From Edwin Olofu, Kano
With two months to the 2015 general election, Kano state government has expressed disappointment over the negligence in distribution of Permanent Voter Card by the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), saying the commission is not ready for the exercise in the first place.
The sate Commissioner for Information, Youth, Sports and Culture, Dr Danburan Abubakar Nuhu, who disclosed this to newsmen in his office yesterday, expressed dissatisfaction over the exercise.
“It has not been smooth as expected. There are a lot of challenges, but INEC is not ready to overcome them,” he lamented.
Nuhu equally frowned over INEC’s poor communication system on matters surrounding voter education, maintaining that it was part of the issues that hindered the smooth conduct of the exercise.
“We are therefore calling on people to continue being patient, as nothing good comes easy. This is our right that we should not waste. It is very important for people to wait and persevere,” Nuhu urged.
He promised that they would continue to engage INEC to ensure that they do the right thing.
On management and servicing of debt before their tenure ends, Nuhu boasted that they inherited the debt of about N70b, but they were able to service the debt of about N50b.
According to him, “Our government did not borrow a Kobo from any quarter. And we are not interested in borrowing anything up to the end of our administration.
“All the projects you are seeing on ground and all other developmental projects and programmes are done with the federal allocation we are receiving from the federal government and our internally generated revenue”, he revealed.
Nuhu hinted that the result is the plugging of leakages in government, saying this has helped the administration to have realistic and workable budgets all along.
He further disclosed that in its effort to fight drug abuse and curtailed the spread of counterfeit and fake drugs, the Kano state government has destroyed fake and counterfeit drugs worth more than N4b since 2011 to date.
“This issue of insecurity is multi-faceted. It has to do with job insecurity, empowerment insecurity, education insecurity and health insecurity. That is why we took it upon ourselves to fight the menace of drug abuse, so that our youths would not be used as cannon-fodder,” he said.
He said the government took it seriously to educate youth, get them employed and rehabilitate them, “If you can remember, Kano is not the same as it was in the last four years, in terms of rampant misuse of drugs. We did our best to put a stop to it,” he said.
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