Kaduna State Governor, Malam Nasir El-Rufai, on Monday inaugurated the boards of five parastatals, telling the elites that anyone who thinks government is a bazaar, or a funder of last resort for their greed should know that his administration is against the practices.
El-Rufai added that, the government certainly does not have the money to fritter on the vanities of the elite.
Speaking during the inauguration of boards of five parastatals in Kaduna, the governor said the parastatals have mandates that are aligned to the goals of the Restoration Programme, and will help strengthen the public service.
The agencies are the Kaduna State Investment Promotion Agency (KADIPA), the Kaduna Facility Management Agency (KADFAMA), the Kaduna Geographic Information Service (KADGIS), the Kaduna State Internal Revenue Service (KADIRS) and the Kaduna State Bureau of Pensions.
According to El-Rufai, “The government paid N2.7bn in wages and pension in May 2015. That is why we commenced the verification of the public service payroll from June 2015. If we had not done verification, we would have had to borrow N300m just to pay salaries. If government is designed to provide a legitimate machinery to organize society and provide public goods, then its resources cannot be legitimately spent only on servicing itself”.
“Anyone who thinks government is a bazaar, or a funder of last resort for their greed should know that we oppose such practices, and we certainly don’t have the money to fritter on the vanities of the elite”
El-Rufai said, “It is immediately apparent from their names that some of these parastatals are brand new,” he said.
“Their emergence is to give effect to our quest to lay a stronger institutional foundation for the public service as a committed and effective provider of services for the people of Kaduna State. Everyone can identify and lament the limitations that hobble public agencies, but our duty is to actively take steps to strengthen these agencies in the overall interest of the state.
“All the five agencies whose boards we are inaugurating today have mandates that are aligned to the core of the Restoration Programme that we presented as our roadmap for governance during the election campaigns.
“We promised to make this state attractive to private investors who can create multiples of the few direct jobs that government can offer. Less than 100,000 persons are employed in the public service of Kaduna State, out of a population that is between 8m and 10m. The wages of these fewer than 100,000 workers are relatively low, but together consume about 90% of state resources.
“In March 2016, Kaduna State got N2.4bn from the Federal Accounts Allocation Committee. That same month, our wage bill was N2.2bn. That leaves only N200m. When you add overheads to this, you get a full picture of the dire financial straits that low revenues and public service expenses have placed the state. How much can the government deliver for the larger population, the majority of the residents of the state, with a wallet of N200m? Will anything remain when wages, pensions and overheads are paid? And it could have been worse! The fact is that the state is being kept afloat by the difficult decisions we took as soon as we resumed at the end of May 2015.
“These grim statistics we have just shared indicate that Kaduna State needs to raise more money from internal sources while it continues to cut costs by tackling fraud and eliminating waste. KADIPA’s job, which is to attract investments into Kaduna State, is practically a matter of survival. Our IGR effort must be so coherent that its clarity and ease of payment serve as a key incentive to investors, who also know that the validity of land titles can easily be checked at a computerized land registry, KADGIS.
“The state facility management agency (KADFAMA) assumes responsibility for the timely and efficient maintenance of all government assets, saving the huge sums wasted on assets that are allowed to deteriorate before they are rescued. And by sorting out pensions through a contributory pension scheme, we have removed the peril to public finances that unsustainable pension liabilities would have posed,” he said.
The boards that were inaugurated have big names like Flour Mills boss John Coumantaros, who is Vice-Chairman of the KADIPA board that is chaired by Deputy-Governor Barnabas Yusuf Bala.