Kwara Emerging Leaders, KEL, has cautioned the government of Mallam Abdulrahman Abdulrazaq to properly subject the decision to secure a N35B bond to extensive deliberation and careful scrutiny in order to avoid plunging the State into avoidable debt burden.
In a statement by its Head of Media Relations, Adekunle Oyedepo, the group noted that while it understand that the long years of misplaced priorities and lack of leadership innovation has placed many Nigerian states in deep financial crisis, the situation in Kwara has not yet warranted the huge borrowing being proposed by the Kwara State government. The group added that if the government does not review its position, it will take the government to court over the planned action.
Already, the financial situation of many states is very gloomy with the combined debts of all the sub-national governments jumping from N2.05tn in 2014 to approximately 5.39tn in 2019.
We are worried that with the fear of a possible drop in the revenue that accrued from FAAC, the Kwara state government would choose to prioritise borrowing at this time rather than fine-tune its revenue collection strategy and carefully utilising the state resources.
We have however read the defence of the State government authored by the Chief Press Secretary to the governor, Mr. Rafiu Ajakaye. He regaled Kwarans of the efforts of the current government to do so much with the little at its disposal, an effort our group greatly appreciates.
However, some of the reasons the state government has put forward to justify the N35B bond were even a justification that Kwara currently does not require such a huge loan, especially not during this period of financial uncertainty.
When, for instance, the state government said one of its evidence of performance in the health sector is that “…public hospitals now attract thrice the traffic inherited in 2019,” this goes to show the lack of innovation in the conduct of government’s business. It is our considered opinion that if the government has enough clarity about impact measurement, it would have realized that the less people need to visit the hospitals, the more effective our health policy would have been adjudged. But an exodus of people to hospitals means that we are not getting the health situation right, and the earlier we start working on raising a healthy population who need to visit hospitals less frequently, the better for our State.
Again, we note with concern another attempt to justify the loan on the basis of the need to aggressively drive the infrastructure development of the State. This is not a very convincing argument. Even if His Execellency, Mallam Abdulrahman Abdulrazaq stays in office for the constitutionally permitted 2 terms of 8 years, he would still not have been able to provide all the infrastructural needs of Kwara. It is not for nothing that government is described rightly as a continuum. No one person, no matter how rightly intentioned, can finish the business of government.
While the State government also cited the examples of States that have raised similar bonds to justify its quest for the loan; what it has not told Kwara people is how the State it seeks to emulate are faring in terms of financial viability. We have a very good lesson to draw from the experience of Osun State during the administration of Ogbeni Rauf Aregbesola. In his untempered desire to drive the physical development of his State, the governor took a huge bond that plunged Osun into financial mess so much that it began to default in its salary obligation to workers.
As we speak, the Kwara State government is still unable to implement the minimum wage. And this is despite the comparatively huge receipt of monies from other sources other than the FAAC in recent times. The Abdulrahman Abdulrazaq administration has received tranches of the unremitted PAYE from the Federal Government agencies located in Kwara; it has also recently received a whooping $16.9m from the World Bank; in addition to a relatively stable internal revenue generation. Why then do we still have the urgency to borrow?
While the government has said that it result to the idea of borrowing because it does not want to place heavy burden on people by embarking on aggressive revenue drive, it is the belief of KEL that the state government does not need to increase any collectible tax in the State. It should instead undertake a proper tracking of its VAT and prune down on negative spending. And this is why our group has consistently criticized the implementation of the ‘father Christmas’ social investment programme at this point, or how do we justify that we are prioritizing school feeding at a time the school infrastructure are not even conducive for learning?
KEL believes that if truly the government of Abdulrahman Abdulrazaq represent progress for our State, it must not favour the old and lazy way of doing things. Any governor can borrow and pass the burden to subsequent governments. It’s the simplest thing to do. But what we need the Kwara State government to do at the moment is to get creative. There are tested models of delivering public facilities. The Public Private Partnership (PPP) model is one. The Build, Operate and Transfer (BOT) model is another. We believe bond is a lazy quest to solving the problem of infrastructure deficit in Kwara, something that require deep thinking and rigorous deliberation.
However, on the planned N35B bond, we call on the governor to review this loan carefully and to not mortgage the future of our dear State and its people. We are particularly worried that the process for the loan will be completed very close to the 2023 elections, a situation that further raise doubt on the actual intention for the loan. The fact that the government skipped the necessary requirement of having a public hearing on the proposed bond is also an indication of lack of transparency on the matter. It is in the light of this that we call on the Abdulrahman government to live to its name of a progressive government by allowing all the critical stakeholders in the State to jointly review the need for the proposed loan and to not take a decision that would affect us all in haste.
