Alhaji Yahaya Bello: the points to add to the agenda By Hussain Obaro.

Just a couple of hours ago Alhaji Yahaya Bello was sworn in as a new governor of Kogi state, promising the local people to handle all the challenges hampering the development of the respective state. 

Hussain Obaro, outlines the issues concerning the Kogi state development, which, in his opinion, should be a number one priority in the new governor’s agenda.

Welcome, new governor!

It is true that Alhaji Yahaya Bello is set to take over as the sixth democratically elected governor of Kogi state at the time when the state’s share of revenue allocated from the federation account is nose-diving. The facts on ground reveal that the incoming administration will be dealing with high expectations of all in the state who see the victory of the APC in the last election as the one to usher in the much-craved for and desired change, bring succor and positive turnaround to the Kogi people both home and outside.

The present economic challenges

Considering the present economic reality coupled with the urgent need to rescue the people from poverty and hunger, the exigency of the moment demands that the incoming administration looks inward to sort out the funds to provide for the people.
Ours is a civil service state with over 75% of the working population being employed by the state and local governments. This means that a lion’s share of the state resources is being channeled into payment of the workers’ salaries, pensions and gratuity, and other allowances.
The honest truth is that no state can thrive or perform optimally when majority of its resources that should go into the infrastructural development, like construction of motor able roads, provision of potable water, improvement and establishment of hospitals to enhance healthcare delivery system, improvement of the condition of schools, etc., is spent on salaries and allowances.
Little wonder that successive Kogi state administrations were not able to keep a clean sheet in terms of payment of the workers’ salaries, pensions and allowances. This is because of the need to create equilibrium between human and infrastructural developmental needs; one has to suffer a setback for the other to be met.
As it currently stands, the Internally Generated Revenue (IGR) of the state is nothing to write home about. I am an advocate of the fact that the state has no business waiting for monthly allocations from the federation account before the workers’ salaries are paid. As a matter of fact, I fully support the proposition that any state which IGR is not big enough to pay its workforce’s salaries should cease to exist as a state and rather merge with another to become more viable.

The positive experience of other states

The available records and statistics show that only Lagos and Kano states can conveniently pay its workers from their IGR without having to wait for the monthly federal allocations from Abuja. The need for Kogi state to increase the state IGR is a task which the incoming administration should embark on as a matter of priority.
Moving Kogi state from its present status of a civil service state into an industrialized one, which would ensure creation of ample jobs for our unemployed youth and curb the prevailing hunger, poverty and restiveness as promised by the APC during the gubernatorial campaign, can only be possible through an improved IGR.
The fact that Lagos state has been able to boost its IGR base through the effective collection and prompt depositing of taxes to the state account is no longer news; hence, the need for the new administration to borrow from the expertise of the tax administrators and workers of its Lagos state counterpart.
Training and retraining of the Kogi state revenue service staff by either inviting the experts from Lagos state, or sponsoring the local staff to go to Lagos is highly needed at this moment if Kogi state wants to benefit and learn from the “magic” of Lagos state in terms of tax collection and revenue management.

Resources management

The greatest asset of any state or organization is its people, in other words human resources. Luckily, Kogi state is blessed with brilliant, agile, enterprising and hard-working people, who, if effectively put to use and harnessed, can turn the state revenue base around.
The time for us to de-emphasize reliance on the oil money from Abuja is now. God has already blessed Kogi state with the abundant mineral resources, which, if prudently handled, have the capacity to replace crude oil and make Kogi one of the richest states in the federation.

Corruption

The ghost-worker syndrome, which has been a conduit pipe through which the state’s meager resources have been appropriating by the corrupt individuals, should be carefully tackled through a well-programmed and comprehensive staff audit or the worker bio metric registration. This will ensure that only the people who are genuinely employed by the government get paid, and block the further leakages.
The previous administrations treated the issue of pensions and gratuity with levity, leaving our senior citizens, who had served the state in their youth days, to suffer and languish in penury. The present situation in which some state pensioners still earn as little as N5000 per month should be looked into as a matter of priority.
As Ahmadu Yahaya Bello has taken an oath of office earlier today, January 27, 2016, and is expected to hit the ground running, what will be his greatest mistake is if he surrounds himself or mingles too much with “the people of yesterday”, or political praise singers who specialize in sycophancy. Running an open-door and an all-inclusive government that would ensure the cross fertilization of ideas is needed if Yahaya Bello wants to succeed.