El-Rufai: My re-election proved critics wrong

TRACKING>>Governor Nasir el-Rufai of Kaduna State was among several Governors-elect and returning governors, who attended a two-day induction at the Presidential Villa, Abuja. He speaks with Anule Emmanuel on why some state chief executives must summon courage to tackle challenges of high wage bill and other related financial burdens, strategies of growing Internally Generated Revenues (IGR), his re-election and the spate of banditry in the North-West, among other issues. Excerpts:

What is your advice to states that are finding it difficult to pay salaries?

I think states should work at broadening their Internally Generated Revenue (IGR) and ensure that they pay salaries on or before the 30th of each month. That is what I will tell them. You know, each state has different circumstances. Lagos can say, oh we raised 80 per cent of our budget from IGR, but that is because it is lucky that industries are there, the sea ports are there and it was the Federal Capital. Some states have no industries at all, they have no tax base and you can only work on developing that and the taxes will start coming after you have developed that.

A lot of what you are seeing happening in Lagos now is the foundation of the efforts laid by the former governor, Asiwaju Bola Tinubu. But when he was there, they were not collecting a fraction of what they are collecting now. So, it is something that you need a long term plan and keep politics out of it. You also have to forget the fact that you will have results within your term of office, or even within your two terms of office. We have made progress in Kaduna, we have tripled IGR, but we are still not where we want to be. We want to triple it again within the next four years. It is only when we do such that we will be able to cover our personnel and overhead cost from IGR.

But like I said, each state circumstance are different, so you really cannot lecture anyone or boast that you are doing better than anyone because circumstances differ. Everyone is starting from a different base, but the basic principles of trying to raise your revenues mostly internally is a sound one that we should all pursue and I am happy that the Joint Tax Board, the Governors Forum, the Department for International Development (DFID), the World Bank are all offering assistance to the states to ensure we achieve that.

But, some states have too much on the wage bill?

If you have a huge wage bill, you look at it and reduce the number of people you have. I mean, even in your own household, if you have five domestic staff and your resources cannot pay them, you cut down on the number. This is something that everyone has to do, some people don’t want to do it because it has political cost, but in Kaduna, we did it and we got re-elected. As long as what you are doing is with a lot of good intentions and you take time to communicate to people and explain to them, people understand.

Many people predicted that we would not be re-elected because I sacked 22,000 teachers, I did this and that, but we got re-elected and those who were afraid of doing it, some lost election. It is not about taking hard decisions; nobody can keep people that he cannot afford. No one does that in his or her personal life and governance should not be anything different from your own personal life. The same standard you apply in your own personal life should be the same standard you apply in governance.

What magic is the Kaduna State government doing with regards to increasing IGR?

Since we took over in 2015, I think it is largely due to the combination of policies and legislation as well as the creation of an enabling framework. We hope to do better. As we target to triple IGR in the next four years again, it will not be necessarily by raising taxes or by introducing new taxes, but by expanding the tax net. We will do this by getting more and more people to contribute to the development of the state through the payment of a small amount of tax.

That is what we are working on and we hope to get a lot of technical assistance and support from development partners like International Monetary Fund (IMF0. The DFID has also offered to support us so, we will work with them to see that we increase our IGR. Our long term objective in Kaduna State government is to stop attending the monthly Federation Accounts Allocation Committee (FAAC) meetings, we just wait, when the cheque comes, it is okay. We want to be able to cover the cost of governance, our recurrent expenditure, that is personnel and overhead cost from IGR.

We don’t want to have a government that is more expensive than our IGR. We are not there yet, we are at about 60 per cent of that, but by the grace of God, by the end of next year, we will be able to get to that point. I had committed when I was sworn-in that so long as we cannot cover our personnel and overhead cost, I will be on half pay. So, I have been on half pay since 2015 and I would like to receive my full pay. I am working hard to see that we achieve that.

How prepared is the state to pay the new National Minimum Wage?

It is not a problem for Kaduna State. We have already done scenarios and we were even ready to start paying before the enactment of the law. But, it will be a problem for many states, for Kaduna, we will be fine by the grace of God. We are working on it, we are working the mechanics, the grade level step by step numbers on how we are going to do it. By the grace of God, it will not be a problem for Kaduna State.

How can the nation address the issue of insecurity, especially the banditry in Kaduna and other north western states?

The issue of insecurity is not as bad as the media points out. Kaduna is a target for many reasons and I think that security agencies are giving us cooperation. I think the problem is that when the main challenge of banditry is treated on a piecemeal basis, it persists. Bandits move across states, they don’t recognise borders. So, if you bomb them in Zamfara, they move to Kaduna and if you bomb them in Kaduna, they move to Niger or Plateau.

I think what needs to be done, going forward, is to carry out this anti-banditry military operation simultaneously across the states that are affected and in all the forests, where the bandits find refuge. If that is done, it will be eliminated more or less as we did in the case of cattle rustling in North-West states. That is what should be done and it is more within the purview of the Federal Government. The federal authority gives us all the cooperation, but we need this simultaneous joint military operation to displace the bandits.

Once that is done, the other security challenges are normal security challenges that we can deal with. There is nothing like perfect security, no country in the world, no state is totally secured. There will always be security challenges and they evolve, but I think we are better off now than we were before 2015.