Governor Tambuwal says he's ready to sacrifice his 2nd term bid over verification exercise

Governor Aminu Waziri Tambuwal of Sokoto state has maintained that the ongoing verification exercise at the state and local government levels would continue even if it would cost him his second term bid.

In an interactive session with newsmen as part of the activities marking his two years in office, the Governor reiterated that he owed nobody apology over the exercise because "we believe we are doing the right thing."

He further reiterated his government commitment to remove all ghost workers from its payrolls.

"There have been hues and cries over the verification exercise with some people saying we are denying them their salaries. But all these campaigns of calamity would not make us to back down even if it will cost me my second term bid because I believe we are doing the right things, “he stated.

Tambuwal explained:" Before the exercise, things were going wrongly at the local government levels, there were a lot of fraud and atrocities being committed there. Take for instance, somebody from Zamfara state bought 270 offers from Tureta local governments and was getting their salaries. When this was discovered and they were removed he sent a text message to the SSG threatening legal action. Another example is  Binji local government which had not been getting N10 million as its monthly allocation but its salary is N30 million."

He added:" Before we brought primary health workers under one roof,  we were paying the salary of over 12,0000 people but now we discovered they were not up to 9,000."

The Governor further said that there were over 300 million still unclaimed at the Jaiz bank which is now paying the salaries of local government employees.

"We have been calling on these people claiming that their salaries are being withheld to come forward for verification but were not upcoming, meaning they were not genuine workers," he added

On the Almajirchi syndrome , he said Northern Governors would come up with a common approach to end the menace.

The Governor also said that the state government had so far spent 10 billon  Naira on education sector since the declaration of the state of emergency on the sector.

Tambuwal announced  plan to send 200 state indigenes to study medical related courses in India.

He said that the state was not owing salaries and allowances of workers, saying he could not sleep with his two eyes closed while his workers were not paid.

To critics, Tambuwal said being a digital Governor he read both subjective and objective  comments by the  people of the state on social media, review them and do the needful.