Friday, 29th March 2024
To guardian.ng
Search

We won’t waste state’s scarce resources on fanciful projects, says Tambuwal

By Eric Meya, Sokoto
18 June 2018   |   3:52 am
Sokoto State Governor, Aminu Waziri Tambuwal, yesterday said he would not waste the state’s scarce resources on building fanciful projects like flyovers at the expense of the people’s real needs in health, education and access roads. Addressing civil servants and heads of government agencies led by Head of Service, Dr. Buhari Kware Bello, who paid…

Sokoto State governor Aminu Tambuwal

Sokoto State Governor, Aminu Waziri Tambuwal, yesterday said he would not waste the state’s scarce resources on building fanciful projects like flyovers at the expense of the people’s real needs in health, education and access roads.

Addressing civil servants and heads of government agencies led by Head of Service, Dr. Buhari Kware Bello, who paid him a visit during the Sallah celebration, Tambuwal said the state’s needs were different from other states, particularly those constructing bridges and flyovers.

His words: “Our needs are completely different from state to state and our priorities are not the same. I will not use Sokoto money to construct flyovers or bridges. These are not the priorities of the state. Our priorities are tailored toward the needs of our people.

“What we need in Sokoto, particularly for our people in the rural areas are not bridges and flyovers, which are projects in billions, but what they need are smaller projects like basic health clinics, cottage hospital and industries, feeder roads, school infrastructure and scholarships to encourage more learning.”

He argued that the costs of providing these needs run into billions and that was why the state government was focusing on the particular areas because it desires to change all negative indices of development in education, health and other sectors associated with the state in the past.

He, however, lamented that with his administration’s efforts to increase the state’s Internally Generated Revenue (IGR) base, its IGR was still less than N700 million monthly. Whereas Lagos generates over N15 billion monthly, while Rivers generates revenues in billions.

“We cannot compare ourselves with them, but when you look at what comes to the state from the federation account, it hardly meets our needs because we have a huge wage bill and the little from our IGR cannot foot projects that cost billions.

“We know some states around us that concentrate on huge projects, but we are reminding those comparing us with them that this administration will embark on projects and policies designed to meet the needs of the people and change the negative narration about the state. Education, for instance, would be pursued with vigour.

He explained that efforts have been intensified in the past three years to spread small-scale projects to the rural areas in health, education, construction of feeder roads and award of scholarships, which he noted, run into billions and were still outstanding.

Speaking, Bello commended Tambuwal for making payment of workers’ salaries and allowances a priority and pledged the workers support in the successful execution of the state programmes.

In this article

0 Comments