Revenue formula must change in favour of states, says Orji

The Abia State Governor Theodore Orji, has been in the news, joining debate on national policies. He speaks in this interview on the direction of state policy in Abia State in his second term. UGOCHUKWU EKE was at the session.

Your colleagues from the North are calling for a change in the revenue sharing formula, do you subscribe to that?  

Yes, I subscribe to a change in the revenue sharing formula in the country, as it will give more funds to the states and local government areas across the country. Once the revenue formula is changed and more funds come to the various governments, the rate of development will increase.

How did you tackle kidnapping in the state, because at a time it looked like the state was going to collapse under their threat?

Do you need to remind me of that dark period? The security system in the state collapsed and things got very bad as economic activities stopped in the state, but I believe that God used it for us to atone for our sins. Let me use this forum to praise the security agencies that operated in our state at that point in time and special thanks must go Mr President Goodluck Ebele Jonathan for the order he gave that made the military to move into the state and the clerics for their powerful prayers that helped to save the state. I want to tell people now that our state is now the safest state in the country and when the history of kidnapping will be written in this country, Abia State will be a case study.

It seems that your government does not have the will power to demolish houses in the state to give the state its true aesthetic value?

Let me tell you, that my government will not hesitate to demolish any building that is situated on the waterway to save the cities from total collapse, because if the drains are blocked, the roads we have built will not stand the test of time.

We have just opened up the big drainage system in Aba that has been blocked for about 20 years and along the line we found out that a church has been built across the drainage, forcing waste water. We have called the owners of the church for a meeting to find a way for water to move into the Aba River, but if there is no way out, the church must be demolished. Also we have the same with the mosque in Aba where people have built stalls on the waterway, when we made efforts to remove the stalls, the Muslim community resisted. We have called their leaders for a meeting as the demolition exercise will not affect their mosque, but only the market stalls around the worship centre.

Your government has built about 210 health centres across the state, are they fully equipped to function?

I have given directive to all the 17 local government chairmen in the state to ensure that they open up all the health centres, because they have been equipped. It is not only the health centres that we have built, we have built diagnostic centres in Aba and Umuahia while a dialysis centre is being added to the one in Umuahia to stop our people from travelling long distances for such treatment. As we get older, we need such places for our health problems. We are also building more structures for the Abia State University Teaching Hospital at Aba, children centre at Amachara general hospital; we are doing a lot in the health sector and will still do more as I intend to govern healthy people and not dead people.

How have you, despite the lean resources of the state, been able to run the administration?

The magic is prudent management of our lean resources from the federation account and we make up the rest with internally generated revenue. After paying the workers, whatever is left goes to infrastructural development like roads, building of houses, hospitals. It was bad before now when we used to get just about N2 billion, while our wage bill will take about 90% of what we get from federation account. However, now, we are getting about N3.2 billion and our wage bill is N1.8 billion.

When we came on board we were getting quite a small amount from the internally generated revenue, but now we are getting about N350 million every month, which has been helping us to fund some of our projects. Let me use this forum to make it clear to everyone that this administration has never borrowed money from any bank, which is why the national assembly has commended us. We inherited N29 billion debt which we have been servicing, and there are also debts which the past elected local government chairmen incurred and we are also servicing that, including garnishee orders.

Source: The Nation