By Suzan Edeh, Bauchi
The Bauchi State Governor, Bala Mohammed has debunked reports that there are activities of banditry in the state, saying that Bauchi State remains one of the safest in the North East subregion.
The Governor was speaking at the opening of an extraordinary meeting of the State Executive Council (SEC), held at the Executive Chambers of the Governor’s Office on Wednesday
He said that there was an incident in Darazo last week that was reported in the news, adding that the incident was a community issue and not an act of banditry as wrongly circulated in the media.
“I want to tell the general public that, what happened in Darazo was not banditry. It is a community issue. We will handle it with the Police and the SS. Because of security reasons, I will not disclose all the information.”
“But investors will be reassured that it is not banditry. Yes, we closed our schools because we were asked to close them by the security agencies. They have more information than us. Even though I am the Chief Security Officer, I don’t have the personnel. They have told us that there is a likelihood of abduction of our students as has been practiced all over”.
“That is why we are here. For being proactive is not just to create fear but to be safe and secure is better than to go with evil. We will make sure that we do as much as we can to make those half-awake or half-rescued vulnerable students are kept safe in the schools.”
“By the end of the year all our schools will be fenced and we will put some lights and so on and so forth. And that is why the recruitment of the vigilante will be concurrent so that our aspect of safe-school programme as enunciated by the Office of the National Security Advisor will be implemented 100% emotionally. At least we will do our own and leave our Creator to the rest.” he said
The Governor said that his administration is not borrowing money to “chop”, but to work for the citizens of the State who deserve to get the best of democratic governance.
According to him, “This is going to be huge, we are going to fence our hospitals and schools, we are going to build more hospitals and fence the walls of tertiary facilities. We will build dormitories and in roadways, we will provide electricity, we will provide power.”
“We want to make sure that all the local government have water, running water. And that is what we are borrowing for, we are not borowing money to chop, we are not borrowing money to make any impact or than to work for the citizens.”
The Governor assured that his administration is doing everything possible to safe money to be able to provide more developmental infrastructure for the good of the citizens.
“I don’t know if you understand what we do, but we are collecting time and some money. That’s why it requires a lot of sacrifice and time. We have been doing it for a long time already. The longest time we have been doing it is today.”
“And this budget will be a budget of consolidation, because for the last years, I’ve been doing, this is the seventh one I’m doing, and I believe the eighth one is just going to be a buy-buy budget. It will not matter so much,”
“I’m happy all the Commissioners have been engaged by the economy management team, and we have discussed all the areas and initiatives that we need to put in place, so that at least, we’ll be able to cut our initiatives from 2019 to date to a logical conclusion.”
“We don’t want to leave any project somewhere that we can’t do the best. We must take our projects and programmes with visions to a point of no return, to something that will be tangible and measurable.”
“If anything, we have learned from ourselves the art of governance, how to be able to do things and achieve results. We have become result-oriented, and that’s why within a short amount of time, you have been overstretched. And expectations have been piled up on the quality of the system.”
“Yesterday, or the day before yesterday, we have been going around the state, and we have seen the love and appreciation of the people. Just because of one initiative, the Rural Access Fund Programme, people like good things. But it takes a lot of efforts to produce good things that will be liked by the people.”
“Even to think of it, we are building a road, the alignment of the products, and the cost of the products, and the procurement of the products. We must be able to give value for money.”
The Governor said “We will not be too proud and arrogant about what we have done, because whatever we do together, we have done it with the resources of the people of Bauchi State. We are their servants. We will have satisfaction that at least we have led the society better than where we have found it.”
“This year, we are going to be very ambitious. We are going to have a new trend, for the first time, we are taking a foreign loan, so that we will be able to recover it.”