BUHARI WILL INHERIT BAD ECONOMY SAYS EL-RUFAI

The governorship candidate of the All Progressives Congress in Kaduna State, Mallam Nasir el-Rufai, on Tuesday said the party’s presidential candidate, Maj.-Gen. Muhammadu Buhari (retd.), would inherit a wrecked economy if elected as president in February. El-Rufai said he too would inherit a bankrupt state after the governorship election if he is elected as the chief executive officer of Kaduna.

The former minister of the Federal Capital Territory spoke at an Organised Private Sector’s interactive session in Kaduna.

He said the state had been bedeviled with domestic liabilities totalling N106bn and that most of the monies received or generated internally were used to settle debts. He said about N700bn had been wasted in the past seven years in the state, a situation he described as “most unfortunate.” El-Rufai noted that the nation was presently passing through an economic crisis as it was in 1983. “General Muhammadu Buhari will be inheriting a broken economy like he did in 1983, just like I am going to likely inherit a bankrupt state when we take over power,” he said. He said if elected in the February 28 governorship poll, he would, among other things, develop human capital, ensure a free and compulsory education for the first nine years for all children in the state as well as fix schools and improve teachers’ training.

He said he would also ensure that the take home salary of teachers were higher than any civil servant in the state workforce. Other areas to receive his attention, el-Rufai said, were the security of lives and property of the people of the state.

The former minister, who described the Agricultural Transformation Agenda of the Peoples Democratic Party-led Federal Government as a complete failure, promised to provide meaningful agricultural enabling environment for farmers by setting up of marketing boards, adding that the APC government would transfer mining rights to states.

On employment generation, he said he would liaise with the Federal Government to revive the comatose textile industry in the state so that “jobs will be created and youths will be productively engaged.”