29 June 2009
interview
Lagos — Governor Isa Yuguda of Bauchi state who formally decamped to the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) last Saturday, took some time off to speak to some journalists about his stewardship in the last 24 months. Chuks Okocha who was present at the parley brings excerpt
How has it been as governor of Bauchi State in the last 24 months?
My tenure as a governor for the past 24 months has been most challenging because when I came in, I was faced with many problems and these problems if not properly addressed as I settled down in office and recording some success in my solving the problem by now, may be, there would have been an uprising in the state. I can say that by the time I came in, I met a failed state and nothing just seemed to be working here. The dam that provides water for Bauchi, when we came in, that dam was supplying only 1.5 million gallons of water daily and the transformer that was providing steady power supply was blown off.
The two generating sets we inherited, one was completely unserviceable, the other two were just managing to provide power in the event that there was power failure. The 33 KVG was meant to provide 24 hours electricity supply to the dam but we are supposed to step down the 33 KVA to 11 KVA and then supply the dam. But when it blew off, we had to manage the 11 KVA and it was on and off, so we had that problem of water, our hospitals have no water, no medicine. In fact, there was completely absence of power. We had to power the hospitals, provide water for the hospitals and then provide medicine as well as personnel too for the sick and in fact some of the hospitals we have to close down three because we brought in consultants that said we had to close them otherwise, the patients that come in there, 95 percent of them might die either from the ailments that brought them to the hospital or the one that will afflict them in the hospitals. And that time, I believe some of you have seen the video clips of the hospitals we inherited because I had session with journalists in Lagos.
The same thing goes with the schools, there is no one single secondary school that you can say this is a secondary school, apart from the children being malnourished because we have to increase their feeding allowance; what the former government used to spend in one year, we spent it in one quarter and we had to rehabilitate all the infrastructure because everything had collapsed. There is no secondary school you go to that you don't see the entire structure being rebuilt so far.
There is a school in Misau; that school was the same school where the video clip showed students sleeping in the toilet, eating and also urinating in the toilet; it was that bad. In almost all the secondary schools, when it is raining they had to shift their desks. The situations were very, very bad. In fact, some of the journalists that watched it wept and the first time I saw it too, I was very emotional and in fact when I showed it to some of the elders of Bauchi, some of them were weeping.
The situation was very bad indeed and apart from that, I inherited an army of youth militants that killed at whim and a para-military arm of a political party. So, they were used to intimidating the people. In the event that they do not like you, you will get killed. It was so bad to the extent that when we came in, hardly will a day pass without somebody being slaughtered just like a goat. So, we had to address that; we had to provide over 30, 000 jobs both directly and indirectly to take them out of the streets and unfortunately those that have gotten accustomed to killing and will not stop, we had to get them arrested and prosecuted them and that is how we were able to arrest this youth restiveness. We are about the only state in Nigeria where we had the emergence of youth restiveness and we were able to stamp it out completely. Bauchi never used to be safe, but we have returned sanity, safety and peace to the peaceful town of Bauchi . Even the armed robbers we used to have on our highways, they have been checked. We have a lot of people who are in the business of politics who believe in using old means to foment trouble.
Sometimes you have crisis here and there which they normally give the colouration of religious crisis and it is certainly not religious crisis; it is all politically motivated and we have been able to address that very squarely because at the end of the day our citizens appreciate that. We don't have anything like religious crisis in our state because there is no religion that says go and kill in the name of God and the Bible is preaching peace, Islam is preaching peace and our brothers were made to understand that before you become a full Muslim, you must believe in Jesus Christ, in the Bible, the Virgin Mary, what is the issue of contention there.
This kind of interactive session has been holding and people really appreciate that if somebody wants to create problem for Isa Yuguda, he will just go late morning hours, may be around 3am, 4am and set a mosque ablaze and the following morning, they will say Christians have gone to burn down a mosque and then if somebody wants to commence crisis too, he will go and burn down the church and they will say Muslims have burnt down a church. This is what has been happening and we have been to trace this and stop it. All these are part of the challenges I inherited as governor and it has not been easy at all. I spend most of my days from morning till evening, I hardly see my family and that is how it has been. It has been a very big challenge for that matter.
Power is a major problem in the country and Bauchi is not an exception, is your administration thinking about Independent power generation?
I have just finished holding a meeting with some banks, BankPHB and one other bank and other solicitors, and the rest. I have identified a power plant through an embassy in Germany that will generate up to about 160 megawatts using crude oil and we have gone very far. The project is supposed to start as from the month of September. The financing arrangement as from 3rd of July, the parties will be here in Bauchi and we have already arranged for equity participants, those who are going to take up part of the equity, they are taking about 70 percent, they are ready with their money. Bauchi needs about 70 megawatts to power the entire state, with these industries that have collapsed because of the lack of power, so, if we are able to generate about 150, 170megawatts, we take 70 and the remaining balance, we will sell it to Power Holding Company and we are happy that Bauchi has is the only state in Nigeria I understand can generate power, hook up to the national grid, power the state, and if they generate excess, they can hook up to the national grid and sell it to them.
We are going very far in that direction and it is expected that, all things being equal even though that is what the economy says and by coincidence, they say things are normally no equal but I believe this time around, it is going to be equal. By next September, by the grace of the Almighty God, we are going to switch on our power plant because the manufacturers of the equipment are those who will come and run the power plant and aside from if you are very conversant with the oil sector, there has been a prospecting of oil in the Benue basin and already there are a lot of gas deposit in this basin and part of it are in Bauchi because when the prospecting was on, Shell sank a well and got over 30 million cubic of gas and we have been discussing with a German group so that they cane exploit the gas and start generating the power with the gas but beyond the gas, I believe they say is crude.
We have floated a limited Liability Company with three other states, that is Gombe, Adamawa and Taraba and we intend to use that as a vehicle to partner with the Oil Company so that we can see how we can get part of the oil blocks allocated to us so that we can start working. That may be medium or long term solution but the short term solution which I believe is going to surprise everybody is what we are doing now. Apparently there is no State that has access to this plan that I have so far.
You were elected governor on the platform of the ANPP and you have now dumped the party which was there for you at the time of need for PDP; is it not a sense of betrayal?
You have forgotten to mention that I migrated from PDP to join ANPP. You didn't ask me why I migrated from PDP to ANPP. I was a Minister under the PDP. I was one of the longest serving Ministers in Obasanjo's government. I served in the Transport Ministry and also as Aviation Minister. Apart from that, you should appreciate that I'm one of the founding members of PDP. As faith will have it, I never wanted to be in politics. I wanted to remain a professional banker that I was. But providence has it that I will have positions in the public service. When eventually, I was appointed Minister, I served the PDP government. I was part and parcel of the PDP family until 2007; I left PDP and joined ANPP. It was circumstances that made me to leave. I don't think it is necessary for me now to repeat the circumstances because I have spoken so much on the reason why I left then. I joined the ANPP, campaigned for three months and I won the election.
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