Radda: Masari is Restoring Katsina’s Glory
In an interview with Ibrahim Shuaibu, the Chief of Staff to Governor Aminu Bello Masari of Katsina State,Alhaji Dikko Umar Radda assured the people of the state that the administration is working round the clock to return the state to its glorious past. E
This government came on change mantra to restore in its agenda. Looking at the journey so far, can you say you have commenced the process of restoring the glory of the state? Honestly, we have commenced these projects. We have started earlier even before we came into the government . You know the backbone of any restoration or anything you want to do in terms of development, you need to study the state; you need to know what glory you have lost and in which areas and sectors?
Since Governor Aminu Bello Masari wanted to contest the governorship, we had set up some committees that were mandated to do certain jobs, but most important is to look at the most critical sectors and then try to see what were there before and how they are now.
For example, number one on our agenda is education. Before you do anything in education, you have to know what is really happening there. If we said there is a problem, what are the problems? How do we restore the problem? What are we going to do to return Katsina to its past glory in terms of education because we are blessed? When Nigeria came into being, Katsina State was one of the cities or provinces that could raise its head up in terms of education. Most of the first and second generation leaders of Nigeria schooled in Katsina.
So, what we did first was what to examine what was happening in our schools, especially this education. The government is emphasising so much on foundation education because what we are having in the universities and secondary schools is what is produced in the primary schools. If you didn’t get primary and secondary education well, then you would not get the university education well because it is garbage in, garbage out.
We have 2,262 primary schools in the state. The committees looked at the infrastructure available, teachers that the schools have, the teaching materials available and even the students’ population. When we came in, we were given the figures of the students’ population at over 1,200,000 but when we conducted the actual census, we discovered that we only have 776,000 students in attendance against the one million, two hundred thousand.
We discovered that 80 per cent of those schools were not in good conditions, 40 per cent of the teachers were not qualified as teachers and those that were qualified were not enough. From the statistics, having 50 students per class, we need about 23, 000 teachers but what we are having now is about 14, 000 teachers in the whole state.
So, we knew our problem now because we know that we have infrastructure problem. Ninety per cent of Katsina State primary and secondary students sit on the bare floor. Toilet facilities are absent and teaching materials is zero. If we want to put at least 50 students per class, we discovered that we needed about 3,980 classes to accommodate the number of students we have, if they are to sit at 50 per class.
This is what we have been doing. You cannot achieve what you want to achieve without proper planning. You have to plan well to move the state forward. After this discovery and what have you, we have now started work. You can see from the 2015 budget, despite all the challenges, the government is allocating about N22 billion of the N111 billion to education. This translates to about 20 per cent of the budget into the education sector and this shows the seriousness of the government.
From day one, when we came into power till date, about 50 schools are being rehabilitated. A number of primary schools are being rehabilitated now. There are a number of secondary schools that we bid as a pilot being rehabilitated now. We have now started making the furniture. We have distributed over 5000 so far. The governor has received some interventions from UBEC, which is now rehabilitating over 20 primary schools in the state. There are interventions from MDGs; they are now rehabilitating some schools.
One problem that keeps recurring is the issue of cattle rustling which is becoming synonymous to the popular ‘kiwo haram,’ what is the government doing to curtailing this? Security is among the major priorities of this government and in fact, you cannot govern if there is no security. There can be no achievement without peace and this state has a disadvantage. About seven local governments of Katsina State border the forest which cuts across the neighbouring countries. These local governments include Jibiya, Batsari, Safana, kankara, dan dume, faskari and some parts of funtua. So, what we are saying in essence is that about 200km of Katsina State cuts across this forest, so we have a lot of challenges.
There was a time when these people came in daylight and robbed people, took away their wives, children. They came to the market with AK47. Sometimes people had to run away from their homes and move upward. But when we came in, the governor sat down with the relevant security agents and discussed how we can tackle the problem. In fact, the governor had to meet the Chief of Defence Staff, visited the Chief of Army Staff and Chief of Air Staff, all in the effort to join hands to see how we can address the problem.
The governor was able to put seven state governors together, including Sokoto, Zamfara, Niger, Katsina, Kaduna, Kebbi and Kano States. So, the governor is now chairing the meeting of this security operation. There has been an operation for over three months and these governors are contributing N100m every month for that particular operation.
As I am talking to you, a joint taskforce were able to penetrate our dajin runhu forest. They entered inside. There was an air raid last month. They killed some of the rustlers and arrested others as well as recovered about 11, 000 cattle, including sheep, goats etc and we were able to hand over the recovered animals to their owners. We have done tremendously well in this regard.
Still on education, the question of this NECO and WAEC has generated a lot of controversy to the extent that most of the people are of the view that the state government is indirectly trying to stop the payment for the examinations , thus trying to scrap the free education policy of the previous government. Is that true? The position of the government on this is very clear because as I told you earlier, the governor has emphasised that he is not going to play politics with education. The previous government played politics in this regard. They paid for WAEC and NECO, then what? If you are paying and the students don’t pass then what are you doing? Are you throwing the Katsina peoples’ money into the ocean? What are you trying to do? Why should you take N3 billion and pay for NECO while 90 per cent of the students are sitting on bare floor? Why should you pay same amount for WAEC while students don’t have qualified teachers and the teachers were not trained? Who are you trying to impress?
We studied the examinations result and what have you ? We discovered that last year, over N2 billion was paid for these two examinations and only 10 per cent of the students were able to get five credits and above to proceed to university. This 10 per cent includes Katsina indigenes studying outside the state. It also includes those studying in private schools in the state.
If only 10 per cent of Katsina indigenes passed WAEC and NECO, what future do we have, when about 46,000 students sat for SSCE but only 4,600 and passed the examinations and proceeded to university? I believe out of this 4,600 only about 2000 are from public schools while others are from private schools. Then you said children of the masses in Katsina State have future? This is not a new thing; everybody knows there is usually a mock examination. Not only that, there should be promotional examination from one level to another. We are now introducing two things; promotional examination from one class to another and we have also reintroduced mock examination. There should be an internal exam from the school which will qualify you to sit for WAEC and NECO and the government is ready to pay for anybody that qualifies.
We are doing this for two reasons: one, we are spending Katsina State money appropriately and two, we are encouraging the parents to pay attention to their children’s study so that they will have the advantage of getting the payment by the government.
What’s the government doing to diversify its sources of revenue? The governor is trying his best to invite investors into Katsina State in order to increase the economic activities in the state. So, we are doing a lot of work and when we finished, we are going to print our blueprint to see how to generate more revenue.
How far has the government gone in recovering money allegedly looted by the previous administration? We are serious. What the government is doing now is that we are not trying to probe any government but it is what they gave us in the hand-over note that we are trying to comprehend. When we came in, the transition committee discovered a lot of abnormalities in the running of affairs of the government.
So, it has highlighted a lot of things. But when the governor came he said he is not going to probe them. He just said if they claimed to have executed a project, let us see the project on the ground, if not, then we will recover our money. It is the job that is not done and it is the money that they took without any evidence of being utilised that we are going to do everything to recover because it is for Katsina State.