Hottestgistnaija.com
Too many strange things are happening in Kwara State.
Naijahottestgist serves you how Bukky Saraki and his Politicalgodson Gov Abdulfatai are mismanaging the state Economy and making themselves richer
>> On February 18, I read the full text of an interview Governor
>> Abdulfattah Ahmed granted some journalists. The interview came under
>> different headings in different dailies. Of all these headings, however, I
>> considered the one in The Punch most catchy and, perhaps innocently,
>> most indicting. It reads: “We’ll hand over Aviation College to
>> investors.” Having earlier read the interview under a different heading
>> (“We’ll make Kwara Nigeria’s agric hub”) in The Nation of same date, I
>> did not bother to read the interview again. The content is the same.
>> Now I quote a statement from the interview, as published in The
>> Nation. “For now, the school is fully owned by the state but don’t
>> forget that the state government is not in the business of running
>> aviation. So ultimately we will sell off 70 per cent of that business to
>> those who know how to do it and then the school will run on its own
>> internationally”. Something is very clear from this statement and that
>> is that the Kwara State government owns the Aviation College wholesale!
>> On Monday January 14, the governor’s spokesman, Femi Akorede, made the
>> following statement on twitter: “Kwara will eventually sell 70 per cent
>> of its stake in Aviation College.” Today, after reading the governor’s
>> interview, I asked mysself what
>> Akorede’s statement meant. And without much ado, she said it means the
>> government is selling 70 per cent of its own shares in the business.
>> Prodded further, she said the statement meant the state does not appear
>> to own it 100 per cent. That was the exact interpretation I had in my
>> mind. Instructively too, I recall somebody on twitter asking Akorede
>> whether somebody else owns some shares in the college. He has remained
>> mute ever since. Now the governor just told us Kwara owns the college
>> wholesale. The “its” in Akorede’s statement clearly is ambiguous and I
>> remember somebody had alleged it was a sign of very terrible things to
>> come on this project, citing the Shonga Farm as an example. The governor of
>> course made some false claims about the Shonga Farm such as
>> declaring it a huge success when Mr Irvine Reid, one of the remaining
>> Zimbabwean farmers, said in an interview with Financial Times of London
>> (November 1, 2012, titled ‘Nigeria seeks to beef up farming industry’)
>> that “our farming experience has passed its sell-by date”. Recall that
>> 13 white farmers were there initially. The governor did not disclose
>> that five of the white farmers had since left the farm, much less
>> explain why they left. He did not also say that Kwara State government
>> is having its funds being deducted at source on account of unpaid debt
>> of the “thriving” Shonga Farm which the government says now belongs to
>> “private concern”. An article titled ‘Operation Fool the People of
>> Kwara’, published by Newswatch of March 09, 2012 in the wake of 70m Euro
>> rice farming agreement the state government signed with one Valsolar
>> Consortium of Spain, had far-reaching revelations about this. Why is
>> Kwara shouldering a burden of a venture now belonging to a private
>> concern or where it has a paltry 25 per cent?
>> Now to the Aviation College. I do not know of any decent government
>> that spends public fund to put a project in place and then hands same to
>> some “investors”? Where were these investors when public fund was being
>> committed to the same project? Here I repeat a question one terrified
>> Olabisi Ogunwale asked Akorede about this issue: is the aim solely based on
>> future divestiture? And worst still, the governor said in the
>> interview that government has no business in doing/running business! Is
>> this statement an afterthought or the governor had always known this? If he
>> knew this, why commit government fund to a business when government
>> has no business being in business? These clearly defy common sense.
>> Also, we do not know precisely how much of public fund has gone into
>> putting the college (including the facilities and man power) in place.
>> If we do not know these and the government is not the type to give such
>> fact, how do we know it is not being dashed out at giveaway price to
>> so-called private investors?
>> I have further worries. It is my prayer that the Aviation College
>> does succeed. Else, Kwara will pay dearly – as it is doing for Shonga
>> Farm. The Governor, clearly attempting to douse public anger at the news of
>> Kwara’s plans to purchase additional 10 aircraft for the college in a state
>> with legendary dearth of basic infrastructure, used the interview to explain
>> that the money is not from the public coffers. He said the
>> college is benefiting from the new NEXIM loan that the Federal Government has
>> signed with the Chinese and India governments. The aircrafts are to be
>> purchased from the loan, the governor added, to be paid back by the
>> college over a period of 10 years. Good deal. But the governor clearly
was holding back some facts about the loan: who is standing surety for
this loan just in case of default? What happens, God forbid, in the
event that the college is not able to pay pack? Head or tail, Kwara
people would be made to pay.
But the bad news does not end there. The Aviation College was built
from the N17b bond accessed sometime in 2009 from the capital market.
Last year, additional N10b loan was taken to, in the words of the
government, complete projects, including the same Aviation College! That
money (N17b) is due for payment next year. With the college far from
yielding any profit and the hope of it doing so remaining dim as at this
minute, it is fair to say that the ISPO (Irrevocable Standing Payment
Order) – which the state government signed in the event of the
businesses for which the bond was taken defaulting from paying – would
take effect from 2014, further depleting the meager resources of the
state. Yet Kwara people will soon lose ownership of this venture whose
debt would be deducted from the treasury!
Clearly too many things are not right here. The government will hit
back on this, rather than explain itself. But definitely Kwara’s
investment model is quite strange. And one would be forgiven to call it
an outright fraud. This is the only state I know of where public fund is
used to float an enterprise and the government will wake up one morning and
auction it out. If my information is right, the multibillion naira
Kwara Diagnostic Centre, also built from the N17b bond, is also gone and our findings show just one thing,These Gorvenment properties were sold to Senator Bukky Saraki.
