Former Kaduna State commissioners under the government of Nasir El-Rufai have responded to a June 5, 2024, report by the Kaduna State House of Assembly of the Ad-hoc Committee on Loans, Financial Transactions, Contractual Liabilities and Other Related Matters of the Government of Kaduna State from 29th May 2015 to 29th May 2023”.
The former commissioners were Jafaru Ibrahim Sani of the Ministry of Environment, Hafsat Mohammed Baba of the Ministry of Human Services and Social Development and Umma Yusuf Aboki of the Planning & Budget Commission.
They spoke during a press conference in Abuja, during which they dismissed this assembly’s report and the processes associated with it in their entirety.
They challenged the ad hoc committee to release the certified true copy of the report.
Nevertheless, Jafaru Sani, who spoke on behalf of the former commissioners, said, in light of the non-release of the certified copy of the Report, they relied on the document referred to above that began circulating on social media shortly after the Kaduna State House of Assembly adopted the said document on Wednesday, June 5, 2024.
Sani described the report as the outcome of a process motivated by malice and conducted with patent unfairness, adding that it is riddled with falsehood, predetermined conclusions, and misrepresentation.
In defence of their government t, he said, “Not a kobo, speak less of N423bn, was ever siphoned out of Kaduna State Government coffers during our tenure. The Ad Hoc Committee indulged in voodoo accounting merely to concoct a scandal.
“We note that this same Kaduna State House of Assembly received and accepted the Audited Accounts of the State for each year from 2015 to 2022 but now wants the public to disregard the formal, legally and constitutionally recognised public
accounts of the State in favour of its wishy-washy, malicious, but incompetent and poorly calculated attempt at legislative character assassination.
Speaking on the loans, he said that the government of Malam Nasir El-Rufai inherited external debts of USD234m in 2015. It followed due process in securing its loans and the testimony of Aminu Shagali, who was the Speaker between June 2015 and early 2020 confirm this!
He said, “To enhance the delivery of its progressive governance agenda for Kaduna State, the El-Rufai administration approached the World Bank for credit. The Board of the World Bank approved the credit in June 2017 as a Performance for Result (P4R) credit of USD350m. The conditions for the grant of this credit were entirely performance-driven. Kaduna State is the only subnational in Nigeria that has received this kind of credit.
Like other loans raised by the El-Rufai administration, Sani said, the USD 350m World Bank Performance-for-Result (P4R) loan was utilised adequately to further the development of Kaduna State.
The documentation submitted in support of the loan application, he said, was subjected to the due scrutiny of the fiscal authorities of the Federal Government of Nigeria and the board of the World Bank. After the P4R programme, which ran from 2017 to 2021, the World Bank rated its implementation as satisfactory. The massive infrastructure projects under the Urban Renewal Programme are among the most visible fruits of this loan.
Sani said, “The Report put the foreign loan exposure of the State at USD578.14m but went on to attribute foreign loans amounting to over USD2bn to the El-Rufai Administration. It cited an XDR (World Bank Special Drawing Rights) 494.6m loan for the Agro-Climatic Resilience Semi-Arid Landscapes (ACReSAL) programme of which only USD2m was disbursed before 29 May 2023, and all of which was left intact for the incoming government, thereby simultaneously demonstrating ignorance of the nature of Special Drawing Rights and grossly exaggerating amounts disbursed to the State.
“The report also listed the following loans, totalling over USD600m that were secured, but with NOT A CENT DISBURSED to the State before the exit of the El-Rufai Administration in May 2023:
USD280m for the Rural Access and Agricultural Marketing Project (RAAMP)
USD150m for the Special Agro-Processing Zone (SAPZ)
USD130.7m for the Bus Rapid Transport System
USD62.8m for the Reaching out of School Children (ROOSC) Project
USD20m for the Livestock Productivity and Resilience Project (LPRES)