RUTH DAVID
Speaker of the Bauchi State House of Assembly, Hon Kawuwa Damina has explained that the delay in the stated that the delay in the appointment of commissioners in Bauchi State by Governor Mohammed Abubakar is not deliberate.
Hon Kawuwa Damina who disclosed this Wednesday, during an interview with newsmen in Bauchi, added that the governor ‘was taking his time to plan in order to select credible, competent and trustworthy people that will run the government for the four-year tenure.’
According to him, the governor was not slow in constituting his state executive cabinet as wrongly conceived by some people of the state, but was putting all the machineries in place to have a vibrant government.
He pointed out that it takes planning for any government to be successful, noting that even at the federal level; it took President Muhammadu Buhari almost seven months to inaugurate his cabinet.
The Speaker said: “Any moment from now, the governor will be submitting the names of the nominee-commissioners to the state House of Assembly, so there is no cause for alarm. As I speak, the assignment for the selection of commissioners in the state has gone more than 90%. The governor is just tiding up his list and very soon he will submit the list to the house for screening and subsequent approval.
“You all know the situation that was on ground before the APC government took over the mantle of leadership in the state. The present government battled with the challenge of an empty treasury and the settling the backlog of workers’ salaries which was cleared up just barely two months ago.
“Secondly, the little grant the government receives from the Federation Account is not even enough to settle workers’ salaries in the state because civil servants are less than 10% of the state population. So the government just has to strategize and plan in order to meet its financial needs.
“We cannot solely depend on what we get from the Federation Account, the government has to look inwards, come up with good plans that will benefit the people and planning takes time”.
