Delivering world class projects is our priority – Chief of Staff

MUHAMMAD SANI ABDULLAHI is Governor Nasir El-Rufai’s Chief of Staff and also the Chairman of Infrastructure Development Council, one of the five Policy Councils of Kaduna State Government. He speaks at some length on how his Council is monitoring numerous projects in the face of the COVID-19 pandemic.   Between 2015 to date, Kaduna State […]

MUHAMMAD SANI ABDULLAHI is Governor Nasir El-Rufai’s Chief of Staff and also the Chairman of Infrastructure Development Council, one of the five Policy Councils of Kaduna State Government.

He speaks at some length on how his Council is monitoring numerous projects in the face of the COVID-19 pandemic.

 

Between 2015 to date, Kaduna State Government has awarded several contracts, amounting to billions of naira. Does the Infrastructure Development Council have a way of tracking these contracts?

It is important to understand the critical objective of the Council itself; the Council stems from the backdrop that infrastructure is critical for development. You can’t talk about reducing poverty or bringing about economic growth without infrastructure. This infrastructure can be social infrastructure or economic infrastructure. Social infrastructure in terms of hospital, schools that ordinarily the private sector would not invest in; economic in terms of transportation and so on. Developing our infrastructure will allow the state to improve its Internally Generated Revenue (IGR). Infrastructure is critical for developing countries like Nigeria. It is even more critical because our infrastructure gap is very wide. Kaduna State has invested in infrastructure before but we have tried to do in a very systematic manner.

Our infrastructure master-plan estimates the needs of the state for the next 30 years from now to 2050. What that means is that we have a very determined focus on how many schools we need to build to cater for our population. How many hospitals we need; how many kilometers of roads; how much power we need. All these things are important because if not, what we will be building will just be a confused array of different things. As much as possible, what the infrastructure council is doing now is gathering all these different pieces of infrastructure and streamlining them in a way that we conclude on all ongoing projects. We take out projects that were either wrongfully conceived right from time and replace them with something that is more cost effective and more impactful for the people of Kaduna State. And then finally, to identify the priority infrastructure that this government can visibly achieve between now and the next three years. These are more or less the major things we are concerned with.

The discussion about infrastructure started in 2014, before elections, when we had done a quick survey around the state and realized the significant amount of dilapidated infrastructure in Kaduna State. As we all know, there has been no large-scale expansion of the city in the past 20-30 years. Our schools have been dilapidated and have not kept up with the amount of population we have today. As at last count, we are a state of about 10 million people. Each local government has its disparities and if you look at the classroom:student ratio, you will see that we are far behind. So, obviously, there is a need for emergency construction of primary and secondary public schools. There is an urgent need for expansion of hospitals across the State, because the current infrastructure that we have for hospitals does not meet these things. Kaduna metropolis was built for about 500-750,000 people. That is, these four local governments; Chikun, Igabi, Kaduna North and Kaduna South, were supposed to accommodate these number of people both in terms of road networks, housing, power and water. Today, almost four million people live in these four local governments, which are essentially the centre of Kaduna. It is clear that the infrastructure is over stretched and has not been expanded in the last 20 years. The result is what we are seeing today, the state is becoming overcrowded.

For example, there is no way that the current network or supply of water can be enough for four million people because it was designed for 750,000 people. The same thing with the road networks, they do not open up the city and that is why instead of successive governments to open up the state, they started doing what they call carve -outs. You see, that is lack of imagination. It does not take into consideration the 42,000 sq/km we have as a state. We are the third largest state in Nigeria but we are constrained by carve outs because there is no imagination to open up the city.

 

Like you said, there is a huge infrastructural deficit but there are  little resources to meet all of them. Have you done a scaling process with regards to priority?

In fact, the first prioritization process we did was in 2015. When we came in, we met a huge number of ongoing projects and a lot of them were not going anywhere but were on the books of government. We did a detailed assessment of all the projects and we grouped them into Grade A, B, C. Grade A had the highest impact and must be continued at all costs. Grade B are those that are important enough and we can continue to fund them and Grade C are those that were wrongfully thought out and stuff like that. We have taken some projects and completed them. For example, the Kawo to Lugard Hall roundabout road along Ali Akilu road. You remember that that road was awarded but had not really started. So we prioritized that, and we funded it. Now in the Infrastructure Council, we have done two sets of priorities.

Priority number one are 55 projects worth about N450bn, that we have prioritized to be completed between now and 2023. These are important projects and what priority means is that we will push for payment of these contractors; we push procurement process and we monitor the projects because they are the ones with the biggest impact to the people of the state. We arrived on a second level of priority where we asked every Ministry Department and Agency (MDA) that has infrastructural projects, to classify them into top 10%, 20%-50% and then 50-100%. They have done a re-classification on three levels. We are trusting that they will take the projects that we have not taken in the initial 55 I earlier mentioned, and classify them based on impact. So that when we finish the top 10%, we move on like that. That is how we are now prioritizing our projects. That prioritization has gone to Council and we are very proud of the work that we have done. It is another N70bn worth of work.

So, already we have about N520bn worth of prioritized projects. What this means is that our budget between now and 2023 will put priority funding, priority procurement, priority financing, priority releases on these projects. And these are projects that we will all go to sleep happily, if we are to leave government in 2023, having completed them.

 

Given the present lockdown and the attendant dwindling of revenue, is government thinking of reviewing the scope of the ongoing urban renewal projects?

Our urban renewal projects cover a wide number of components across several MDAs which I have had the responsibility to coordinate. The most visible of these have been the road components which includes significantly opening up urban Kaduna to absorb future growth in population and economic activity. As all can see, we are moving forward with the roads despite the lockdown. The Kawo bridge has come down and a new more functional bridge will soon go up. Yakubu Gowon way is almost completed and the 5.7km Shehu Musa Yar’Adua way connecting Millennium City to Eastern Bypass is making quick progress. In addition, just last week, the Governor approved a few more roads that will transform transportation in the urban city, including the dualization of Isa Kaita road, Surame and Sultan roads and Katuru road connecting to Badarawa. This in addition to Aliyu Makama and other roads that will commence soonest with the speed and quality we have come to witness in the Urban Renewal Projects. Our special financing model for the Urban Renewal projects has become a standard to financing infrastructure at the sub-national level and we intend to expand this approach across all infrastructure projects.

 

You will agree that most people don’t do their work without what you call hands-on supervision. Having conceived, prioritized and awarded some of these projects, do you have a monitoring mechanism to see that these contractors are really delivering value for money?

Within the Infrastructure Council, we have continued to beef up monitoring. Of course, as you know, there are various monitoring mechanisms in the state; the Public Procurement Authority does monitoring, the Planning and Budgeting Commission has “The Eyes & Ears”; they also do monitoring. The Project and Result Delivery unit does monitoring. What we are now doing in the Council is to move these monitoring mechanisms to a higher level. Every week now, we have our members of Council, Commissioners, respected members of council, heads of Agencies, who have been put together into various teams, going out for monitoring. They monitor education, water, roads, security, all the projects that we have. We have bunched them into sectors, and each sector is led by a Commissioner that is not in charge of that sector.

 

What is the wisdom behind a Commissioner who is a layman in that sector, leading the monitoring team?

The wisdom is that, if you have fresh eyes looking at the project, you will get better input. So for example, the Commissioner of Education, we know that on a normal day, he is supposed to be going out daily to be checking on his projects, but we are putting another Commissioner as a leader of that team, to bring fresh eyes and fresh experience to the projects. Mark you, these projects are not owned by any Commissioner. For example, because you are Commissioner of Health, it does not mean the health projects belong to you; they belong to the government and the people of Kaduna State. So it is not about anybody trying to get into your work. We are doing this because these are public resources we are using, and we are forcing accountability, between and within ourselves and each other. So this is the rationale behind this.

 

But some professionals have the tendency to bamboozle non-technical persons with jargons, sometimes confusing lay men. So, in these teams you are putting together, will there be technical persons amongst them?

There will be a technical person. And what we try to do with these high level teams is that, they will identify a problem, then we send an expert team to do a detailed assessment, sit with the consultant, the contractor and then we try to de-bottleneck and resolve these issues. So we don’t allow issues to fester and become bigger problems before we attack them. Usually, with infrastructure, where you fail is if you award the contract, and leave the contractor to his devices, until he comes for payment six months later and you realise that he has gone completely wrong. For anybody that has built a house, no matter how small a project, even if it is a well you have dug, you must have realized that you must be there to supervise the worker. In our own case, these are projects that we are spending hundreds of millions on, sometimes billions of public resources. So, we do not think that it is anything difficult for us to monitor these projects on a weekly basis. In fact, the Infrastructure Council has resolved that every single member must dedicate one entire day during the week, to go round all his projects. This is separate from the joint mechanism monitoring team that we are undertaking.

 

You spoke about joint council monitoring and individual council monitoring. Are there no consultants for these projects? Why is the government distracting itself from its day to day work, to supervise these projects?

We are a very concerned government. And the Governor and the Deputy Governor are the ones that were elected in the Executive arm of government, but is very important that we show concern because we have a larger stake on the success of the projects than contractors and consultants. So, we have noticed again, there are areas where consultants themselves have compromised and allowed contractors contravene the tenets of the agreements with them. So, we sat down with the Procurement Council to even analyse the consultants themselves to ensure that we weed out all of them that are not doing proper work and then putting another team to monitor the consultants themselves. All we want is delivery of quality projects for the people of Kaduna State.

 

But is effective monitoring of projects possible with this lockdown?

Definitely. We have deployed technology and provided necessary passes to our contractors, consultants and staff to ensure that we can implement and monitor our projects in a manner consistent with the COVID-19 protocols.

 

Does the Infrastructural Council award contracts? If so, what is its threshold?

The Infrastructure Council does not award contracts. We are not a contract awarding body. The only body that awards contracts is the Procurement Council. What we do in the Infrastructure Council is conceptualize projects. For example, we are have conceptualized the Greater Kaduna Water Scheme which is going to respond to the shortage of water in Kaduna, by building a new dam, and a number of other projects. Once we reach conceptual level and it is ready to tender, we back off and the rest is handled by the Procurement Council. When the Procurement Council awards contracts, we then come back fully to monitor the projects and ensure the implementation. That is our role.

 

Can you put a figure to all the contracts that have been awarded so far?

I would say as of four months ago, we probably have contracts in the region of N600bn on the books of Kaduna State. These are multi-year contracts. These are not contracts expected to be paid within a year. If you look at our budget this year, it is 259bn, but if you look across the years, then you will see that these are contracts we can handle. But I must give a caveat here, the Greater Kaduna Water Scheme alone takes about N200bn of that. It is also funded by Federal Government and a few multi-lateral development agencies. So, the ones that are dedicated to Kaduna state in terms of resources, it will be half of that. The rest is external financing and Federal Government.

One of the biggest problems for any organization, even individuals, is to have wants that are not backed by resources. Apart from statutory allocations, and Internally Generated Revenue (IGR), what other sources of funding are you looking at to complete these projects.

We also try as much as possible to partner with international agencies. For example, we’ve done a number of partnerships with DFID, UK Aid on hospitals, where they provide Solar. We have other partnerships on ground for example with India EXIM Bank. So, when we look at our projects, what we try to do is to create a pie of financing. Public/State financing, Federal Government financing, Development Partners finance is another part, External loan is another part and internal loans and then the grant system. For example, Universal Basic Education Commission (UBEC). If you look at federal grants, UBEC is there, TETfund is there. What we do is when we conceptualize the project, we then try to understand the best way to fund it. If it is a long term project, it’s probably better financed by long term external concessional loan, of 1 % interest rate that you won’t really feel it. If it is a project that can be finished in three months, if we don’t have resources, we can easily call up one of our commercial partners, take a short term loan and we liquidate it in three months. So, we creatively play around with the source of financing, by looking at the cost to the state, and what will fit the project better.

 

Can government execute its priority projects before the end of the administration, seeing that the current situation has slowed down the pace of work?

Indeed, at the beginning of the second term, the Government identified 55 priority infrastructure projects across all sectors that we are confident will accelerate growth and opportunity for the state, in addition to supporting healthcare and education. We have ring-fenced financing on these projects and are doubling down on monitoring the contractors and consultants for each of these projects. This is to ensure that over the next three years to the end of this administration, we are able to deliver them to the benefit of the people of Kaduna State.

Our colleagues whose MDAs house these projects have been in constant touch with the contractors to ensure we remove all hindrances to their achievement. There are one or two which of course wouldn’t be completed in three years because they are very long term projects, like the Greater Kaduna Water Expansion project which the Governor signed the MOU just last week with the Federal Government. So, we intend to take it as far as we can and hopefully future governments will complete it, just like we finalised the Zaria water project.

 

Last month, the government unfolded a Governance Continuation Plan, asking MDAs to devise ways and means to carry on with their activities in spite of the lockdown. How is the Infrastructure Council carrying out its mandate amidst the existing Quarantine Order?

The continuation plan of government seeks to ensure that the citizens of the state are prioritized with service delivery even during the lock down. For the Infrastructure Council, this means ensuring the maintenance and expansion of infrastructure is not hindered. We have developed protocols to ensure our contractors can keep working in adherence to the health requirements. We are prioritising payments to contractors and consultants on site and we are going out personally to monitor these projects. The council is taking advantage of clear roads to accelerate progress on major road and water projects. My colleagues at the MDAs and the Vice Chair of the Council, Balaraba Inuwa, the Commissioner for Public Works and Infrastructure have all been up and doing to ensure we deliver.