From Noah Ebije, Kaduna
Governor Uba Sani of Kaduna State has disclosed that he has not collected a single loan from any local or international financial institution since he assumed office two years ago.
The governor made the disclosure while fielding questions from some Kaduna-based broadcast journalists in Hausa, as part of the celebration of his two years in office on Wednesday night.
According to Governor Uba Sani, several banks had approached him to collect loans under different guises, but he refused to accede to their requests because he does not want to sink the state into further debt.
The governor disclosed that he cut the allowances and some perks of his Secretary to the State Government and commissioners to run an efficient administration.
“The Secretary to the State Government is a retired federal permanent secretary, who is also a former consultant with the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO). Some of my commissioners were receiving big salaries in their former places of work.
“I persuaded them to forfeit their performance bonuses and to use the old cars that their predecessors used in the last administration. This is how we have been running the administration without collecting a single loan,” he added.
Governor Uba Sani also said that he leveraged his contacts and the connections that he made throughout his career as a human rights activist and a senator to secure grants from donor agencies.
He said that the Qatar Charity is constructing the Kaduna Economic City and embarking on a mass housing project at the Millennium City, adding that the houses will soon be completed.
The governor praised President Bola Tinubu for also assisting Kaduna State, like other states in Nigeria, to navigate its financial challenges.