The ruling People's Democratic Party last year selected Umar Yar'Adua as its candidate for the election. Even in Nigeria little is known about the governor of Katsina state. It is generally said of him that he has a good record, is prudent, and has done a lot to aid the development of the far northern state. But on a recent trip there, very little positive development was evident.
Katsina is a dry dusty place with widespread and deep poverty.
Introducing last year’s budget, Governor Umar Yar’Adua told the Katsina state assembly: “We have developed appropriate policies and programmes in previous budgets since 1999 to reposition and reform the educational sector, improve health care delivery, increase agricultural output, provide potable water and make adequate infrastructural provision for urban and rural development and the development of the socio-economic sector.”
Among political observers, Governor Yar’Adua has a reputation for fiscal prudence, and some success on the ground in his northern state. Supporters point to the good condition of roads and managed irrigation and agricultural diversification programmes, and a general hospital equipped with modern machines.
But, even if they can be believed, budget reports for the last four years show the education sector received significantly less funding than the state government’s investment in roads. The government spends very little on irrigation infrastructure, and over the last four years has reduced the amount it spends on domestic water resources. The budget also reveals the government spent more in one year renovating the state guest house in Kaduna than it did on buying drugs for the state-run hospitals.
The former Governor Umar Yar’Adua was not available for interview during the course of researching this feature. The acting governor Alhaji Tukur Ahmed Jikamshi was also not available for interview.
Education
In 2004, the government budgeted an extra N500 million every year to spend on capital investment in primary schools. This “intervention fund” has been used to double the number of classrooms in a school by adding another storey on top of existing buildings. In the last three years enrolment of girls has risen, and the State Universal Education Board says the number of qualified teachers is also up.
Iro Ibrahim (pictured left) has been headmaster of the Hassan Usman government primary school in Katsina city for nine years. He said: “Before the government invested this money you used to find up to 80 children in a class, sometimes many age groups in the same class. This affects education because you find that a boy of 12 years old learns quicker than a boy of 8.”
Their new school has just been finished. Now they have 42 classrooms the number of children in each has decreased to 30.
Permanent secretary, Alhaji Danyaya Mashi said the government has increased the number of secondary schools to 263 from 129 in 1998. He said the state government in collaboration with local governments will build an additional 57 schools this year at a cost of N61 million each.
But there are schools that have not received any investment. In order to teach all their 1458 pupils Kofa Kaura primary school has to teach half in the morning and the other half in the afternoon. They only have 15 classrooms.
Deputy head-teacher Suleiman Isa said: “Since last year the government has not brought us new textbooks. We are expecting them. We are also praying the government to come and build another storey on our school. We don’t know why they have not.”
The last time any work was done on the school was in 2005 when the World Bank built two classrooms, Mr Isa said.
The school (pictured left) has no desks and children have lessons sitting on the floor.
Mr Isa said: “We have been waiting for five years to have desks. We write to them, but they didn’t give us. If they don’t have desks their handwriting is not good, and they get dirty. It’s hard for them to learn.”
According to Halimat Jibril the UNICEF Girls Education Project coordinator in Katsina, many of the 120 schools they work with don’t have desks, and do not have enough teachers.
She says: “When the project started in 2004 the government hired more teachers, but in the schools we work with they only have 30 per cent of what they need.”
The UN project works in six local government areas trying to increase the number of girls getting an education.
She said: “In the areas where we work even boys’ enrolment was not high because the people don’t see the value of western education. They prefer their children to go to Islamic schools. After primary school the girls are married off.” She says since the UN project started, enrolment in schools across the six local government areas has doubled.
Before the GEP project, communities did not feel the schools were part of their community, Haj. Jibril said. UNICEF set up management committees made up of parents and representatives of the local community. She said: “Now when an enrolled child is missing from school, a School Based Management Committee does something about it. UNICEF’s insisted school based management systems were brought in. The federal government had approved the system, but it has not been implemented widely across the states.”
This is denied by the Director of Schools, Mr Aliyu Dan Baba, who said the parent Teacher Association had been in existence for a long time, doing the same job.
But some question the state’s spending priorities. 26-year-old Sani Sefullahi, a lecturer at the state-run Isa Kaita college of education said: “The governor is wasting his time building these extra stories so that when outsiders come he can say he is doing something. This investment is just for show. The standards of education in the state are dropping. I see students who have trouble speaking English. A student studying A’ Level cannot even write his name clearly. It’s getting worse. Their education is very poor and there is no way that I can recommend them.”
Good teachers are leaving the state because they pay N13,000 per month salary, less than in other states, he said. He said he will be voting for Buhari in the election, and says he will leave his job at the college soon.
The State Universal Education Board said that 70 per cent of the 2158 schools under its control had been upgraded so far. They admitted there was much to do in terms of improving the quality of the education children were receiving in Katsina. Permanent Member of the Board, Alh. Haladu Ashiru Kafaru Saari admitted the quality of education was a problem, but improvements were being made.
He said: “Its something that we realise, but it’s a problem that dates back a long way. If you look at the students they are often weak in English and Maths.”
But results had improved, he said. Nine years ago 10 per cent passed school exams, in recent years half the pupils who sat school exams passed them.
According to state budget figures, the government builds and maintains all the state’s schools on half the amount it spends on roads.
In 2005 Governor Yar’Adua told the state assembly in his budget address his administration would give education 20 per cent of its capital budget, close to the 25 per cent recommended by UNICEF. However records for 2006 showed the state government actually spent only 10 per cent of its capital budget on education. In the same year, N3.9 billion, or 17 per cent of the capital budget, was spent on roads.
In 2006 the government projected it would spend N5.2 billion on education, more than it had done before. The projected spending represents 17 per cent of the capital budget. This spending was dwarfed by the amount the government projected it would spend on roads: 42 per cent of the capital budget, or N12.7 billion.
PDP guber candidate Barrister Ibrahim Shema said this spending priority was “practical and necessary”. He said: “Every sector of the state benefits from better roads.” But a former State Secretary General Alh.Isa Katsina said the spending on roads was an area where “personal interest and developmental interests coincided.” In his experience officials were more enthusiastic about road contracts because it was easier to inflate the price to enrich themselves, he said.
Water and Agriculture
Katsina is overwhelmingly an agrarian economy. Last year it became government policy that every dam and reservoir in the state be used for irrigating land. The government says this increased the amount of land irrigated from 210 hectares to over 1000, the scheme cost half a billion Naira.
But spending on state irrigation schemes over the last four years has never risen above 1.5 per cent of the amount budgeted for developing the entire economic sector if the state, and in 2005 it was less than 0.01 per cent of the total amount spent on capital development. The government says this capital expenditure is low because they have built all the infrastructure they need, and now just needs to maintain it.
But according to ministry figures, the area irrigated by these projects is only 0.04 per cent of the state’s landmass, measured by the government at just over 2.4 million hectares.
Daily Trust visited Ajiwa Dam, a state-run project irrigating small plots of land that grow market vegetables like tomatoes and onions.
According to farmers (pictured above) , the land around the dam used to be farmed by a small number of people, who hired farm labourers to work the plots. Five years ago half the land was split up into smaller plots and given to the labourers to farm themselves.
The small farmers produce vegetables for local markets all year round and have seen their incomes rise. Water is provided from the dam by a petrol-driven pump three days of the week. In the area Daily Trust visited one pump was irrigating two patches of land each under a hectare. Another patch of land lay barren and un-irrigated. Farmers said the pump that serviced that area broke two years ago and has not been replaced. Underground pipes have been cracked and broken by cars.
Ahmed Zirkiflu, 23, said: “In five years we have seen 100 per cent improvement. We were using one locally made machine to water the land through canals, but now we have a pump. Every year in one plot alone I take 800 bags of beans to market. Tomatoes, as we pick them, more keep growing.”
Each bag of beans can fetch up to N1000 each. The farmers say they make up to N80,000 a year. Their income used to be a fifth of that, they say.
But the farmers say they have been given the land, fertilizer, insecticide and seeds by the government. The farmers only have to buy the petrol for the pumps, which costs N450 for every 12 hours it runs.
Mr Zirkiflu says: “We don’t know if they will ever stop giving us these things. But we wish they would give us the petrol too.” The effect of the government’s donation is clear. When asked how they will vote the farmers shout: “PDP!”
But privately, civil servants called these schemes “window dressing”. Speaking on condition of anonymity, a senior civil servant said: “These farmers are given everything but they then sell them on to their godfathers for cash.”
Just a few kilometres away from Ajiwa Dam is the village of Kayauki. The farmers here (pictured left) can only farm their dry, sandy land during the three-month rainy season. They grow maize, millet, wheat for themselves and beans and groundnuts to sell at market. They can get a few hundred Naira per bag of beans, it is not enough to keep their families. Many of the villagers have more than one wife and as many as ten children. In order to make up the difference, the villagers rent a crushing machine and sell truck-loads of crushed rock to passing builders for a few thousand Naira.
The farmers receive subsidized bags of fertiliser for N1300. But it is not enough to cover a large farm, they said.
Isiaq Suleiman, 42, said: “Every day I have to spend hundreds of Naira getting our children to secondary school. It is too much for us. We only see the government at election time, and when we go to pick up fertilizer.”
There are other commercial farmers in the state. Bashir Yar’Adua is a wealthy businessman in the petroleum products. A former Lagos civil servant, he was jailed by General Buhari’s military regime after the 1982 coup. He is also from the same town as Umar Yar’Adua. He owns 100 hectares of land just outside Katsina city where he farms millet and wheat in the rainy season, In another part of his land he installed a N50million irrigation system to grow fruit trees and watermelon. Last year he made N28 million on his watermelon crop, he said. He believes that Katsina has potential as a great agricultural producer, and is planning to expand his farm in the coming years.
Mr Yar’Adua said: “Here you’re on your own. You may have the largest piece of land but unless you have the capital to develop it its useless. But I wouldn’t say the government should help. The cost of irrigating this land is too great, it would take the entire budget of the government and more. Finance institutions need to come around to loaning money in a way that is meaningful for agriculture. There is really no way that we can change the land from subsistence farming as it is now without finance.”
It is a view echoed by the commissioner for agriculture Alh. Ali Husseini Dutsin Ma. They have made partnerships with banks to provide small loans for farmers. It is a scheme that won the Governor an award last year.
Alh. Dutsin Ma said: “Agriculture is a private business entirely. It’s not a question of giving massive amounts of money to farmers. We need to train them and you have a credit scheme for farmers.”
It has concentrated on diversifying farmers energies into other farming schemes. Over the past four years the government says it spent N100 million on developing fish farms.
But Mr Yar’Adua said: “If you go there now they are full of fish. But just watch, in three months these projects will fall apart. If you are paying someone to work on a farm, they have no interest in keeping it up.”
Because most farming is on a subsistence level, the consequences of crop failure are dire. In 2005 the medical aid organisation Medecins Sans Frontiers discovered severe malnutrition in Katsina state. Over 13,000 children were treated over a six month period.
Alh. Dutsin Ma said: “The aid agency misled people because malnutrition is not starvation. It comes down to cultural and educational issues. People’s diets are culturally very limited, and you will find that they eat a limited variety of foods. It’s about educating them how to nourish themselves. It’s not surprising to find malnutrition when you see what people eat.” The government also claims that MSF included malnourished people from the Niger Republic in their treatment camps.
But MSF says the type of malnutrition seen in Katsina was classed as ‘severe acute’ which is caused in part by hunger and starvation. At the time Emergency coordinator Tom Koene said: “Chronic food insecurity is another problem that not only affects Northern Nigeria but the sub-Saharan zone. Food stocks are depleted because rains have been patchy. MSF cannot address the chronic aspects of malnutrition. To solve those MSF would have to deal with deeply rooted social and cultural aspects and would have to get involved into developmental aspects such as agricultural schemes, long term education, etc. This is not our role as an emergency oriented agency”.
Water resources
Domestic water is also a problem in Katsina. Most people in the city buy their water from carts.
In 2004 the government allotted a N500 million intervention fund for water resources. It says it has sunk nearly 300 boreholes in the state, and is developing solar-powered pump technology in rural areas. Alhaji Ibrahim Dankama water resources commissioner said the state government foots the bill for 60 per cent of borehole construction in rural communities. Local governments take care of the remaining 40 percent. The rural water supply agency receives an annual grant of N800 million as special funds for rural water supply. Out of the sum the state government provides N500 million while the local governments jointly provides N300 million.
Alhaj, Dankama said: “Katsina is one of the closest states to the Sahara Desert in Nigeria; consequently water supply poses a great challenge to the government. Several communities in the state depend on means other than modern sources for water. In view of the enormity of the task of water supply in the state (especially in rural areas), the government of Yar’Adua established the Rural Water Supply and Sanitation Agency (RUWASSA). The agency is charged with the responsibility of identifying ways and means through which water could be made available to rural dwellers in the state.”
But Alh. Katsina said: “The trouble with water is that the money given to local government areas for water is not making it to the projects.” In response the state government said they keep a close eye on local government spending.
In Kayauki the farmers say that the government tried to bring water from two different pipes, but it has not worked. They have to carry water form neighbouring villages in jerry cans, they pay 20 Naira for 15 litres, a family uses about 50 litres a day, the farmers say. Because they live on rocky ground boreholes have not been successful.
Daily Trust spoke to a civil servant in the water resources commission who said the village was connected to a pipe system that didn’t work properly. The civil servant, who spoke on condition of anonymity said: “The village could be connected to another system, but that would cost 900 Naira per tap per year, so they don’t get it.”
Between 2003 and 2005 state government spending on water resources was cut by half. In those years the state government under-spent its yearly budgets by as much as 40 per cent. In 2005 Governor Yar’Adua announced his government would spend six per cent of the capital budget on water resources. But instead of spending the full N1.2 billion, the 2006 state budget shows the government spent N366 million that year, 30 per cent of the money projected.
Health
The Permanent secretary ministry of health, Dr. Salisu Banye said hospitals in the state provide free medical attention for accidents, malaria patients, maternity care and child birth. They say the Katsina general hospital is the only one offering free dialysis treatment in the whole country. The cost of dialysis is about N20,000 to N30,000 weekly.
Dr. Banye said: “Hospitals in the state have modern facilities such as ex-ray, dental chairs, dialysis center, surgical equipments and ambulances for referral medicine.”
But Daily Trust spoke to a surgeon at the state general hospital who said the hospital lacks basic amenities.
The surgeon who has worked at the hospital for two years and spoke on condition of anonymity, said: “The Governor is ready to fund anything he is really trying. But I cannot say the hospital is well equipped. The minor essential things are not there, but people are thinking of the modern machinery, the big things. Some people might say that was a kind of madness.”
He says the intensive care unit in the hospital is “world class”, but the accident and emergency unit is lacking light, water, sutures, oxygen and an operating theatre.
He said: “Most of the time we send the patients to go and buy their own emergency drugs.”
In 2004 the government introduced a N500 million intervention fund for capital expenditure in primary healthcare. This makes up just under half of the budget. The budget reveals that although N50 million was set aside for drug procurement in 2004 and 2005, spending records show the government spent no more than N29.7 million in 2005. In the same year the government projected it would spend N40 million “repairing and renovating” the state legislators guest house in Kaduna.
Dr Halimat Adamu, civil society activist, paediatrician and former civil servant said: “Until I see big babies, healthy mothers, tall children, I cannot say we are having success. When I visit new mothers I see their children and they look like small rats, two, two and a half kilos.”
She says that people in Katsina have better access to hospital facilities improvements mean people now don’t have to go more than 15kms to find a medical facility. But she says they are overstretched. The only doctors in Katsina are in the general hospital in the city.
But she says that the focus of change must be on other areas of life, like improving water resources and health education and food security.
She says: “If it were up to me I would stop funding the health ministry. I am serious. We should concentrate on water and food security. All these UN agencies who say we should spend 25 per cent on health, they want us to be ill and go to hospital to die.”
Talking to commissioners in Katsina’s sate government they point to the N500 million “intervention funds” as a great achievement of the state government. These funds were given after a 2004 “retreat” where spending priorities for Yar’adua’s second term were decided. They have undoubtedly given benefits to the state, but in terms of the state’s budget these three intervention funds represent less than five per cent of the money allocated in 2006 for capital expenditure.
A senior civil servant admitted to Daily Trust he regularly inflates infrastructure contracts by as much as 50 per cent. Every budget that Daily Trust looked at balances perfectly, despite significant under-spends in some sectors of as much as 50 per cent. The state budget has never been audited by an independent auditor, and no one can say if the spending the state says it gives actually makes it to the project.
Ngo activist Dr Adamu told Daily Trust: “It’s this corruption this dripping away of everything that prevents real development in Katsina.”
Katsina is a dry dusty place with widespread and deep poverty.Introducing last year’s budget, Governor Umar Yar’Adua told the Katsina state assembly: “We have developed appropriate policies and programmes in previous budgets since 1999 to reposition and reform the educational sector, improve health care delivery, increase agricultural output, provide potable water and make adequate infrastructural provision for urban and rural development and the development of the socio-economic sector.”
Among political observers, Governor Yar’Adua has a reputation for fiscal prudence, and some success on the ground in his northern state. Supporters point to the good condition of roads and managed irrigation and agricultural diversification programmes, and a general hospital equipped with modern machines.
But, even if they can be believed, budget reports for the last four years show the education sector received significantly less funding than the state government’s investment in roads. The government spends very little on irrigation infrastructure, and over the last four years has reduced the amount it spends on domestic water resources. The budget also reveals the government spent more in one year renovating the state guest house in Kaduna than it did on buying drugs for the state-run hospitals.
The former Governor Umar Yar’Adua was not available for interview during the course of researching this feature. The acting governor Alhaji Tukur Ahmed Jikamshi was also not available for interview.
Education
In 2004, the government budgeted an extra N500 million every year to spend on capital investment in primary schools. This “intervention fund” has been used to double the number of classrooms in a school by adding another storey on top of existing buildings. In the last three years enrolment of girls has risen, and the State Universal Education Board says the number of qualified teachers is also up.
Iro Ibrahim (pictured left) has been headmaster of the Hassan Usman government primary school in Katsina city for nine years. He said: “Before the government invested this money you used to find up to 80 children in a class, sometimes many age groups in the same class. This affects education because you find that a boy of 12 years old learns quicker than a boy of 8.”Their new school has just been finished. Now they have 42 classrooms the number of children in each has decreased to 30.
Permanent secretary, Alhaji Danyaya Mashi said the government has increased the number of secondary schools to 263 from 129 in 1998. He said the state government in collaboration with local governments will build an additional 57 schools this year at a cost of N61 million each.
But there are schools that have not received any investment. In order to teach all their 1458 pupils Kofa Kaura primary school has to teach half in the morning and the other half in the afternoon. They only have 15 classrooms.
Deputy head-teacher Suleiman Isa said: “Since last year the government has not brought us new textbooks. We are expecting them. We are also praying the government to come and build another storey on our school. We don’t know why they have not.”
The last time any work was done on the school was in 2005 when the World Bank built two classrooms, Mr Isa said.
The school (pictured left) has no desks and children have lessons sitting on the floor.Mr Isa said: “We have been waiting for five years to have desks. We write to them, but they didn’t give us. If they don’t have desks their handwriting is not good, and they get dirty. It’s hard for them to learn.”
According to Halimat Jibril the UNICEF Girls Education Project coordinator in Katsina, many of the 120 schools they work with don’t have desks, and do not have enough teachers.
She says: “When the project started in 2004 the government hired more teachers, but in the schools we work with they only have 30 per cent of what they need.”
The UN project works in six local government areas trying to increase the number of girls getting an education.
She said: “In the areas where we work even boys’ enrolment was not high because the people don’t see the value of western education. They prefer their children to go to Islamic schools. After primary school the girls are married off.” She says since the UN project started, enrolment in schools across the six local government areas has doubled.
Before the GEP project, communities did not feel the schools were part of their community, Haj. Jibril said. UNICEF set up management committees made up of parents and representatives of the local community. She said: “Now when an enrolled child is missing from school, a School Based Management Committee does something about it. UNICEF’s insisted school based management systems were brought in. The federal government had approved the system, but it has not been implemented widely across the states.”
This is denied by the Director of Schools, Mr Aliyu Dan Baba, who said the parent Teacher Association had been in existence for a long time, doing the same job.
But some question the state’s spending priorities. 26-year-old Sani Sefullahi, a lecturer at the state-run Isa Kaita college of education said: “The governor is wasting his time building these extra stories so that when outsiders come he can say he is doing something. This investment is just for show. The standards of education in the state are dropping. I see students who have trouble speaking English. A student studying A’ Level cannot even write his name clearly. It’s getting worse. Their education is very poor and there is no way that I can recommend them.”
Good teachers are leaving the state because they pay N13,000 per month salary, less than in other states, he said. He said he will be voting for Buhari in the election, and says he will leave his job at the college soon.
The State Universal Education Board said that 70 per cent of the 2158 schools under its control had been upgraded so far. They admitted there was much to do in terms of improving the quality of the education children were receiving in Katsina. Permanent Member of the Board, Alh. Haladu Ashiru Kafaru Saari admitted the quality of education was a problem, but improvements were being made.
He said: “Its something that we realise, but it’s a problem that dates back a long way. If you look at the students they are often weak in English and Maths.”
But results had improved, he said. Nine years ago 10 per cent passed school exams, in recent years half the pupils who sat school exams passed them.
According to state budget figures, the government builds and maintains all the state’s schools on half the amount it spends on roads.
In 2005 Governor Yar’Adua told the state assembly in his budget address his administration would give education 20 per cent of its capital budget, close to the 25 per cent recommended by UNICEF. However records for 2006 showed the state government actually spent only 10 per cent of its capital budget on education. In the same year, N3.9 billion, or 17 per cent of the capital budget, was spent on roads.
In 2006 the government projected it would spend N5.2 billion on education, more than it had done before. The projected spending represents 17 per cent of the capital budget. This spending was dwarfed by the amount the government projected it would spend on roads: 42 per cent of the capital budget, or N12.7 billion.
PDP guber candidate Barrister Ibrahim Shema said this spending priority was “practical and necessary”. He said: “Every sector of the state benefits from better roads.” But a former State Secretary General Alh.Isa Katsina said the spending on roads was an area where “personal interest and developmental interests coincided.” In his experience officials were more enthusiastic about road contracts because it was easier to inflate the price to enrich themselves, he said.
Water and Agriculture
Katsina is overwhelmingly an agrarian economy. Last year it became government policy that every dam and reservoir in the state be used for irrigating land. The government says this increased the amount of land irrigated from 210 hectares to over 1000, the scheme cost half a billion Naira.
But spending on state irrigation schemes over the last four years has never risen above 1.5 per cent of the amount budgeted for developing the entire economic sector if the state, and in 2005 it was less than 0.01 per cent of the total amount spent on capital development. The government says this capital expenditure is low because they have built all the infrastructure they need, and now just needs to maintain it.
But according to ministry figures, the area irrigated by these projects is only 0.04 per cent of the state’s landmass, measured by the government at just over 2.4 million hectares.
Daily Trust visited Ajiwa Dam, a state-run project irrigating small plots of land that grow market vegetables like tomatoes and onions.
According to farmers (pictured above) , the land around the dam used to be farmed by a small number of people, who hired farm labourers to work the plots. Five years ago half the land was split up into smaller plots and given to the labourers to farm themselves.
The small farmers produce vegetables for local markets all year round and have seen their incomes rise. Water is provided from the dam by a petrol-driven pump three days of the week. In the area Daily Trust visited one pump was irrigating two patches of land each under a hectare. Another patch of land lay barren and un-irrigated. Farmers said the pump that serviced that area broke two years ago and has not been replaced. Underground pipes have been cracked and broken by cars.
Ahmed Zirkiflu, 23, said: “In five years we have seen 100 per cent improvement. We were using one locally made machine to water the land through canals, but now we have a pump. Every year in one plot alone I take 800 bags of beans to market. Tomatoes, as we pick them, more keep growing.”
Each bag of beans can fetch up to N1000 each. The farmers say they make up to N80,000 a year. Their income used to be a fifth of that, they say.
But the farmers say they have been given the land, fertilizer, insecticide and seeds by the government. The farmers only have to buy the petrol for the pumps, which costs N450 for every 12 hours it runs.
Mr Zirkiflu says: “We don’t know if they will ever stop giving us these things. But we wish they would give us the petrol too.” The effect of the government’s donation is clear. When asked how they will vote the farmers shout: “PDP!”
But privately, civil servants called these schemes “window dressing”. Speaking on condition of anonymity, a senior civil servant said: “These farmers are given everything but they then sell them on to their godfathers for cash.”
Just a few kilometres away from Ajiwa Dam is the village of Kayauki. The farmers here (pictured left) can only farm their dry, sandy land during the three-month rainy season. They grow maize, millet, wheat for themselves and beans and groundnuts to sell at market. They can get a few hundred Naira per bag of beans, it is not enough to keep their families. Many of the villagers have more than one wife and as many as ten children. In order to make up the difference, the villagers rent a crushing machine and sell truck-loads of crushed rock to passing builders for a few thousand Naira.
The farmers receive subsidized bags of fertiliser for N1300. But it is not enough to cover a large farm, they said.
Isiaq Suleiman, 42, said: “Every day I have to spend hundreds of Naira getting our children to secondary school. It is too much for us. We only see the government at election time, and when we go to pick up fertilizer.”
There are other commercial farmers in the state. Bashir Yar’Adua is a wealthy businessman in the petroleum products. A former Lagos civil servant, he was jailed by General Buhari’s military regime after the 1982 coup. He is also from the same town as Umar Yar’Adua. He owns 100 hectares of land just outside Katsina city where he farms millet and wheat in the rainy season, In another part of his land he installed a N50million irrigation system to grow fruit trees and watermelon. Last year he made N28 million on his watermelon crop, he said. He believes that Katsina has potential as a great agricultural producer, and is planning to expand his farm in the coming years.
Mr Yar’Adua said: “Here you’re on your own. You may have the largest piece of land but unless you have the capital to develop it its useless. But I wouldn’t say the government should help. The cost of irrigating this land is too great, it would take the entire budget of the government and more. Finance institutions need to come around to loaning money in a way that is meaningful for agriculture. There is really no way that we can change the land from subsistence farming as it is now without finance.”
It is a view echoed by the commissioner for agriculture Alh. Ali Husseini Dutsin Ma. They have made partnerships with banks to provide small loans for farmers. It is a scheme that won the Governor an award last year.
Alh. Dutsin Ma said: “Agriculture is a private business entirely. It’s not a question of giving massive amounts of money to farmers. We need to train them and you have a credit scheme for farmers.”
It has concentrated on diversifying farmers energies into other farming schemes. Over the past four years the government says it spent N100 million on developing fish farms.
But Mr Yar’Adua said: “If you go there now they are full of fish. But just watch, in three months these projects will fall apart. If you are paying someone to work on a farm, they have no interest in keeping it up.”
Because most farming is on a subsistence level, the consequences of crop failure are dire. In 2005 the medical aid organisation Medecins Sans Frontiers discovered severe malnutrition in Katsina state. Over 13,000 children were treated over a six month period.
Alh. Dutsin Ma said: “The aid agency misled people because malnutrition is not starvation. It comes down to cultural and educational issues. People’s diets are culturally very limited, and you will find that they eat a limited variety of foods. It’s about educating them how to nourish themselves. It’s not surprising to find malnutrition when you see what people eat.” The government also claims that MSF included malnourished people from the Niger Republic in their treatment camps.
But MSF says the type of malnutrition seen in Katsina was classed as ‘severe acute’ which is caused in part by hunger and starvation. At the time Emergency coordinator Tom Koene said: “Chronic food insecurity is another problem that not only affects Northern Nigeria but the sub-Saharan zone. Food stocks are depleted because rains have been patchy. MSF cannot address the chronic aspects of malnutrition. To solve those MSF would have to deal with deeply rooted social and cultural aspects and would have to get involved into developmental aspects such as agricultural schemes, long term education, etc. This is not our role as an emergency oriented agency”.
Water resources
Domestic water is also a problem in Katsina. Most people in the city buy their water from carts.
In 2004 the government allotted a N500 million intervention fund for water resources. It says it has sunk nearly 300 boreholes in the state, and is developing solar-powered pump technology in rural areas. Alhaji Ibrahim Dankama water resources commissioner said the state government foots the bill for 60 per cent of borehole construction in rural communities. Local governments take care of the remaining 40 percent. The rural water supply agency receives an annual grant of N800 million as special funds for rural water supply. Out of the sum the state government provides N500 million while the local governments jointly provides N300 million.
Alhaj, Dankama said: “Katsina is one of the closest states to the Sahara Desert in Nigeria; consequently water supply poses a great challenge to the government. Several communities in the state depend on means other than modern sources for water. In view of the enormity of the task of water supply in the state (especially in rural areas), the government of Yar’Adua established the Rural Water Supply and Sanitation Agency (RUWASSA). The agency is charged with the responsibility of identifying ways and means through which water could be made available to rural dwellers in the state.”
But Alh. Katsina said: “The trouble with water is that the money given to local government areas for water is not making it to the projects.” In response the state government said they keep a close eye on local government spending.
In Kayauki the farmers say that the government tried to bring water from two different pipes, but it has not worked. They have to carry water form neighbouring villages in jerry cans, they pay 20 Naira for 15 litres, a family uses about 50 litres a day, the farmers say. Because they live on rocky ground boreholes have not been successful.
Daily Trust spoke to a civil servant in the water resources commission who said the village was connected to a pipe system that didn’t work properly. The civil servant, who spoke on condition of anonymity said: “The village could be connected to another system, but that would cost 900 Naira per tap per year, so they don’t get it.”
Between 2003 and 2005 state government spending on water resources was cut by half. In those years the state government under-spent its yearly budgets by as much as 40 per cent. In 2005 Governor Yar’Adua announced his government would spend six per cent of the capital budget on water resources. But instead of spending the full N1.2 billion, the 2006 state budget shows the government spent N366 million that year, 30 per cent of the money projected.
Health
The Permanent secretary ministry of health, Dr. Salisu Banye said hospitals in the state provide free medical attention for accidents, malaria patients, maternity care and child birth. They say the Katsina general hospital is the only one offering free dialysis treatment in the whole country. The cost of dialysis is about N20,000 to N30,000 weekly.
Dr. Banye said: “Hospitals in the state have modern facilities such as ex-ray, dental chairs, dialysis center, surgical equipments and ambulances for referral medicine.”
But Daily Trust spoke to a surgeon at the state general hospital who said the hospital lacks basic amenities.
The surgeon who has worked at the hospital for two years and spoke on condition of anonymity, said: “The Governor is ready to fund anything he is really trying. But I cannot say the hospital is well equipped. The minor essential things are not there, but people are thinking of the modern machinery, the big things. Some people might say that was a kind of madness.”
He says the intensive care unit in the hospital is “world class”, but the accident and emergency unit is lacking light, water, sutures, oxygen and an operating theatre.
He said: “Most of the time we send the patients to go and buy their own emergency drugs.”
In 2004 the government introduced a N500 million intervention fund for capital expenditure in primary healthcare. This makes up just under half of the budget. The budget reveals that although N50 million was set aside for drug procurement in 2004 and 2005, spending records show the government spent no more than N29.7 million in 2005. In the same year the government projected it would spend N40 million “repairing and renovating” the state legislators guest house in Kaduna.
Dr Halimat Adamu, civil society activist, paediatrician and former civil servant said: “Until I see big babies, healthy mothers, tall children, I cannot say we are having success. When I visit new mothers I see their children and they look like small rats, two, two and a half kilos.”
She says that people in Katsina have better access to hospital facilities improvements mean people now don’t have to go more than 15kms to find a medical facility. But she says they are overstretched. The only doctors in Katsina are in the general hospital in the city.
But she says that the focus of change must be on other areas of life, like improving water resources and health education and food security.
She says: “If it were up to me I would stop funding the health ministry. I am serious. We should concentrate on water and food security. All these UN agencies who say we should spend 25 per cent on health, they want us to be ill and go to hospital to die.”
Talking to commissioners in Katsina’s sate government they point to the N500 million “intervention funds” as a great achievement of the state government. These funds were given after a 2004 “retreat” where spending priorities for Yar’adua’s second term were decided. They have undoubtedly given benefits to the state, but in terms of the state’s budget these three intervention funds represent less than five per cent of the money allocated in 2006 for capital expenditure.
A senior civil servant admitted to Daily Trust he regularly inflates infrastructure contracts by as much as 50 per cent. Every budget that Daily Trust looked at balances perfectly, despite significant under-spends in some sectors of as much as 50 per cent. The state budget has never been audited by an independent auditor, and no one can say if the spending the state says it gives actually makes it to the project.
Ngo activist Dr Adamu told Daily Trust: “It’s this corruption this dripping away of everything that prevents real development in Katsina.”
posted by Andrew Walker at 12:30 am
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