It is true that Alhaji Yahaya Bello is set to take over the mantle of leadership as the sixth democratically elected governor of kogi state at a time when the state’s share of revenue accruable from the federation account is nose diving, the facts on ground reveals that the incoming administration will carry a load of huge expectations from all and sundry in the state who sees the victory of the APC at the last elections as one to usher in the much craved and desired change, bring succor and positive turn around to kogites at home and outside.

Considering the prevailing economic realities coupled with the urgent need to rescue our people from the shackles of poverty and hunger, the exigency of the moment demands that the incoming administration looks inward to sort for funds to better the lots of our people. Ours is a civil service state with over 75% of the working population being under the employment of the state and local government, this means that a lion share of the state’s resources is being channeled into payment of workers’ salaries, pension and gratuity, and other allowances. The honest truth is that no state can thrive or performs optimally when majority of its resource is used in paying salaries and allowances. Resources that should go into infrastructural development like, motorable roads, provision of portable drinking water, improve and establish hospitals to enhance health care delivery system, improve the condition of schools to aide better teaching and learning etc, which the people yearns earnestly.

Little wonder why successive administrations in the state were not able to keep a clean sheet in terms of payment of workers’ salaries, pension and allowances. This is because of the need to create equilibrium between human and infrastructural developmental needs of the populace; one has to suffer a setback for the other to be met. As it currently stands, the Internally Generated Revenue IGR of the state is nothing to write home about, I am an advocate of the fact that state has no business waiting for monthly allocations from the federation account before workers’ salaries are paid. As a matter of fact I fully support the proposition that any state whose IGR can’t pay salaries of its workforce should cease to exist as a state or rather be merged with another to make it more viable.

Available records and statistics shows that only Lagos and Kano states can conveniently pay its workers from their IGR with not having to wait on monthly federal allocations from Abuja. The need for Kogi State to put machinery in motion at speedily increasing the state’s IGR is a task which the incoming administration should embark on as a matter of priority. Moving Kogi State from its present status of a civil service state into an industrialized one that would ensure creation of ample job, for our teaming unemployed youth and curb the prevailing hunger, poverty and restiveness as promised by the APC during the gubernatorial campaigns can only come to fruitions through an improved IGR.

The fact that Lagos state has been able to boost its IGR base through effective collection and prompt remission of taxes into the state’s account is no longer news. Hence, the need for the new administration to borrow from the expertise of tax administrators and workers of its Lagos state counterpart. Training and retraining of staff of the Kogi state revenue service by either inviting experts from Lagos state to come and train ours or sponsoring staff to Lagos to be trained is highly indicated and needed at this moment if Kogi state is to benefit and learn from the “magic” of Lagos state as far of as taxes collection and remission of revenues are concerned.

The greatest asset of any state organization is its people i.e its human resources. Luckily, Kogi state is well blessed and endowed with a brilliant, agile, enterprising and a hardworking people which if effectively put to use and harnessed can turn the revenue base of the state around. The time for us to de-emphasize reliance on oil money from Abuja is now. God has already blessed the confluence state with abundant mineral resources which if prudently tapped has the capacity to replace crude oil and make Kogi one of the richest states in the federation.

Ghost-worker-syndrome which has being a conduit pipe through which the state’s meager resource is being milked by corrupt individuals should be carefully tackled through a well programmed and comprehensive staff audit or workers biometric registration. This will ensure that only people who are genuinely under the employment of government get paid and further blocked leakages. Previous administrations since creation of the state have treated the issue of pension and gratuity with levity, leaving our senior citizens who have served the state in their youth days to suffer unduly and languish in penury, the prevailing condition where some state pensioners still earns as meager as #5000 monthly should be looked into and reviewed upward as a matter of priority.

As the governor-elect takes an oath of office come 27^th January, 2016 and hits the ground running as expected, what will be his greatest undoing which would eventually lead to his failure in office is if he surrounds himself or mingle too much with “people of yesterday” or political praise singers who specializes in sycophancy. Running an open-door and an all inclusive government that would ensure a cross fertilization of ideas is however needed if Yahaya Bello wants to succeed.

Hussain Obaro…oseniobaro@yahoo.com…08065396694…lokoja-kogi state. [myad]

Most Nigerians are panicky as the economy seems headed for the rocks. The currency is on a free fall as manufacturers take a hit from the Central Bank’s restrictive foreign-exchange policy. The uncertainty is palpable. The average Nigerian is confounded, petrified with fear that the economy may fail to rebound at this rate; the economy that groans under the strain and weariness of a 12-year low crude oil prices.
The situation remains worrisome even as the administration seems clueless, at the very least, or unperturbed, at worse, by the economic suffocation inflicted on the masses.
The government plays up its trump card of anti-corruption, back-up by the now almost soap opera-like unending drama of probes, media prosecution and the promise to recover stolen loot. This is of course, closely related to the daily drama of arraignment of accused persons, detained suspects and the bail subplot.
But the people are curious, if not disappointed, so far as the anti-corruption circus continues. Supporters of this administration seem very concerned that the media campaigns against corruption could be loosing steam, especially as the government that rode to power on the promise of change continue to disregard court rulings on bail of allegedly corrupt members of the past administration. Lai Mohammed’s recent concerted consultations with various media stakeholders to solicit support and loyalty lays credence to this fact. Especially as it’s becoming apparent that an anti-corruption campaign, hitherto shouldered selflessly by the media, is starting to wane.
Unfortunately, the more the promised change, the more things remain the same. No roads. No jobs. No improvements in the power situation. No infrastructures are being added. In fact, things seem to be worse than the way the previous administration left them. Budgets implemented in the past eight months have been on recurrent; most overhead and personnel costs including payment of salaries (which continues to be delayed), foreign trips, payments of military allowances fighting against Boko Haram.
Added to all these is the fact that fuel crisis is looming over inability at securing letters of credit to the tune of $4.2 billion and on the repayment of loans acquired by oil marketers.
A time-bomb like the issue of Niger Delta militants’ threat are taken lightly, treated almost as inconsequential matters. For the government, its a one-way street of loot recovery.
The the ordinary man on the streets is expected to toe the line but they are unable as the economic strain continue to bite harder. For owners of small businesses and industries, it’s even worse. They have long rested their case, like we say, as credit facilities are a forlorn hope made worse by the mirage of power despite a new regime of higher tariffs.
The youths who were promised N5,000 naira by the administration have long withdrawn into their shells because the budget to which their allowances have been tied, even if they have to resort to being farm attendants, is mired in controversy. They are still amused by how a budget was not withdrawn as claimed by spin doctors of the government but got its figures changed in a new submission to the Senate by President Muhammadu Buhari.
While they have not stopped in their admiration of the President’s integrity, most youths are worried about lies that pervades in governance.
Trust is still in the air but with the application of caution because since the youths hero promised in the United States of America that it is reeling out the names of those who stole our yams last October but all they have seen is the accused, the allegations and their charges. Neither the Governor of the Central Bank, the custodian of the treasury, nor the Finance Minister seems to be aware that anyone has returned any loot and where it was deposited.
All they have continued to hear and seen replayed are the dramas that have dominated headlines. Issues bothering on contempt of courts, bogus allegations and anti grafts’ weightless charges hanging on the noose of the accused persons.
These days when you put on the television and people see those scenes that now look orchestrated all they bark out is frustrations turned against the supposed ineptitude of media houses over lack of contents.
People are worried that a country that relies on oil and the accompanying falling oil prices should refrain from increasing budgetary allocations on frivolities for which it queried the previous administrations as an opposition. Majority of the people are now sad that government has to continually sit on the neck of the media tribunals to sustain its campaigns against corruption when it holds the power and prima facie cases against accused persons.
Why should a minister be obsessed about meeting with all stakeholders in the media industry at least twice in a month with all its genuine cases against the societal corruptions when it has journalists at its beck and call every other day on whatever clarifications.
Such exercises are in futility but affirms the Presidents’ earlier position that the ministers are ‘noise makers’ after all. After sll, in every government the work is suppose to speak for itself. It’s not about owning the media or making friends with media at a time the opposition is so weakened;  but on taking the right steps toward achieving enduring legacies by bringing about the change promised, both obvious and the intangible.
We should not allow a Donald Trump to smear us by referring to us as rogues and thieves, because our leader takes every opportunity to carpet Nigerians as corrupt at foreign public fora without recourse on the overall implications  of such statements to the generality of the citizenry. Unfortunately for the  citizens, it is mostly the public servants and their permanent civil cousins that have recorded more cases of high profile corruption than the man on the streets since the formation of this Nigeria republic in 1963. [myad]