Why I support single tenure –Suswam

Posted by admin Governors Friday, September 23rd, 2011

Suswam
Photo: Sun News Publishing

Governor Gabriel Suswam loves basketball. It became obvious that night, as he was engrossed in a basketball game on the television in his sitting room in Makurdi. It was a rather long day and the basketball game was a good way to unwind. But there was an irony in that setting.

He passionately hates injection, yet his personal physician had recommended few doses of injection and was, in fact, waiting at a corner, to give His Excellency the needle that night.

As he watched the game, the youthful governor also complained to people around that he was unwilling to be injected even after admitting that his system responds quickly to injections at the slightest symptom of cold. His Excellency had to take the needle although the Doctor waited for this reporter to complete his interaction with the governor.

That is the irony of life; some good things also come with pain. Such has been Suswam’s political ascendancy in Benue state. He has evidently put infrastructural development on the fast lane in Benue, yet the opposition has been unrelenting in fighting him.

The battle is to unseat him from his second tenure but Suswam says both God and the people are solidly behind him. In this interaction he says the battle for second tenure has become so fierce and acrimonious that he would support single tenure in order to reduce the unnecessary fight. Here are excerpts of the chat.

What is your major agenda in the second tenure?
Well, the major plan of this present administration is poverty reduction through creation of wealth. During my first tenure, I concentrated wholly on infrastructure. The reason is to create accessibility in the rural areas because as you know, Benue State had been an agricultural state. It is basically a rural state. So, we produce a lot of food in the rural areas, but there are no access roads.

Having created the access in most of the rural areas, I now intend to embark on poverty reduction through creation of wealth . The federal government also has some intervention facilities in the state. For example, the Agric Loan scheme and we intend that we will advertise it in the papers for farmers to come forward. The conditions to access these loans are not very stringent, so that the farmers who do not have security would also access the loan.

We also engage Central Bank for some entrepreneurship training centres. But above that, we have set up a marketing board to be able to buy some of the excess crops from farmers, so as to stabilize the market. Most farmers get discouraged to enhance production because they do not know what to do with the excess.

Now, if we create oligopoly in the market, not monopoly as we now have which is the essence of the marketing board, farmers will be encouraged to produce more, knowing that there is stable pricing for their produce. So, there will be commercial activities going round the villages and then, we will be able to reduce poverty. This is because there will be movement of capital here and there. So, my main trust in the next four years is to reduce poverty in the land.

Your critics say you have lopsided development and skewed roads and infrastructure in favour of some areas, especially Makurdi. Could you react to that?
You know, what I have done for the first time in the state is to focus on infrastructure as I have already said. We have three senatorial zones, if you go to zone A.

There are lots of road infrastructure going on there. Zone A is made up of two parts and we have two roads going on simultaneously. We have a road completed in Kwande and another one from Vandekya to Konde. You have another between Oshongo and Konshisha. These are roads that transverse two local government areas. All of them are done by reputable companies.

Then, when you move to Zone B, agreed that Makurdi is the capital , if you have been here before we came into office, it looked like a big village and I decided that there has to be a change and in terms of urban roads , I will concentrate more on Makurdi. That is not to say other major urban centres have not benefited. If you go to Gboko, we have done some roads, we have also done some in Tukur and Tayaku. In Zone C, we are doing a road between Oju and Ado.

There is also another between Ado and Oturkpo local government. Others are between Ado and Ogbadibo local government areas, Apa and Agatu local government areas. If you go to the areas I mentioned, the contractors are at work. So for anyone to say that I have skewed development to favour one particular group of people will not be fair and truthful. Even in the water works, I am doing one in Katsina Ala, one in Makurdi and another in Oturkpo.

The water projects spread across the three senatorial zones. In terms of electricity, I have done more in that area than road infrastructure. We surveyed about 150 villages and have about 70% of them ongoing. We have just released money for that. In education, we are building three science and technology secondary schools, one in each senatorial zone. So, I have been mindful of development, which has never happened before. Every body is carried along in my development strides.

Therefore, any person to insinuate that I skewed development is not telling the truth and no well meaning Benue citizen will say that. By all standards, Makurdi should have good roads. They are doing a lot in Abuja because it is a capital. Most travellers end up in Makurdi and their view on Benue is what they see here, that is why I am doing quite a lot to ensure that the place is developed. Now, after the election, I have stepped up in the area of road infrastructure within Makurdi to open it up so that people can spread out and not to concentrate in a particular place.

I went to North Bank area, the Special Science School and noticed that some form of work has begun, but nothing else has happened for sometime. I also learnt that some Contractors left the site because they were negotiating for variation , Is it true?

Yes to some extent it is true. I took time to be visiting the special science school when I became governor almost on daily basis and I decided that there must be a change. There was no fence in the school. Therefore, I decided to restructure the school to what you are now seeing. Some Contractors collected money without doing the job and were asking for variation and that was what delayed the job. The situation in College of Advanced and Professional Studies [CAPS] was worse when I came into office. It was the school I attended.

The structures you see were there from inception in 1976. I have just started changing some of them. They are doing the classrooms now and I have just been given a bill to do the girls hostels and designing the administrative block has commenced. So, you hear the contractor issues, people collect money but do not do the job and start asking for variation. But we are taking up that, in the next few weeks now that we just inaugurated the Commissioners, I have asked them to go round and give me the briefs so that we can take up some of these issues.

I want to congratulate you on what is happening at the Benue State Teaching Hospital.
Let me congratulate you on the good work at Benue State University Teaching Hospital.However at Oturkpo General Hospital, the impression was that nothing has happened there since the inception of the present administration, why?
Yes, If you have gone to other General Hospitals, like Katsina- Ala, I contracted all the general hospitals out and I bought medical equipments and noticed that the infrastructures were so deteriorated, and needed upgrade to be in consonance with the new equipments that I bought.

Unfortunately, some of the contractors continued to tell stories. But, if you go to majority of the hospitals, things are moving on well there. Oturkpo and Guma, a neighbouring Local Government to Makurdi have the same issues as you are saying. But it has to do with the contractors, people are mobilised and they disappear later and when you give the jobs to foreign contractors, they start to complain that you are not encouraging local contractors. But when you give them, they will not do the job as expected. Meanwhile, we are noting all of these and we are going to terminate some of the contracts and give them to those that can give us result.

Your opponent said that you wanted to take a bond to be used for election. But from my findings, you did not access the bond till after the election, what are you going to do with it?
I started quite a lot of projects and at some points I stopped because of funding. Roads infrastructure is the most expensive thing. When I was awarding these roads, we were getting excess crude money. Then, the money seized, and it became a huge problem for me to finance the projects, using the little federation account that we have. So, it became an issue.

Therefore, I needed the bond to be able to complete the project. I accumulated a lot of debt running into billions and I was desperate to pay and continue the projects. So, the bond came at the right time. After my election, I needed to exit most of these projects and I was planning to achieve that between September and October. You need to go the water project at Makurdi, it is finished and the contractors are doing everything to start testing it next month.

I also need to exit the one at Katsina –Ala and other areas. I needed to exit some of the completed roads that have not been commissioned. I needed to pay some contractors that are about to complete their projects. So, when the bond came in, we had to quickly pay the contractors and that is why most of them are rushing their job for us to be able to exit it. But we are mindful to ensure that the money is applied to the projects that are listed in the bond document we signed. So, we are paying and are making sure that by end of this year, we must have exited most of the projects we started last year and start few of them within the this four years.

You have been talking about contracts, but people are saying that you do use them to siphon funds. Could you react to that?
That is not true and cannot be. You know, I go for quality job and to get that you need money. When you give a road to a contractor like PW, you should expect quality job and that costs a lot of money. If I want to siphon money, it is not through the contractors. I will form mushroom companies. The past administration had companies like, Jikoks, Romiks.

They paid them money without doing a single road, that is the way to siphon and not through performing contracts or through contractors of international repute. Look at the water treatment plant, Gimo and CCE are building them all over the place. If you give money to the contractors we use and want to collect it back, they will say no because they are sure that they will perform. So, those saying that are my political opponents that are scared of what I am doing.

In the area of education, it seems there are insufficient teachers. Do you have plans to employ more?
That is on going. About 1000 teachers are being employed to make up the ones we already have.
It was tough and a long-drawn battle during the campaign, many taught that you would not make it in your second term bid. Now that you later emerged, what is your message to your political opponents?

There are people who make noise during campaigns, who are not necessarily on ground. There is a difference between a crowd following you and people who vote. Even the opposition people are among the crowd, they go here and there during campaign money is being given to them for transport. So some of them follow you because of that, not because they support your cause. My opponents were making noise that time because they have such crowds following them, so they believed that they were popular. On my own side, I know that I am on ground judging by what I have done for the people of Benue State.

I was not so much interested in doing election on pages of newspapers just to give people the impression that we are winning election. I was interested in direct contacts with people with what I have already done. Though they are seeing them. But I was busy going round to remind them of that, while the oppositions are busy running their campaigns on the pages of the newspapers. So, that was why you see an overwhelming victory in Benue State for PDP. Eleven House of Representatives members against three, two Senators against one, twenty House of Assembly members against eight. In the presidential, we have 697,000 as against 233,000.

So, PDP is on ground here , there is a difference between noisemaking and the actual thing on ground. I am not a noisemaker, I believe in action, while they make noise, I am busy strategizing and talking to the people and the people have seen the genuineness in what I do. The opponents embark on so many lies and trying to bring me down, but it has come to nothing after all. So, my advise to them is that all of us were seeking office in order to build Benue State.

Therefore, it does not pay anyone to cause acrimony to the extent that it would deteriorate into crisis. That would mean that they were seeking offices for their personal gains, not to serve the people. I really want to serve the people and that is why in spite of obvious provocation I maintained maturity to ensure that we are peaceful in the state in order to make progress.

Going by the torture and pains of the second term, what do you say of those that are proposing a single tenure?
See, I have said this in another forum that I will support the President for that because I have experienced that there is unnecessary acrimony in the issue of second tenure. So, if you have a single tenure of six years and if you are serious and take five years in working for the state and use one year for politicking, you can do it . So, I believe that single tenure will be a solution to most of the acrimonies that we have in this country. Look at what happened in the last election, the crisis that erupted in some parts of the North and the quarrel we have in the states.

Everyday you are going to court instead of concentrating on developing the state and doing things that would bring dividends of democracy to the people. So in this case, if someone knows he is doing single tenure, he would know what to do and how to do it. Therefore, I am fully in support of the single tenure amendment in the constitution.

What should be added to it is that it should be rotated among the zones, so that it is not a single tenure that would be coming to a particular zone. For instance, we have six geopolitical zones and once a particular zone finishes, it will move to another zone. The same thing is applicable in a state where you have three senatorial zones. That would be able to reduce acrimony and give those elected to concentrate more on their jobs.

You are a member of the Presidential Committee on National Integrated Power Project (NIPP). I recall that you said that if the things on ground were done, as they should, within a short period of time, there would be steady power supply, what are now the projections?

Yes the NIPP embarked on a lot of projects, and most of them were given even before Late Yar’ Adua became President. He formed NIPP with President Goodluck Jonathan and a governor per six geo- political zones. We were asked by Yar’Adua to contribute money and we contributed the sum of 5.3 billion dollars across the 36 states and the federal capital. That money was meant to complete the NIPP project. As I talk to you, most of the generation plants are being completed.

There were little problems like pipelines not being properly designed. But as I am talking to you Sapele Plant and others would soon be ready to add light to the national grid. Very soon, we will take care of some of the problems. We had a meeting recently to approve some of the variations arising from the delays in some of the contracts.

Monies are been paid and so at least at the end of this year some substantial mega watts would be added to the national grid. Because of some of these challenges, which we did not foresee immediately, it would not be safe for us to make hasty conclusion on what will happen. However, we are moving forward and contractors are working.

We are therefore optimistic that when all of these generating plants come on stream, there would be a great improvement. But there is another challenge, the transmission line. You know that where there are compensations on people whose 230KVA lines pass through their farmland. So, these are some of the basic challenges we have. Now the federal government has stepped up by setting up electricity board to address issues of bulk purchase and agreement.

In fact these are some of the issues militating against investors coming to help us in the power sector in order to move forward. So, with these issues being addressed, in the next one year, there would be a whole lot of difference in the area of electricity supply. But you know it takes time because it has to be meticulously done for it to stand the test of time.

Initially, governors said they could not afford to pay minimum wage. But lately, they agreed to pay. What happened between that time and now?
The minimum wage issue is a highly contentious one because just like any other programme, we did not plan for it well. First, the figures were not on the table. If we want to increase minimum wage, what we should have done is to know how much it will cost both the federal and state governments to implement it. We did not do that, everybody is just talking about paying minimum wage and there is no circular from the Salary and Wages Commission directing on what to do.

Even those who agree to pay have no circular to that effect. We misconstrued minimum wage to mean salary increase. Minimum wage means that no person should be paid below N18,000. Most of the people in the service receive above that. The increase is only for those whose salaries are not up to that amount. What that means is that if we pay those people, they will meet up with their seniors. So, it means that some level of adjustments have to be done upwards. But that would be just on small percentages. But we need to be properly guided from the Salary and Wages Commission and no circular has come on that.

So, when people agree to pay, they are still expecting a lot of things to come. Firstly, we are expecting the official circular from Salaries and Wages Commission. Secondly, most of the states did not contemplate it, so they did not budget for it. It is a budget matter, except you now go for supplementary budget, which I have not heard of any state that have submitted a supplementary budget with the purpose of paying minimum wage. People must understand that there is difference between minimum wage and salary increase and that is what the federal government has refused to explain.

We have accepted as governors that we will pay minimum wage. But we are asking that the revenue formula should be changed. We are also asking for subsidy because we need money to be available for us to pay.

What would be your expectation when you finish your tour of duty as Governor of Benue?
My expectation is that Benue will be different. The state of infrastructure is now high and that was my intention that people should be judged on the basis of performance and not how many you have given cash. People must see the things on ground and believe in you as their leader. It is unfortunate that some people are interested in how much you give to them. But mine is to do things that would affect lives collectively. Since 1976 we have been dragging.

As governor, the place I am staying is not good enough. We have no proper lodge for the governor. I just completed a lodge, which I hope by end of September, we will move in. Subsequent governors will not experience what I am going through because I have bridged the wide gap. What I am doing in Makurdi and other areas in Benue state will last for a long period . I am happy that the things that are lacking in Benue state are now on ground.

People of the state are seeing them and are happy. So I want to be remembered as someone who has raised the state and brought a different approach and attitude to governance. Therefore people should develop the right attitude, so that we can move forward, At end of four years, they will see things they will really point at. I am therefore happy that people are beginning to have right attitudes towards Benue State.

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Posted by admin on Sep 23 2011. Filed under Governors. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry