I’m A Leader People Can Trust, Says Wada

How do you intend to contend with the APC challenge in the poll?

We recognise the APC challenge particularly as they have the federal might. My appeal to President Buhari is for him to create an enabling, equitable environment, a level playing field for us to test our popularity and level of acceptability by the electorates. Let us not have overwhelming presence of federal influence in the election, let it be a state election, it is not a national election. Let us have unbiased security personnel and election officials.

How did you overcome the challenges you faced before the primaries?

My desire to seek a second term is to consolidate on some of the things I have done and still doing, to ensure we put the state on the path of sustainable development.

So when those challenges came in during the course of the primaries, I was not disturbed because of my faith in God and the transparent agenda I have for the transformation of our state. The national leadership of our party and the elders brokered peace to ensure we come together as a party and face the challenges of the primaries.

Several meetings were held to bring all candidates together for a consensus candidate but when it did not work out, we were told to go test our popularities with the delegates of our party who were elected in accordance with the constitution of the PDP. I subjected myself to the process and I came out victorious. But I give credit to the PDP that we went through that process. I have set up a reconciliation committee to talk to aggrieved persons because this election is critical to survival of the PDP as a party.

Is the PDP now united ahead of the election?

It (PDP) will go into this election substantially as a united family. Of course, as a party just like in a family, it is almost impossible to have 100 percent loyalty. There may still be some issues that are yet to be resolved, but we will go into the election as a united family because members of the PDP know that the re-election of the party in Kogi state is critical to its survival in the state.

You flagged off your campaign in Anyigba, what is your impression with the outcome? 

I was highly overwhelmed because we started the process of this rally just few days ago. We concluded that our campaign would take off in Anyigba. The turnout was overwhelming. We have never had such crowd in previous rallies. Even in 2011, I did not attract this kind of popularity.

The people waited patiently for my arrival. In fact when I came to Anyigba, I went to the university to meet with the VC and visited the traditional ruler before coming to the venue, yet, I had a large number of people still waiting.

I was really overwhelmed and what that portends is that our people are beginning to see that this government has a clear agenda for the development of the state. They can see sincerity of purpose in the leadership style of my administration. Nobody is under tension that the governor or his officials is going to victimise him. There are heightened security arrangements in the state and of course, there might be minor crimes, which you cannot completely rid a society of. We are working on agriculture, health, education, human capital development, infrastructural development and industrialization of the state. The people are coming out now to show their support. We don’t have the money to rent such crowd. The people willingly came out and struggled to enter the rally ground.

What new thing are you bringing on the table this time around?

When I came in, I had a think-tank that produced a blueprint for transformation of the state. We have in mind, a 10-year plan for the transformation of Kogi state. I know the maximum term I have is eight years and I know that by the time you implement eight out of the 10-year plan, it will bring about sustainable development. In the last three and half years, we have done a lot in agriculture, education, human capital development, health and infrastructure which are key critical elements of our economic and social agenda for the people.

What is the true situation with the bail out funds?

Kogi State was one of the first states to comply with all the documentary requirements of the CBN for the funds. We applied for about N86B because it is rare in our country’s economy for the Federal government to give a 20-year loan at 9% when most commercial loans are minimum of 7%.

We saw it as an opportunity to aggregate all our financial challenges to take this loan and clear outstanding and move forward in a solid manner with industrial peace. Our application was assessed and cut to about N50B because they said they were not dealing with issues of pensions, bonds and gratuities yet, that their first challenge was the restructuring of commercial bank loans. Kogi State had the lowest Bank loan in Nigeria. What we owed the bank was N816m.

The next stage was salaries of workers. We have been paying percentage salary for local governments for some years because the money for local government comes directly from the federal account. I have been reluctant to take any step that would lead to relieving workers of their jobs, I thought whatever we have should cover as many people as possible. It is only one-month salary we owe, but because we used money from other sources to pay the remaining one-month that is why we applied for two months to sort ourselves. We are basically up to date with civil servants.

The CBN sent us an email that they wanted to have the biometric data of teachers and all the Local Government workers that we are claiming for and we supplied because we had done biometric verification to eliminate ghost workers. We provided, then later they said they wanted BVN numbers for these people and we said look BVN has just been introduced, many have complied, allow others to go and get their own. That should not withhold the processes of this fund because our workers are in expectation. They threatened to block the highway to express their anger on the delay. They have published N50 billion as bail out for Kogi State if you go back now it will cause a lot of industrial problem in the State so I spent the whole of last week in Abuja pursuing this. So what I can report as the status now is that we are very close, by the grace of God, in a week or two, we should be able to access this loan to settle our financial obligations.

Is it true that the delay in releasing of bailout is to make your government unpopular before the election?

Well it is politics, you can expect that the opposition would say anything to discredit the PDP. Because of our concern for the workers, we decided to take the 20-year loan and sort out their financial issues and any party that is trying to sabotage this effort is not a party the people should vote for.

I have been very prudent in the management of finances of the State. People should recognize this because our State could not have been approved for this kind of amount if we were in excess debt. If already, more than half of our allocation is going to pay interest and financial cross loans we would not have qualified.

I praise President Muhammadu Buhari for opening this window of opportunity to enable us settle our finances and carry our workers along for a progressive agenda for our country.

Power rotation has become an issue being used as a bait to garner votes what is your opinion?

What has made power rotation a dream rather than a reality is because it always comes into the political agenda when people are running for governorship election. If they are running for House of Assembly or National Assembly you don’t hear anything about power rotation but only when the governorship election is near. This means that this agitation come up every four years. So my position is that we should make it a continuous agenda, a topic for continuous engagement of the stakeholders from all the three zones including the minority tribes in each of these zones because each of these zones have minority tribes. We are just talking about the Igalas, Igbiras and the Okuns, how about the minorities; we have the Bassas, the Igbiras in Ajaokuta, which is a mixture of Igalas, and Igbiras. Now, the rotation, should it be clockwise or anti- clockwise, where should it go first? Okun or is it Ebira and when does it come back to the Igalas? All these details have to be worked out. At least there is some kind of framework at the National conference where it was discussed nationally. We can borrow from that and use it to guide our own discussion here in Kogi State. In conclusion, I am a leader you can trust because once I take a position I will do my best as a human being to actualise that position.