As part of activities marking the Golden Jubilee Anniversary of Kwara State, Governor Abdulfatah Ahmed held an interactive session with members of the Correspondents’ Chapel of the Nigeria Union of Journalists, Kwara State Council where he spoke on issues that affect the State and nation. LAYI OLANREWAJU was there.
Comparatively, after 50 years of creation there appears to be nothing on ground to show that the Councils are carried along in this celebration. What is happening?
Firstly, you see at the local government levels, I said this sometime ago, there are about 774 local governments in Nigeria, most of which were created largely based on political exigencies; if you go through the constitution on criteria for creating local governments, you will see that quite a few fit into these criteria. Most of them were created during military administrations. Our Councils are what they are and will continue to be what they are until there is a restructuring in the system to improve on their capacity to access resources.
Currently, they are heavily reliant of federation allocation and the same allocation has been dwindling as a result of dwindling price of crude oil. So you cannot expect to see much from local government outside Lagos. Lagos is a purely a commercial environment. Go to Isin Local government in Kwara State, what kind of commercial activities go on there? What resources can you raise from that kind of a place? What sort of internal revenue can you raise from that place? And ditto for other Councils in most parts of the States that are not in commercial environments, so it’s a huge challenge. And that is why even the payment of salaries which is most critical they are faced with today is not doable 100 percents because their capacity to raise revenue is weak and they are presently reliant on the dwindling federation allocation account. When you draw comparison with Niger State, Ekiti State and Osun State, then you are talking. Lagos has been a federal capital; every structure is on ground to make things work. The Lagos environment has been made more enabling for those things to thrive. In fact if you compare Kwara with Edo State, then we might not be too far from each other.
There have been claims that government spends money on water reticulations projects, yet residents go through hell to get water, because there is no water in Kara State, what is your response to that?
Water will continue to be a problem because the population is increasing, not decreasing. The number of people in Kwara yesterday is not the number today, so meeting the needs of the people in the areas of water is a continuous process. We will continue to and we are
still on the reticulation, which is about 95 percent completed, so like I will always tell you, the need is growing, what the people need is far bigger than 25 million gallons that was just completed because more people are coming in and that is what happens everywhere in the world except for populations that are not growing. So in essence, there will continue to be pressure on power supply and on water. The same thing goes for health services and on infrastructures, so government will continue to put machinery in place not only to expand new ones but also to rehabilitate old ones. These are part of the challenge that government business are faced with, so for water as we continue to maintain the old one that are being put under pressure, we would ensure that new ones are also put in place; So I think within the available resources at our disposal, we are able to carry on to certain levels and we still have a lot more that we can get to.
Recently, the Kaiama- Kishi and the Michael Imoudu – Amoyo road were being taken over by the federal government; the question is why were these roads taken over despite State government’s decision to undertake the construction?
These roads are federal road. They belong to federal government so in essence it is not a takeover; it is the State that attempted to rehabilitate federal roads but the federal government has decided to do its own work that is exactly what happened.
How is your government supporting Agriculture as a way of engaging the youths in the State?
Agriculture as it were had been wrongly perceived by people as a government programme. Agric is a business and it has to be treated as such and that is why we have introduced the off taker demand driven Agric scheme. It is designed to make the man who is starting at the primary level to be lifted up to the person who is going to off take whatever he is producing for value addition. For example, the man who is producing Maize is already linked up to a feed mill and this feed mill too is already linked up to a poultry farm that is the kind of scheme we have put in place. You will see a place there at the Ministry of Agric called Agric Mall; It is designed to be a one stop shop where intending farmers can access input requirements. The first one you can access there is Tractor hiring. A farmer is expected to hire Tractor, government is not going to give it out free of charge and there are a thousand and one individuals that have Tractors for hire. So if someone tells you he doesn’t see Tractor, it must be that he doesn’t have money to hire one, they are available for hire.
Currently, I also hire tractors to do my own farm. That is what we call Agric because it is business. Also to make funding easy, we have gone to Central Bank of Nigeria to arrange for a credit scheme, Commercial Agric Credit Scheme, CACS, which is coming at nine percent. This has been deigned to be available to intending farmers to borrow, use and pay back. That is why there is lot of noise going on about CACS and ODDA scheme. Then government’s responsibility is to continue to crate subsidy which we have done by accessing a loan at nine percent interest per anum, any serious farmer will take advantage of that. By this we are taking our farming from subsistent level to commercial level.
With the different levels of payments in State-owned schools, can we still say that education is free in Kwara State?
Education is free in Kwara, what is free in education; is the tuition fee. The Okada you are riding from home to school is not free; the uniform to put on is not free, you have to make them. The only two things that will be free are the tuition and the free meal that the federal government is working on. So when you get to some schools they will say ok ‘ha, Ijoba ni a o ni sanwo Ile iwe mo’ but they are asking us to bring so and so amount; it’s not everything that is free. But among the teachers and the parents and the administration of the school if they agree that ok tuition fee is removed, what else you have to pay for, they then agree among themselves with the Parents Teachers association, PTA, on what they want to contribute to augment the education of their wards. So let it be understood from that angle.
Who owns Shonga Farms?
On the ownership of Shonga Farms, you all know where to get these facts, the Corporate Affairs Commission, CAC is there. There you can see all registered businesses and who owns them and their level of ownership. Why do you always want to hear from me? I have been asked this question more than 40 times in the last few years and nobody has gone to CAC. With this you will realize that there is mischief.  That is why the last governor did so much explanation
on it, when I came in I started doing explanations on it because a lot of people see it as a platform for mischief and as long as we want to take that part we would never see anything good in what people are doing. That is the problem we have as Africans and as Nigerians. We must learn to appreciate what is good and criticize constructively.
This is how Shonga Farms started; when those white farmers came, they also went to Nasarawa as they came to Kwara. When Senator Adamu was here with the Senate President, he was asking how we are able to keep these white men here. He said the ones that came to Nasarawa had left and I said they would obviously go away from Nasarawa because the State government funded them, once that administration goes they too would go. What we did here was that we created a public Private Partnership arrangement with them and funded them under a debt equity structure; I created the financial vehicle that put them in place through financial ingenuity, that is why they are still there so even when I am gone in the next 30 years they would still be there.
What was the level of involvement of the State Government?
We gave them land, provided infrastructure, gave them loans to build houses then we went to commercial banks, don’t forget that the CBN had directed that every commercial bank must put some money aside for SMEs, I think about 10percent of their annual profit or thereabout. Some of them have accrued this money and  have not been investing them as directed most people don’t even know, it is only a few of us that work in the financial industry that know that these funds are there. So we went to these commercial banks and ask them to invest their equity funds into Shonga farms Holdings. These funds were used to buy equipments, so the banks are now part owners in that business because the money that has been invested is equity. That equity was now used to buy equipments. These equipments were now used as security to secure loans from the banks; that is why we call it debt funding equity arrangement.
A lot of people are not used to this kind of funding; all they know is government funding this and that. You need a good understanding of this funding arrangement to know how it works. So in essence, the equipments which were bought secured the loans obtained from the same banks. To make the arrangement comfortable, we were asked to partake in the stake and what we did was capitalize the road construction, power and the infrastructures given to assist them into shares. That was how we were able to stabilize Shonga Holdings which are a holding company to about 13 other companies broken down into three major consortium; they are Diary, Poultry and Mix Cropping. Today it is a huge success story. Those who followed us there know that it is a
success story. They are the best hatchery in sub Saharan Africa, mark my choice of words and we have just a few farms like that where there is complete value chain; starting from the parent stock, to the hatchery to the day old, broilers and then to the dressed chicken. It is a complete value chain. What does that tells you? It is a de-risk business. Potential business agents can put their money there. It was after we did that that companies came from South Africa and injected 40Million dollars, the hatchery you saw came from that because investors have come to put money there. If the business is not viable why will they put their money there? So compare that with whatever you hear, go there and see for yourself, I feel very proud to be part of that success story. Those who don’t know beyond subsistence farming expect that each time we talk of Shonga Farms they want to see Maize on the road, products here and there, it is beyond that. That is why we still have about 200 million Nigerians who cannot grow what we want to eat. If you go to America, less than 10 percent of Americans feed the whole of America but here 70 percent of us are farmers yet we are importing food, what does that indicate? One word: efficiency. There is no efficiency. Efficiency can only happen when you take the bull by the horn, de-risk it; recognize the value chain, fund it and you see the business grow. It is a pilot to show Nigerians how a value chain can be used to drive agric business. So those who don’t understand should go there and see things for themselves.
Critics say you spent about N2billion on a low key celebration, on the whole, how much was budgeted for the Kwara at 50 celebrations?
What was budgeted was appropriated, it’s there in the appropriation law, I am working within the budget, and those who criticize us need to see the public document. Go and check, you
will see whether what we have done is appropriate or short of expectation, go see it. What we spent is less than 10 percent of what people are saying. When the SSG came in, the Chairman of the committee, I hugged him because he had been judicious; we never expect that the amount will be enough, less than 10percent.
What is the status of the Cargo terminal?
The Cargo terminal as you may be aware is a federal government thing and until it is made like a concurrent thing we would not have any critical role to play. Several investors had come to meet us wanting to partner with us but we told them a go ahead must come from the federal government. The Aviation sector as it were today is not on concurrent list. When we were doing the cargo terminal, it was with the understanding that it is going to serve as a platform for exporting agric produce which our farmers will naturally be expected to produce from Shonga and other areas but the dwindling level of our economy has made us the net importer of foods as against what we plan for net exportation. We are still talking with a few individuals and companies who can partner with us or through whatever means to assist us in getting concession from federal government to enable utilization.

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