In a chat aired on Channels Television on Monday, Governor of Kaduna State, Nasir El-Rufai has stated that Governors are the most suspected elected officials in the country.
While explaining the challenges Governors face in a KadInvest 5.0 chat disclosing that many Governors came into power when oil prices had crashed.
He said, “In terms of economic viability, we came in when oil prices were crashing to the 20s and we had inherited wages.
“All of a sudden, Nigeria went into recession. President Muhammadu Buhari had to bail 27 out of 36 states that could not pay salaries.
“Meanwhile, while we are facing that, the expectations of people were on the high side because of our change campaign. So, people expected the change overnight.
“Thirdly, governors are the most suspected elected officials. Everyone thinks governors are thieves and we are wasting the government’s resources, we are not doing anything, and so on.”
“Governors are assumed to be taking security votes. When they (Nigerians) hear security votes, they think it is a slush fund for governors.
“So, we have a very negative image out there; whereas we have the most difficult jobs in the world.
“We are sub-national, so our capacity to borrow is limited. The FG can borrow, they are a sovereign. A sovereign is not expected to go bankrupt, so they can issue bonds, and get loans from abroad. They get loans from the World Bank, we cannot,” the governor added.
Speaking on the Saturday Governorship polls conducted, El-Rufai stated that there was every indication that the All Progressive Congress will win the election but do not know what went wrong in the last three weeks campaign.
He also stated that the election was reasonably decent even though the party was worried about violence.
He said, “We (APC) would have loved to win and quite frankly, I was optimistic up to three weeks ago; the polls indicated that we were going to win. I don’t know what happened in the last three weeks of the campaign.
“As you know, a large number of voters make up their minds in the last two weeks of the election. Many voters decide no matter what happens, this is how I am voting but most people want to wait and make up their minds in the last two weeks.
“Three weeks ago, the polls clearly showed that APC was going to win but the result came out differently from what we expected.
“Obaseki has won, that’s it. You can’t go into an election without the possibility of losing.”
He added, “The election was reasonably decent. We were all worried about violence but there was very little violence or none at all.”
The Independent National Electoral Commission has announced Godwin Obaseki as the winner of the Saturday election.
Source: Punch
