Kaduna State Governor, Uba Sani, has said since he assumed office last year, he has not purchased any vehicles for the state officials.
He equally said he has been receiving half of his salaries, including slashing the allowances of the state commissioners.
Sani, who met with President Bola Tinubu on Friday to brief him on emerging developments in the state, told journalists: “We embarked on a very serious adjustment. We made it clear that we need to reduce the cost of governance in Kaduna State; to date, we have not bought a single vehicle for any government official in Kaduna State. That’s really helping us.
“We have reduced the allowances of all our commissioners and advisers, even my humble self, who receives half of my salary since I became governor of Kaduna State, and I have not had a single new vehicle as governor. So we tremendously reduce the cost of governance and that’s the way to go if we really want to address our problems and improve on major areas of education, healthcare and infrastructure.”
Revealing part of the reasons for visiting the President, Sani said he briefed Tinubu about the situations in his state, particularly the security situation.
“We are making a lot of progress. In the last few months, we have not had any major security problems in Kaduna. I also briefed him on the situations concerning governance generally, some of the challenges we are facing and some of the progress we’ve made in areas that are very critical in Kaduna.
“Of course, I also discussed with him the progress we’ve made since our MOU with Huawei in China. I briefed him about the progress we’ve made, the committee set-up and the progress we have made. As we speak, we have been able to achieve the first phase of the MOU.
“We also talked about developments in the area of education, healthcare and infrastructure, and Mr President happens to be extremely happy with the progress in Kaduna.
“We also discuss our effort towards addressing the children in Kaduna. I informed him that in the last six months, we have reduced the number of out-of-school children to the tune of about 300,000 because we built about 62 secondary schools in Kaduna, 2,340 classrooms in primary schools and we have employed teachers.
“We have also been able to reconstruct, remodel and equip about 12 secondary healthcare centres in Kaduna State. Not to talk about the 62 roads we are constructing, totalling about 700 kilometres across Kaduna State. Some of them have been completed and commissioned. Some are still in progress,” Sani stated.
In his efforts to key into the compressed natural gas (CNG) programme, he said the state has procured 100 CNG buses that will be commissioned by Mr President.
