Kastina state governor, Hon. Aminu Bello Masari, has said that the state is in dare need of about N115 billion to correct the challenges of poor education, inadequate healthcare facilities, agriculture and portable water system in the state.
He revealed that his administration has taken pains in doing proper arithmetic in the first hundred days in office in terms of what is require to fix education, healthcare system, water supply and agriculture.
The governor told newsmen at the weekend in Abuja, after he met with the World Bank senior officials and the Ambassador to Eqypt on how to confront the challenges.
Masari said about N45 billion is needed to fix the problems in Primary and Secondary schools and to provide laboratories and other equipment while about N70 billion will be needed in the health sector.
“In the area of foundation education, when I say foundation education I am talking about Primary and Secondary education, as at today we need N45 billion to put all the infrastructures and to get ourselves, including laboratory and all other equipments, we need a minimum of N45 billion.
“And then in health sector, 22 hospitals and over 30 healthcare centers, we are not even talking about clinics, and by our estimate we need nothing less than N70 billion because employing a consultant require a lot of money.
“So, really we have done our arithmetic in term of the area of education, health, water supply and agriculture we have done our arithmetic, we have facts and figures so that wherever we go, like I told the World Bank, we will give them the document, they will receive it and they will see our contributions and projections. So, really we are starting from a knowledge based situation.
“That is why when we came in we said we were going to do baseline study on all the infrastructures and we did not seat in the office and demand for documents from officials to give us wrong documents. We went to schools physically, we counted the students physically, we went to the hospitals and counted them physically. We are not really allowing our situation to be given figures we can not defend, whatever figure we present to any organisation or any individual it will be figure that we can defend.”
The governor expressed assurance that founding assistance will be getting from the World Bank and other donor agencies, saying his leadership will be honest and transparent
“We will know how much the state is getting from the federation account and they will know how much we are spending in terms of salaries, in terms of over heads and in terms of consumables.”
