Babatunji Wusu –
According to Bala Mohammed, the governor of Bauchi State, his administration has borrowed N100 billion, which it is utilizing to fund infrastructure improvements in the state.
In an address delivered on Wednesday at the Exco Chamber, he made this claim at the start of the third Executive Council Meeting of his second term.
He claims that more than N90 billion has been spent so far on building infrastructure throughout the State.
“You can observe the programs and projects; we have only just begun. After borrowing N100 billion, the infrastructure project alone is currently costing more about N90 billion. We wish to reclaim every Kobo; we are not robbers and we are not here to take anything from the system.
Naturally, we’ll set aside some money for our health and education. In order to leverage this financing for infrastructure projects on our own, we are saving from the meager amount of money we receive from the federal government. This is something you should know,” he stated.
The Governor, bemoaning the wave of phantom employees in the State civil service, pledged that his government will take all necessary measures to eradicate the threat.
“The wave of ghost workers and the others will be out of our way,” he declared. When I saw the Minister of Communications, he expressed his understanding of how well we are doing and his readiness to travel to Bauchi to set up a platform to end the use of phantom labor.
“We do not benefit from these ghost workers, nor do they serve as commissioners, but we do permit them. We need to be able to handle and verify the nominal roll as well as other data that we own. Unless you choose not to, managing your departments and ministries is relatively simple.
“We are working very hard to make sure you do it, but I know there are significant places like health and education where we have the prevalence of the threat of ghost workers because of the numbers. In order to demonstrate to you that we are more interested in services than just infrastructure, we have a ton of events planned, including the education summit.
“We need to make sure that our bureaucracies and services, such as health and education, are producing enough human capital. Following that, we’ll have the investment summit since we’ve been around the globe, garnering interest from people and having what it takes to attract investors.
He gave the state’s commissioners strict instructions to get started right away in order to deliver services and carry out initiatives and programs that would improve the lives of the populace.
