For one, the State Civil Service lay prostrate like a dinosaur, having predated even the first Premier of the Northern Region, Sir Ahmadu Bello, the Late Sardauna of Sokoto. In his time, Kaduna served as regional capital. Subsequent regimes attempted some innovations and reformations but the mill of bureaucracy kept operating the hard way, the manual way. Files passed from hand to hand, slowed down by bottlenecks; red-tapes generally bogged down the process. Something had to be done fast to push the state further on the path of Millennium Compliance.
Sambo found the answer in e-Government and has today made it the new slogan on the lips of politicians and bureaucrats alike in Kaduna State. This commitment has seen the state embark on massive ICT training costing N165 million for 8,000 civil servants, with concomitant heavy investments in computer laptops, desktops and internet facilities. Commissioners, special advisers, permanent secretaries and CEOs of parastatals have so far undergone training, at the end of which they were furnished with 200 laptops.
In addition to the novelty of ICT, the Governor saw the need to inject fresh blood into the system. Prior to his regime, an embargo subsisted against employment into the Civil Service. He immediately dropped the policy. Highlighting his vision of a Kaduna where no one would go to bed hungry, Architect Mohammed Sambo steered his administration to undertake a census of unemployed graduates. Resultant statistics facilitated the evolvement of strategies for a comprehensive employment programme targeted at jobless youths. The last time anybody bothered to count, the state had absolved into different sectors 6,916 graduates, including engineers, architects, quantity surveyors, agriculturists, administrators, computer scientists, etc. Of the 23 MDAs that handed out employment letters, Education took the lion's share with 4,300 new teachers, supervisors and teaching administrators, followed by the Ministry of Health that absorbed 1,307 medical doctors, nurses, laboratory scientists, health administrators and relevant personnel.
Even as he has been admitting new entrants to the state's payroll, Governor Sambo has maintained a balanced focus on developing the human capital within the bureaucracy. This informed the state's investment of over N164 million in training over 2,000 civil servants in workshops, seminars and short courses for the two years running from May 2007 to May 2009. Meanwhile, the government had in 2008 reintroduced the written promotion examination for civil servants on Grade Levels 07 to 16, in addition to the traditional oral interviews. The move has generated mixed reactions, with some officials welcoming it and some, who prefer business as usual, silently kicking against it. But this system has come to stay. Justifying it, the Governor explained, "This was introduced with a view to promoting merit and excellence in the service, apart from laying a solid foundation for the transformation, reorientation and refocusing of the entire Civil Service."
Unlike some administrations that axe programmes preceding their regime, Governor Sambo has guaranteed continuity in laudable programmes inherited from his predecessor. For example, he has not only retained the Micro-Credit Loan Scheme for Civil Servants established during the previous government, he has jacked up its revolving grant of N100 million per annum to N200 million in 2007 and N400 million in 2008. The micro-credit loan aims serves as the popular car loan and furniture loan for civil servants. About 2,420 benefited in the last two years. A similar commitment has also seen Kaduna collaborating with the Federal Mortgage Bank of Nigeria to build and allocate to civil servants 165 housing units at Kawo, Barnawa, Malali, Kurmin Mashi, Kudandan and Unguwan Boro. Savouring the warm reception civil servants accorded this scheme, the government has gone ahead to earmark about 1,500 more units to be erected in Kaduna New City Layout (1,000 units), Zaria (300) and Kafanchan (200). Accommodation beneficiaries make instalmental payments spread through 10 to 20 years.
One interesting aspect of the welfare measures the state has provided for civil servants is a scheme tagged the "Group Life Assurance Cover for the Public Service," which guarantees families of deceased civil servants three times the holders' contribution. Managed by a leading insurance firm, the scheme has so far entertained claims totaling about N120 million for 150 bereaved families.
Others exiting the service in more pleasant circumstances have also been provided for. Like other places in Nigeria, retirees in the Kaduna State service used to have a hectic time drawing their pensions because of the shoddy handling of contributed funds. The will to improve things in that sector motivated the government to introduce a new pensions scheme beginning from March last year. The government pays 10 percent and workers 5 percent. By last 31st May, this purse contained N2.08 billion.
The Governor backed the plan with a new law that created two offices to manage the programme: the Bureau for Local Government Staff Pension and the Bureau for State Pension, with each headed by a Permanent Secretary.
The government approved 15 percent increase in salaries for staffs of MDAs and local governments across-board, and implemented 27.5 percent increase in the Teachers' Salary Structure (TSS) that in other states has provoked much acrimony and strikes. All these have greatly helped to the industrial harmony the state has enjoyed in the last two years.
In the area of transportation, the government swelled by 20 the 10-seater buses that usually service Labour Flight, workers' official transport fleet. the Sambo regime also bought 297 vehicles, all at the sum of N1.15 billion for MDAs. Even the Nigerian Union of Journalists (NUJ) Kaduna Chapter enjoyed some of the largesse, receiving from the government a 10-seater Toyota Hiace Bus valued at N4.37 million.
One thing that strikes people is the palpable transparency dictating the whole operations as epitomised by the publishing of pamphlets that painstakingly depict not just the types and locations of projects and programmes but their costs.
He also reached out to the informal sector for which he spent N50 million to purchase Volkswagen Golf II cars for Kaduna City Taxi operators.
In fact, the commitment to grow the productive sector of the state's economy informed Governor Sambo signing a Public-Private Participation (PPP) agreement with Skye Bank and Entec Power Consortium to develop a 100 megahertz power plant to service industrial areas in the state. According to the Governor, the establishment of the Kaduna State Agency for Power Generation came about "because of the high priority we put on energy generation. No nation aspiring to have a sound industrialised economy can do without having a reliable power base to propel its economic activities because there is a strong correlation between power generation and a country's Gross Domestic Product (GDP). It is not difficult to observe that all the leading power producers are the largest economies in the world today."
Sambo, who until he took the mantle, ran a private practice in architecture, has his professional calling reflecting in several ongoing projects, especially the expansion and modernisation of the Government House, Kaduna which people say is a sight to behold, in and out. The expansion, he believes, would enhance efficiency by making room for Government House staff in one location instead of far-flung satellite offices. The effort has produced a remarkable improvement from previous renovations that the General Kashim Ibrahim Government House has witnessed since the state was created in May 1967.
A Media Executive in the state who craved anonymity said of this former Commissioner of Works under the Military regime of Brigadier Tanko Ayuba, "Only few people are surprised at his basket of laudable achievements. He was a dark horse, a compromise candidate that PDP dug out when the combating aspirants fought themselves to a standstill. But he has proved to be a good Governor, a near fanatical penchant to transparency and accountability. The only problem many party men have with him is that he has not been doling out money into their private pockets. But we civil servants are not complaining."
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Autor(en)/Author(s): Husaini Dallaje
Quelle/Source: AllAfrica, 22.07.2009
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