Governor El-Rufai says he has fulfilled his promises in Kaduna

Kaduna State Governor Nasir El-Rufai on Monday said his government has fulfilled all the electoral promises he made to the people.

The governor said this in a state-wide broadcast to mark his two years in office.

El Rufai said ‎despite recruiting over 7000 personnel within the last two years, the state’s 2016 recurrent expenditures showed a N5bn reduction in personnel cost, as it moved from N26.8bn in 2015‎ to N21.8bn.

“In the last two years, we have done as we have promised. We have steadily implemented the Restoration Programme. No segment of our campaign platform has been left untouched,” he said.

He said in 2016, the Kaduna State government raised N23bn as taxes, levies, and interest earnings, describing it as the highest in the history of the state.

‎In education, the governor said his administration raised primary school enrollment from 1.1m in July 2015 to 2.1m by September 2016, adding that 29% more students sat for WAEC in 2016 than in 2015.

“We renovated 400 of the 4250 public primary schools in the state before we decided to move to a programme of school reconstruction to accommodate the growth in population.

“We have broadened access, improved teacher quality and enhanced school facilities. We are emphatic that basic education shall remain free for the first nine years. We abolished levies, provided uniforms and fed 1.5m pupils every school day from January to July 2016. And to further expand access, we have passed a law to abolish street trading and hawking,” he said. 

On infrastructure, the governor said his government was fixing 414km of intracity roads, while over 2500 solar street lights had been installed.