes seriously. So the issue of youth empowerment is a very serious issue. It is not just making youths? carpenters; youths don’t want to be carpenters or farmers; everybody wants to be like you and me, so we want to create employments that will be youth compliant – that is what this administration is doing.
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How do you plan to take the gains of democracy to the doorsteps of the common man?
We have a very big duty before us. We have the mandate of the people to serve the common man who are very close to my heart. For sake of the common man, I can forgo this office if what I am presiding over cannot serve them better. In fact, the administration we have now in the country is against the common man. Our democracy now in the country is against the common man because if you look at empowerment and the money utilized, it is only to a small category of people , where a common man has no place.
?? Take a look at Nasarawa; we receive about 2.6 billion monthly and out of this, about N2.3 billion goes into servicing the emoluments and benefits of public officers and civil servants. And if you put all of these people together, they are not more than 50,000 and those people benefit about 95 percent of the amount that is sent to the state and leave only five percent to more than two million people.
Why? Is this democracy? Where is the justice? Where are the rights and privileges? Until something is done, the common man is doomed. All these things??????
? I am doing are benefiting the common man and all those who have taken all the money, they are using the roads, they are using the electricity. In fact, I am so passionate about what will became of the common man because I have seen that the system is totally against him. And my administration, and the party I profess, which is the? CPC, have the common man as its centrepiece. I have looked round and I have seen the reason why the common man is not developing; that is why I have no regret and I have no explanation to anybody about the kind of projects that I am doing.
?? I am doing physical and social infrastructure because that is the only thing the common man stands to benefit from government; other than that, the common man has nothing to depend on and that is why this administration is trying to see that after the physical infrastructure, we are going to embark on a robust rehabilitation of schools and hospitals because these are the things that the common man can benefit from directly.
That is why when they are talking about gigantic projects, talking about some self-aggrandizing projects, I am looking at the most ordinary projects that can benefit the common man. You can hear some people grumbling that this government is not sharing money; it is not awarding contracts. There is no contract I will give that will not benefit the common man. It is the common man that voted me into power and I am here because of the common man. I will not sit here to do things that will not benefit the common man.
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There has been hues and cries about the financial status of this state.
If you are talking about finance, you would have made reference to the consultants who are supposed to have the biometric data that we can reduce the instances of ghost workers. Nasarawa State is an apology, a total mess due to the squandenmania of the past administrations. There are places where in one class room, there are five teachers while only one is supposed to serve. So I started this auditing and biometric analysis, and once you stop doing this before paying salaries, ghost workers will resurface. This is a very serious issue and some of the civil servants are not even patriotic. There is a lot mischief, treachery and connivance by some few that I don’t find funny.? If I find them, I would seize them and drive them completely out of service. They are now making life uncomfortable for the government, for the common man and for everybody because instead of these dividends of democracy I want to give to the people, they want me to go and take millions only to service emoluments. I would not do that. Since I came into office, I have not taken any kobo and I will not take any luxury to buy this kind of car and build even mansions, because (not doing these) that is part of what will sustain this state. That is why we must lift eyes up, and so once we get this people fished out and re-sanitize the system, you will see how many projects this government will be able to give out for the benefit of the people.
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There are complaints that the government is only to embarking on infrastructural projects without bothering about the economy; so what is the economic status of the state?
The status of the state’s economy? is bad, without being immodest. If there is a different person occupying this seat, you won’t see this development, because after??? paying salaries, you have look for some money elsewhere. What I did right from day one was to make sure that all these luxury and unnecessary spending are stopped. Certain benefits that would have become absolutely necessary, we have decided to jettison them within the first 5-7 months of this administration and the state government was able to save about N4-5 billion which is that N5 billion that we have taken to provide for this infrastructure: all the road networks in the state, the transformers and all these other infrastructure like drugs and water treatment facilities.
??? When we exhaust that, then we have to go back to the basis, and we have to look properly into our wage bill: how certain payments to certain categories of staff have come about; we want justify why they are going to take that kind of payment and it is only when we do that that we will be able to service the common man. Because you now can be sure that, unless maybe you are illiterate or you are a graduate, unless you are working in government, you have no future because you would not have pension, and you would not have gratuity.