Kwara state PDP gubernatorial candidate, Alhaji Shuaib Yamah Abdulahi on Tuesday said he will secure Kwara’s future and turn things around in the state if elected as governor i next year.
Accusing the ruling APC of putting the state in a messy economic situation, Yamah said having the right leadership will change things for the better in the state, Kwara, he noted, has what is required to be self-sufficient.
Taking questions from reporters including Team@orientactualmags.com during his visit to the secretariat of the Correspondents’ Chapel of the Nigeria Union of Journalists in Ilorin , the PDP gubernatorial candidate, who said he will imaginatively use new ideas to make things work, added that the state ‘is richly endowed with enough resources that can create the needed platform to engage young people in productive activities from which the state could source income that would be used to fund education, health and social security’.
‘It is not enough to go to Abuja every month to get monthly allocation gotten from oil and bring such to Kwara.
Any stupid man on the street can spend money so that is not what a governor is elected to do principally.
A governor is elected to create more money from what is given to him; he is expected to be creative and not to borrow recklessly in such a manner as to plunge future generation into debt’ Yarman said.
Submitting that cotton can be grown in Kaiama local government , he said the only thing required was to put the natural resources and existing infrastructure like the cargo shed at Ilorin airport to good use saying exportation of cotton from the state could be achieved.
‘As a matter of fact, that area has the same soil that can grow cotton, flower and many other products that can be exported via our cargo shed in Ilorin.
There are only four airports in the country that has the quality of the runaway we have here in Kwara’ he said.
‘I have spoken to Chinese companies who could build generators powered by coal.
We have coal in abundance in Kogi state, which is our neighbor that can assist in power generation needed by the cotton clusters that we intend to create.
With that, we can make our product competitive and undercut illegal imports, provide jobs from which tax can be paid to the government’ he added.
Yamah also said there was a need to take needed steps to secure Kwara’s future while warning against total dependent on federal allocations.
‘Our idea is not to depend on federal allocations that was why I mentioned our strategy using agriculture Kwara has a lot of mineral resources we are only using artisanal miners and the people there are not paying anything, actually about one month ago, a geological survey of the Federal Government said the best platinum to have been discovered in Nigeria is in Kwara state, precisely Kaiama area and that it is in commercial quantity , we have gold deposit we have so many things but it takes hard work , the ability to think outside the box and competence to get things done we should see the federal allocations as mere complements what we should focus attention on is what can we do if tomorrow our oil becomes valueless the truth is that so many alternatives are being found for oil including this platinum which we are not saying anything about supposing tomorrow somebody finds water as alternative to oil and nobody wants to buy our oil again.
I was a member of the Revenue Mobilisation Allocation and Fiscal Commission, RAMFC almost ninety something per cent of our revenue are gotten from oil, our economy is married to oil so Nigerians must begin to think of the days when oil will not be there and this is what had been our concerns , yes we believe that Kwara has the capacity to exist without federal allocations with the right leadership, however I know Iam being recorded I don’t want you to say ‘you said in two years, Kwara will not rely on federal allocations and now you are still relying on it’ , Kwara state has now incurred 110 billion naira debt and we spend 1.3 billion every month this is unimaginable I say this with every sincerity we can’t afford it we cannot put the future of our children on a path to failure we must do more than this that is why I say it everywhere that the current government is trying to derail the future we cannot afford this as a state the last time the governor was asked he said he was keeping 17 billion naira somewhere and he had thought he will receive accolades you are keeping 17 billion naira in an unnamed financial institution where it is yielding less than five percent it means we don’t need the money in the first instance, why taking it and keeping it’ he said.
Responding to a reporter’s question asking why he left the APC for the PDP , Yamah said he had a plausible reason for taking such a decision.
‘Yes, Iam a decampee we were the Otoges but you see close your eyes and see what has happened, the other otoges have also left of course what we said was otoge was far better than what the present leadership has given us.
If you thought you are on the way to paradise and you saw yourself being taken to hell why not turn back?
So that was exactly what the otoge people have done we made a big mistake by putting this kind of leadership there and we felt we have failed Kwarans because we made promises to them and we said it will be better for them and we have seen that nothing has happened we are being pushed into ocean and so the rest of us said ‘well we must keep that promise’, if you see someone like me coming back to PDP it is because there is a need for us to fulfill those promises we made to Kwarans and inshallah they would be fulfilled’ he said.
Yamah , who claimed that the ruling APC had done virtually nothing to improve the lives of Kwara North people , also posed a question to the journalists ‘where is the statistics that showed that the former administrations didn’t do anything for the Kwara north people?
He listed infrastructure projects done during previous administrations to include the Kwara state University, Malete, KWASU, Shonga Farm and Ilesha Baruba – Chikanda Road.
He said the current administration had failed to complete the Ilesha – Gwanara road which is according to him about forty kilometers and had been left half -completed by the immediate past administration.
The PDP guber candidate also described social media reports claiming existence of a rift between him and former Senate President, Dr Abubakar Bukola Saraki as untrue, he also said he found another one claiming that he borrowed 2, 500 dollars from someone ridiculous.
‘I was a director at Daily Trust Newspaper and Iam sure that the main media will still keep the etiquettes of the profession but the social media has become a big problem I remember in those days in Daily trust we pasted it everywhere that if you are 99 per cent sure don’t publish except you are 100 per cent sure and that is the ways things should be done because a damage done to someone because of a wrong publication will be very difficult to correct it may even kill some people and of what effect is an apology after death so we always insisted in those days that if it is 99 per cent don’t publish , the problem of the social media is worrisome, some young men some of them even make wrong use of tenses it is part of the problems we have, journalism has become an all-comers thing , it should not be so, I will personally urge you the qualified journalists because I know that as the main media you will want to do what is necessary before recruiting people , social media has no control anybody writes anything you must have heard that some people said I took 2, 500 dollars from somebody some said I borrowed it to travel home because I didn’t have money when I saw it I said what will you do to this kind of boys? It is because there is serious unemployment in the country. We have a problem at hand that is why somebody will sit down and from the fiction of his own mind he will write that there is misunderstanding between me and the leader. which misunderstanding? It is a creation of their own imagination , there cannot even be any misunderstanding infact we just spoke now . Don’t forget also that he is my friend, we have been friends before politics and everybody knows that and Iam not sure politics will change that so there is no such a thing and there won’t be. Let me use this opportunity to disabuse people’s minds and say that there is nothing like that it was just a creation of fiction of minds of some people that are not qualified to practice journalism and they are using the power of social media to say whatever they want’ he said.
Yamah also said his ability to speak almost all the major languages spoken by Kwarans will stand him in good stead when he begins to carry out role and responsibilities as the state governor.
‘It is a serious advantage for me I can effectively communicate with my English- speaking people like you, I can speak Hausa language , and Nupe language , I can speak Yoruba language and the other ones, I see this as a very big advantage because I can communicate directly with the people without requiring the help of an interpreter and I think this will help us a lot we would like to communicate with the people we are not going to be away we are not going to be a governor that will not see his chief of staff for three months we are going to be there for the people of Kwara state and the only way by which we can communicate with them will be through these languages so I honestly hold them very dear and I thank God that Iam able to speak directly to our people, we are going to be people’s governor we are going to listen to them and they will talk to me directly without the help of an interpreter’ he said- Team@orientactualmags.com
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