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Any serious gov'll make impact in two years

Published by Tribune on Thu, 23 Feb 2012


Chief Rochas Okorocha is the governor of Imo State. In this interview with select newsmen, he tells the story of the innovations he has brought to bear on the state, insisting that his commercialisation policy is reinventing the finances of Imo. He speaks on his mission and policies generally. Group Politics Editor, Taiwo Adisa, presents the excerpts:Going round this state, one gets with the impression of work in progress. How soon do you hope to complete these projects so that we don't witness the situation of abandoned projects that is often the problem with many administrations'It is true we have a number of projects ongoing. We have a new city we are building like a down town, like you have in New York. Some of the projects are based on public, private partnership (PPP). It is a vision and sacrifice and prudent utilisation of resources that define an administration. The last administration had about N280 billion that came in and 90 per cent of that money was expende on recurrent expenditure. We have reversed the theory of recurrent expenditure. Now we have 27 per cent recurrent and 73 per cent capital. How we do it is that we introduced what is called commercialisation. For instance, I will just give you a name, Concord Hotel. For the past 30 years the hotel has never yielded one naira profit for government and when I came in, I inherited a debt of N450 million owed the Lebanese company running Concord, plus the N850 million given to the man to renovate the place, so we spent N1.2 billion in 12 years and not even one naira has come in. When I came in, I reversed the trend. I sacked the man and I set up a new management team and handed it over to the Ministry of Tourism. In the ministry, workers' salary is about N12 million every month. For the first time, Concord made N40 million and now it is taking care of the salary of he Ministry of Tourism. That has reduced recurrent from our budget.So, every ministry has something similar to Concord allocated to it. Eventually, we might have a state where money that comes from the Federal Government is for capital projects, while the internally generated revenue, while the commercialisation effort takes care of the staff welfare and everything. That is what I mean by the commercialisation. So, we have brought business sense into governance and removed all the waste. For instance, I removed four billion naira of my security vote and added it to what is available for the people. This four billion naira would otherwise have been money unaccounted for. The police, Army and SSS are all with me; they made the same sacrificial effort. There is no bonus. I don't know anyone of them who collects free money in the name of security but everybody is working. Crime has dropped by 70 per cent in Imo State. So, these are some of the things we are doing. It is just sacrifice and we bend the laws of due process without breaking it. How do we do that' We say that if you are a serious contractor, prove it.First of all, we told all of them to bring their machines, move to the site. So, those who borrowed equipment, after two weeks, they ran away. So the real contractors remained. And the price we award contracts here is the cheapest anywhere in the world. For instance, one office was built by the previous government for N660 million, but now, we can build three of the same buildings for the same amount. There was a lot of wastage. And we recovered a lot of money, over N15 billion, from the past contractors who have come back to renegotiate with us. So, this is where the money is coming from. There are other projects like the hospital, new city. They are all being handled by foreign companies while the smaller projects all handled by indigenous companies. The Italian company is handling the Hand of God, the Ecumenical Centre and the Five Star hotel. The Korean company is handling the New City, the Spanish is handling the Okigwe and Orlu five star hotels. We are hoping that in the next one year, all these projects would have been accomplished. I believe that, in two years, anybody that wants to work for the nation can work for the nation. I don't believe in the issue of people staying eight years in office.Are you saying that you might not seek a second term in office'What I am saying is that anybody who is a visionary, who knows what to do, can perform within the short space of time. I believe that in two years, I might be asking Imo people what else do you want me to do for you' Because we are hoping that all these projects we are working on will be completed.We were somewhere in the state and we saw a place they called ICAP, what is the vision behind that. Number two, the state was recently in the throes of obviously politically motivated kidnapping, which I think is going down now. You might have to say one or two thing about thatI can say ICAP is my best. The vision of ICAP has been there with me for over 20 years. I believe that ICAP is the replacement of the theoretical education which does not reflect any practical reality in this country. So, better put, ICAP is a professional school. In that case, you need not work for anybody; you can work for yourself. That is the whole idea. But what kick-started it this year was the 10, 000 job issue where we have 10,000 workers without the 10, 000 jobs. That was the situation we had in Imo State which was politically motivated but when I came in, I said these young adults could help themselves in life. This idea of looking for white collar jobs and asking for N20, 000 remuneration, what can that do' Why don't you be your own boss and that is the essence of ICAP. So, ICAP is a school where you secure a professional course for yourself so that if a white collar job does not come, you can become an employer of labour. So, in the next two weeks, we are starting with the training of engineers by one Turkish company, ANCA. ANCA has arrived with their equipment to train at least 5, 000 engineers. You may be a graduate in English, Literature, Engineering; it doesn't matter. But you must have a basic knowledge of Education. The company has given a guarantee they will give anybody a degree which is equivalent to Engineering degree anywhere in the world because Nigerians that were trained in Turkey are earning $5, 000 a month.The owner of the company says when he trains them and issues them certificates, they can also go anywhere in the world and be earning the same $5, 000. You can see we have moved from N10, 000 to a professional job of $5, 000 which is about N750, 000. We are training people in underground welding. And you know that underground water welding is where the oil companies spend their money. If you have a staff who knows about that job, you will pay him $10, 000. It is more than a pilot. Now, we are training them in this school. If you have the certificate, then you can go to Shell and you name your price. This course is just six months. We are dealing with solar power. For me, that place is a bigger University by all ramifications and we are hoping to start soon. Most of the trainers are foreigners. We also have a company coming with Alsatian dogs for security. So that that if police or SSS want to recruit people for this profession, they will come to Imo State and negotiate with them. Those dogs are even trained to identify a kidnapper, which is how bad it is. That is the kind of things we are doing in ICAP.On the issue of kidnappers, thank God for the security people we have. The major success lies in the fact that we have been able to discover the leader of kidnappers. In Orlu, it was hell. Everyday, seven, eight or so people were taken. First of all, we decided to suspend the salaries of all traditional rulers where this kidnapping took place. The first one month the thing reduced, I said okay, I can understand. The main henchmen in Orlu have been arrested, two at large but we are stilltrailing them. We will get them. The attitude of the people of Imo state has begun to change; there is freedom. Though, once in a while, you will hear that somebody has been kidnapped and after two days, he is released.There has been this complaint about a fall in the standard of education, what are you doing to redress that' The Young Scientists' College is what we have started; it is a brand new school we just built. We discovered that science subjects are getting unpopular. Children are no longer picking interest in Physics, Chemistry, Biology and the rest, so we tried to create a special science school where you must have finish your three years in junior school. If you want to get admitted into that school, we pay your fee, what we call allowance or salary, for going to the school. We found out that most of our educational systems lack the practical side. We just signed an MoU with a Congolese ' Chinese IT guru who is going to connect the primary schools and secondary schools with computers, such that anybody anywhere in the world can give a lecture at a particular time to all our children and the project is about to commence. One thing I want to do is patriotism as a course, as well as nationalism. The children in the state don't believe in the state anymore. In fact, that I am from Imo State is a mere expression; it doesn't come from the heart. So, we are trying to re-orientate or change their mindset so that they can beat their chest and say 'I am from Imo State.' We introduced what is called bursary in primary and secondary schools. The children now have a sense of belonging. After this, we are now trying to introduce patriotism and nationalism and that brought us to the free education policy.We have now extended free education from primary to secondary schools and the university and don't ask me how the money is coming, because I don't even know how. What I am saying is that everyone of our children will be paid salary just for being a son or daughter of the soil. We are not trying to define who is a citizen because some people will begin to claim Imo and your girlfriends will become your wife. What we mean is that your father or mother must be from Imo. What we are doing now is that every university student is now to be paid N100, 000 every year. The students pay N60, 000 as tuition but the government is paying them N100, 000 and they directly pay the universities, thereby making the university autonomous. The arrangement is concluded but not those doing certificate course or Masters degree. I am talking about first degree.Education is free in Imo state now up to university level. Anything I do, people are talking about sustainability. Like when I say I was going to build schools and make education for the children of the poor free; people queried how it could be sustained and today I have over 5, 000 children, I have schools built in Ibadan, Jos, Kano and people ask how is it sustained. It is the vision and sacrifice that sustains a thing. Sometimes I am afraid to say what my inner spirit tells me about administration because people cannot see. We have started a new system where we are going to have Grade A, Grade B and Grade C schools even in primary and secondary schools because every school is autonomous in Imo State.Every headmistress in the school now has a role she must play. Every teacher, headmaster has responsibility for their school, including renovation of schools. How do we achieve that' We check how many childlren you have in your school and we pay their fees to you; we pay N25, 000 per child in primary school in a year. The real good schools, Madonna Primary school, charges about N8,000 per term and that is N24, 000 and I am paying N25, 000 for every child. But every teacher must sit up. With that N25, 000 I am paying, I will provide school desks, school uniforms, sandals and these have been ordered already. The fees I paid for these children will be utilized to pay the teachers and then we get quality service.Just last year, the state university authorities took a loan of N800 million to run the university; they are paying back the bank now. The Council spent N550 million on hotel and seating allowances but there was no training of teachers. So, with this new system, university will sit up.Many states are not drawing their share of the Universal Basic Education Commission(UBEC) funds, leaving lots of funds there. What are you doing to retrieve your state funds in the UBEC such that you can deploy same to better the standards of education' Let me tell you the truth. I know there is this external fund. I have always imagined myself as MD of a company as huge as Imo State with over 5 million workforce. But the UBEC something, in the Nigeria Governors' Forum, we have lamented on the stringent rules put in place in assessing those funds, which has been solved now. The office of the Vice President has taken that upon itself to resolve it. But there are some bottlenecks concerning some of these external funds. Sometimes, when you talk of the ETF fund, the contract is awarded from Abuja and the contractor comes to a village that he has never been together and he puts all kinds of things in place.I think by the middle of this year, all those things will stop and there is need for proper cohesion between Federal Government establishments in the state vis--vis the contacts being awarded by the Federal Government and the states. That is the problem we have in this country. Like in the NDDC now, if you go to some places now, there are some electric poles installed by NDDC, by Ministry of Power, by Imo State government and by the local government chairman.What is the issue about relocating the Imo state University all about'The Imo State University that we met is on a temporary site and we received seven letters from the National Universities Commission (NUC) which asked us to either immediately relocate that university or we lose its institutional accreditation. That is not even the issue; my concern is that I don't even intend to build one university in Imo, I intend to build three universities, one in Okigwe, one in Owerri, one in Orlu. The university has been on a temporary site for over 30 years and we are at the verge of losing its institutional accreditation. Imo is Imo, what is important is that we have a permanent site. Can this administration actually build a permanent site' I think that is what should be the major issue of concern and not where it is being located. But for me, if I have enough time in this state, I am going to build three universities. Some political persons have tried to tried to heat that thing up. Which is better' Should we leave it (the school) where it is and lose its institutional accreditation or move it' As we seat here now, there is a site for the university in Mbaitolu. We have signed an MoU with a Spanish organisation to build the Imo-European University which is still under construction.Having stated your idea of development, where would you want Imo to be economically in the next four years'As I speak to you now, we are bringing a whole new innovation into the administration and we are creating huge job opportunities. We are also raking in billions of naira through commercialisation. The Imo Tiles which used to be called Nsu which is an initiative of (the late Chief Sam) Mbakwe, where he imported over 24 containers and the place is rotten, we have gotten an Italian company constructing the new Imo Tiles in partnership with the Italian company. This will provide over 15, 000 of the square meters of tiles everyday. This administration, in our four years of development plan, has earmarked 15 new industries but these industries will be agro-based ones. So, at the end of the day, we are going to create more jobs by establishing more industries. We have three now. As I talk to you now, the rice plantation is coming; we are replicating another Imo Plant Plantation. So, I believe the way to go is agro-based industries and that is what Imo is doing now.This administration, in our four years of development plan, has earmarked 15 new industries but these industries will be agro-based ones. So, at the end of the day, we are going to create more jobs by establishing more industries. We have three now. As I talk to you now, the rice plantation is coming; we are replicating another Imo Plant Plantation. So, I believe the way to go is agro-based industries and that is what Imo is doing now.
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