The APC led-government in Kwara State has recently come under attack from the PDP over its intention to raise a N23bn bond from the capital market. But Governor Abdulfatah Ahmed, in an interaction with newsmen, explains the necessity for the loan and describes as impossible the PDP's promise to recapture the state. Excerpts:

Recently the government proposed a N23bn loan which the opposition party kicked against. Can you give an insight into the rationale for the loan?

Like I have always said, infrastructure is something that we have not been doing in the past and this has resorted into the decay which we have recorded in the past. What I mean in the past, I mean in the past 20 to 30 years, we have been building roads, constructing bridges, culverts but we have not been maintaining them. In the process we find out that they get spoilt and you have to start all over again.

When I looked at infrastructural requirements, I went out and I said, "look what is the quantity of infrastructures that Kwara State requires in road, in water, in energy, in education, in health, in agriculture, by the time we give an assessment of the infrastructural requirements in Kwara state, to bring Kwara State to a truly functional environment with all the needed infrastructure that would make the state go on normally, we find out that there is a huge gap and to put those things in place, it would cost us about N300bn. And by all purpose, we know that we cannot raise N300bn but as a government that has a tenured time to stay to drive governance, we must see how much of the N300bn we want to do in our own time and that prompted us to look at the sources of funding. And where are the sources of funding? Of course we know that we get the federation allocation which comes in every month from where we pay salaries and carry out other recurrent expenditures. Is it enough for us to do capital project?

Obviously it is not. It means that we have to look at other sources of fund that will enable us do our own portion of the capital projects and then we expect that other governments that would come would continue from where we stop until one day through a successive, well articulated transition, Kwara state will gain the benefit of not only getting full infrastructures but also receive the build-up of one infrastructure to another by successive governments.

For us here we have decided to look at the capital market which is the cheapest source of fund for government to raise money and do capital projects; that is why we have approached the capital market to raise money. If you go to any organisation that is desirous of improving lives of its people, you would see that it must have access to a large sum of money where it can do capital projects and begin to pay back gradually. That is why we have decided to approach the capital market. Those who don't know will exhibit ignorance by saying that government is going to borrow money to execute projects. How do you want to do projects without borrowing? I don't know how, even the Federal Government as it is today, we know the issue of Treasury Bill. For those who don't know, Treasury Bill is a way by which the Federal Government also borrows money to execute projects.

So the state on its own will go to the capital market and raise a bond to do capital projects. It is a cheaper source of funding because the interest rates are lower than when you borrow from commercial banks but if anybody is asking at all why do we need to borrow, then it means that you are completely ignorant of how capital projects are carried out in government business. I have heard a few people make comment especially one opposition man saying Kwara state is taking a bond to impoverish the people, we should begin to talk...you demonstrate ignorance if you say that taking up a bond to execute well-articulated, well marshalled-out capital projects is impoverishing the state, then you have demonstrated that you have no business in the business of governance.

Can you be specific on some of the projects you intend to carry out with this loan?

When you have sectoral projects, you cost them. The costing will give you specific figure. For instance, Ilorin metropolis water project was costed by N7bn, there is no way we are going to raise N7bn in one single bond except we want to only do water and we would not do anything again. As long as we want to do water, we want to do schools, we want to do energy, we want to do agriculture, we want to do hospitals, then we take whatever we can take resulting from what we can pay back at that time and then we jump-start the projects and the projects will now take us to either 10 per cent, 20 per cent, 30 per cent or 50 per cent completion after which we now take additional money to complete the projects. You see to complete projects, you need to face them, they would go beyond one or two bonds. You take Ilorin metropolis water projects for instance, the first amount that was expended on that water project in the first bond was N4bn, that was in the first N17bn. Now when you pay N4bn, how much do you have left out of 7? You have N3bn. When I came in, I took a loan, out of which I used N1bn to support the project, that takes us to N5bn. We have still not completed it because we still have N2bn to go and that is why we want to take another bond and take N2bn to complete the project. So you see when we raise money, it doesn't mean the money will take the projects from A to Z. It may take it from A to W or from A to X and somebody else will take it up from that level to completion. Projects would be jump-started, then they would be completed as we are moving on. A typical example of this bond is the Kaiama/Kishi road. The Kaiama/Kishi road is going to cost us about N8bn, we cannot raise N8bn now but what we can raise for that road is N2bn. So we would raise N2bn and we have broken it (the road) down into three sections- section one, section two, section three. As soon as we take this bond, we start section one and that takes us to a third of the road. If somebody comes in tomorrow and sees that bond has been raised to jump-start Kaiama road, then the next bond is coming in again on the same Kaiama road, some will say 'but you have taken money on Kaiama road before'. Yes, we didn't take money to complete it because completion would require us to pay large volume of money and large volume of money will require us to have a strong repayment capacity, repayment is limited to your inflow. There is a limit to which you can borrow money, we cannot borrow all the moneys we want, if we can borrow all the moneys we want I would have taken the N300bn and completed all the capital projects but it is not doable. It is only a function of what we can pay back. So there is no way we are going to impoverish Kwara State. We will take money, execute projects that will be completed within specific time-frame for the benefit of Kwarans.

What about the statutory sources of funding?

The sources of government fund are largely three- the federation allocation, VAT (Value Added Tax) and internally generated revenue. Most of the federation allocation in-flows go into servicing of salaries and wages and other monthly commitments. Our VAT and IGR is what we try to see how to carry on capital projects but they are too small on their own to continue to use them on the projects that we have. I just told you of Kaiama/Kishi road now which is about N8bn, my IGR is about 600 to N700million now and of course my VAT is almost about 400 to N500million, how much of that can I use to do Kaiama/Kishi road alone? I have not looked at Share/Oke Ode, I have not looked at Ipetu-Rere road, I have not looked at the General Hospital road, I have not looked at the Teaching Hospital road we are trying to expand. These are all roads that require huge funding. So the only way is to access a large volume of money. So the little that is coming on monthly basis, we will now be repaying back. What I think our people should be concerned about is what do we want to spend this money on, we must see it and the benefits must be understood by all. When we understand the benefits, then what we are going to take, use and pay back will not be the problem and that is why we are going to take our time to advertise the projects we want to do so that people will see. I just gave an example of Kaiama/Kishi road, I just gave an example of Ilorin metropolis water and of course there are schools we want to renovate and of course there are hospitals we want to work on. These are all projects that we can all see that we want to execute.

It has been alleged in some quarters that the government's youth empowerment scheme is political in favour of members of your party. What is your reaction to this?

As a state and as a government, we looked at the composition of Kwara State and we recognised the fact that we have a few people that are unemployed and we are also happy to note that Kwara State has the least of unemployment when you check statistics nationwide, so it tells you that the effort to get us there was deliberate and we want to improve on that. So if anybody under any guise tells you that our youth empowerment scheme is political, then the person is almost not very serious because youth unemployment is real. If anybody anywhere in the world intends to play politics with this, then it means the person is not very serious. We cannot afford to keep the destiny of our youths into an adventure. So we cannot afford to politicise it. It has nothing to do with politics. It has to do with stability and security of this country. Our youths are unemployed. We must ensure that we get them empowered to move them away from disillusionment to areas where they begin to see hope. We must begin to create hope in our youths and that hope is the essence of the empowerment scheme and we specifically said, you will recall when we started in 2011, we started with Kwara Bridge Empowerment Scheme (KWABES). The empowerment scheme was designed to move our youths from idleness to empowerment and ultimately job creation.

And the theme of the direction of this year's budget will be youth empowerment. We have come up with a programme that we want to ensure that we move minimum of 8000 youths from idleness to empowerment. So it has nothing to do with politics. It is a programme to move our youths to build tomorrow's Kwara. It is a programme to move our youths to create hope for them. It is a programme to make our youth to begin to have confidence in the system of government they have voted for...Before the end of this month like I said earlier over 4000 of them would be engaged and before the end of the year we would have recruited minimum of 8000 youths because we intend to see our youth properly engaged away from idleness.

The opposition PDP has promised to recapture power from the APC. What is your reaction to this?

You see politics is not about making noise, it is about action. And we are in Kwara State where we have people and we know what our people want and we are doing and giving them what they want because the capacity to carry on what they want is flowing from them.

It is a people's government and we must recognise the fact that when we have a people's government, you cannot take a people's government from the people. So let us recognise the fact that Kwara State has come this far because of transparency, because of well-articulated marshalled-out government process largely driven by strong political process engendered by APC and that is what will continue to sustain Kwara State because there is strong leadership and that leadership has allowed programmes to be articulated in a way and manner that people are being carried along.

We need to put people together, we need to be organised. What has sustained Kwara State is a structure and the structure was not built by the current leadership. It was built by the late Waziri of Ilorin (late Dr. Olusola Saraki). And if you look at that structure, it is the structure that is sustaining governance and that is an election winning machinery because it has an all-inclusive platform embedded in it. it has a consultative platform embedded in it. So this allows everybody to feel a sense of belonging. Anything other than that will not be able to sustain Kwara.

You recently met with confab delegates from the state. What do you think about it?

The conference as it were is a conference like any other conference we have had in the past. My concern largely is that most of the conferences we have had in the past had not addressed the issues on the ways and manners in which we carry out business. We have always looked at the rules and regulations that are guiding the business rather than looking at the ways and manners in which we carry on the businesses and I don't see this as an exception. But as Kwarans, we must not stay behind and allow ourselves to be left out without contributing our own portion to the process that would mould a new Nigeria for us. For me my expectation from this conference will be to see a conference that would be coming out such that Nigerians would have a better sense of hope, Nigerians would be seeing a new direction for growth and development; Nigerians would be seeing a new policy direction; Nigerians would be seeing an end to where we want to be as a country in mind. In other words, if this conference comes out with clearly set out goals and targets and the ways and manners by which we want to achieve those targets, then to me we would have achieved the purpose for which the conference was set in place otherwise it would be like any other talk show in the past. I hope this one would be different.