By Our Reporter
The governor of Kaduna State, Malam Nasir El-Rufai, has been explaining that accomplishing much in the service of the people across many sectors is how his administration has fulfilled its slogan – Putting the People First. The governor made this known during the presentation of the 2022 Appropriation Bill to members of the Kaduna State House of Assembly.
According to El-Rufai, “We have accomplished much in the service of our people across many sectors. I will highlight a few. We have expanded access to Education, making the first 12 years of schooling free and compulsory. Apart from saving parents over N3bn yearly in fees by making basic education free till completion of SS3, we initiated a primary school feeding programme that was later taken over by the Federal Government. We continue to implement an extensive programme to renovate primary and secondary schools and supply them with furniture, water and sanitation facilities.
“We recently recruited 7600 new teachers for secondary schools, in addition to the 2500 teachers of English, Mathematics and the sciences earlier recruited. We continue to monitor the performance of the 25,000 recruited in 2017 and 2018 to replace the 22,000 who failed the competency test.
“We revamped the scholarship system, increased allowances to those entitled based on either merit or need. We also introduced a low-interest loan scheme to cater for those not qualified for scholarship, but wishing to finance their tertiary education.
In the area of health, the governor said his administration continued to improve the primary health care system as well as enrolment of citizens for the universal health coverage.
“In the Health sector, we continue to improve the primary health care system, with equipment and materials and the recruitment of healthcare personnel”, he explained. “Enrolment of citizens for universal health coverage through the State Contributory Health Insurance Scheme continues. Testing capacity for Covid-19 has been sustained using a mix of PCR and GeneXpert machines.”
As for social welfare, he points out that the Kaduna State government has funded entrepreneurship programmes and many more in order to empower residents in the state.
“Our investment in Social Welfare continues with funding of initiatives to support various demographics”, he said. “We are funding several skills acquisition and entrepreneurship programmes for youths and women, including the Kaduna State Women Economic Empowerment Programme (KADSWEP) with N200 million low-interest microcredits targeting women entrepreneurs and vulnerable groups.
Going further, the governor states that “5000 young graduates have been trained in entrepreneurship through the Kaduna Startup and Entrepreneurship Programme, KADSTEP. With our partners in the Bank of Industry and the Kaduna Business School, we have unveiled KADSTEP 2.0 which will focus on training in ICT skills. This reinforces initiatives like Click-On Kaduna which has enabled thousands of young people to learning to code and acquire other digital skills at our Kaduna ICT hub.”
Another area in which the governor said his administration has been having impact on the lives of the people of the state is in respect of the Urban Renewal Programme. According to him, “the Urban Renewal Programme is a historic investment in the infrastructure of our three major cities. It is the most visible part of our Infrastructure efforts, including developing the long-term infrastructure masterplan and a blueprint for the industrialisation of Kaduna State. The Urban Renewal Programme is improving infrastructure, transport connections and the liveability of our three main cities of Kaduna, Kafanchan and Zaria. The programme started with Kaduna, with new roads, expanded arterial roads, shopping malls and neighbourhood centres included. Some of our major roads have already benefitted from our solar street lighting programme, designed to light up Kaduna metropolis and help improve security.”
He further noted that, “Following the completion of the long-delayed phases 1 and 2 of the Zaria Water Expansion Project that now supplies potable water to Zaria and Sabon Gari Local Governments, the extension of the transmission and distribution pipelines Soba, Giwa and other neighbouring local government areas continues.
“We are changing the face of markets through direct investments and in partnership with private companies. Vice President Yemi Osinbajo recently commissioned the new Kasuwan Magani market. The expansion and development of markets in continues Sabon Gari in Sabon Gari LG, Dan Magaji in Zaria LG, and Kasuwar Barci in Kaduna South Local Government. Most of the real traders in the Abubakar Gumi Central Market in Kaduna have bought their shops as part of our programme to expand wealth creation through property ownership.
“For safety on the highways, we have completed and opened the trailer park in Marraraban Jos. This has reduced gridlock on the Kaduna-Zaria Road. We are working to ensure the completion of Trailer Parks at Tafa in Kagarko Local Government and near Olam in Chikun local government area.”
As the governor further explains, reforms in governance has also not been left out in the effort made by his administration to provide services to the people.
“Reforms in Governance have empowered our MDAs to strengthen their capacity for results delivery,” El-Rufai said. He went on to note that, “Our tax agency has quadrupled the collection of internally generated revenue in five years. Through the effort of the Kaduna State Geographic Information Service (KADGIS), we have signed more than 50,000 certificates of occupancy in four years.”
As he puts it, “this government has recorded the highest levels of budget performance in the history of the state, injecting the largest ever capital investment in the history of the state. In 2019, Kaduna State achieved 97.5% budget performance for capital expenditure, spending N148.57bn of the N152.33bn budgeted. This is more than twice the erstwhile record of capital spending of over N62bn in 2016.
“We have paid almost the entire N14bn arrears of gratuity and death benefit we inherited from 2010. We are faithfully implementing the contributory pension scheme and paying retirees on defined benefits even as we raised minimum monthly pension to N30,000.
“While implementing governance reforms, we have also focused on maintaining our credentials as one of the foremost investment destinations in Nigeria, attracting $2.8bn in investments and pledges. We recently hosted the sixth edition of the Kaduna Economic and Investment Summit, KADInvest. This concluded with the commissioning of the tomato processing plant of Tomato Jos, one of the investors in the agriculture sector in our state. We are looking forward to the commissioning early in 2022 of the Gujeni iron and steel plant of the African Natural Resources and Mines in Kagarko LGA. We also expect the Dangote-Peugeot vehicle assembly project and the OCP fertiliser plant located along the Kaduna-Abuja Road to come on stream.
There is also work going on with respect to one of the more major projects in the state.
“Work is progressing well on the roads, bridges and other infrastructure required for the Damau Milk Farm project, a collaboration between our state, the Central Bank of Nigeria and Arla, the European dairy giant,” El-Rufai explained. “This is a ranching project, designed to help transform and modernise livestock production in Kaduna State, by sedentarising farmers and involving them in a commercially viable animal husbandry business,” he added.
