Today, before God and man, we celebrate the beginning of our
liberation. We rejoice in our good fortune, and for the opportunity of a new
beginning. You, the people, have willed it so. You have acted to start a new
era of hope, and of equality, and of opportunity, and of a brighter future for
all our children. As our leader, Muhammadu Buhari, assumes the exalted office
of President of our country today, we salute fellow Nigerians for choosing
unity over division, humility over excess, honesty over duplicity, and hope
over fear. From today, we declare that we are slaves no more.
By choosing us to lead all our people— man and woman, adult
and child, Christian and Muslim— on the difficult road to our freedom from
soul-crushing poverty and human degradation, I pledge to you today to work day
and night to make Kaduna great again. Together, we shall make this corner of
our country a state worthy of our children.
As we celebrate on this day that God has made, let us
remember, with sober senses, exactly what challenges confront us. For far too
long, our country has been a place where hope goes to die, where the future has
been stolen from our children, where our leaders have commandeered our
resources largely for their own personal enjoyment, and where grinding poverty
has become a fact of daily life for nearly all our people.
Our state is no exception. Kaduna State is in a difficult
situation. As soon as we have all the facts in coming weeks, we shall lay bare
to you just how deep a hole we have dug ourselves in the past several years.
But this much we already know. Our finances are a shambles. Kaduna is the
second most indebted state in our country. Our state is staggering under the
weight of billions of naira in debt and other liabilities. As we all know,
merely by walking the streets or seeing our neighbors everyday, the state of
our state is abysmal. Our schools and hospitals, our roads and bridges, our
villages, towns and cities, all are markers of backwardness. Too many of our
children are hungry and in rags and in the street. Our society is divided along
religious and ethnic lines. Worse still, our state cannot stand on its own
feet. We have become a state of beggars, a condition of dependency that is an
affront to our dignity and our humanity.
The fact is that today Kaduna State cannot meet its
obligations without handouts from the federal government. We cannot comfortably
pay salaries of our teachers and nurses and civil servants. And after
struggling to pay salaries, we can do little else. We cannot fix the schools,
help our farmers, repair our roads, or treat the sick. We have arrived at a
dead end. The patient is sick, and it needs radical therapy.
Are we to have a government that exists solely to pay the
salaries of political office holders and public servants, or would we prefer a
state that devotes the bulk of its resources to providing decent schools,
health facilities and roads, using the public servants as responsible
instruments for delivery of the services that our people so urgently need? Can
we neglect to raise the proportion of our state budget going for capital
projects, thereby preferring investments over consumption? Do the resources of
the state not belong to all its citizens, rather than for the pleasures of a
few?
I say to you today, my fellow citizens of Kaduna State, that
the time has come for us to face up to our responsibilities as citizens. We
must take many difficult decisions. We have no choice but to postpone immediate
gratification and sacrifice the fleeting comforts of today for a better future
for our children. This is what change means. You have spoken loud and clear
that the time is now to stop the madness, and to live up to our fullest
potential as human beings in the 21st Century.
In recognition of the difficult challenges we face, our
deputy Governor and I have concluded that the sacrifices that change requires
must begin with us. We have decided to take a pay cut and donate 50 percent of
our salaries and allowances, until our fiscal situation improves. We understand
that leadership by example is the most persuasive way to demand sacrifices from
all of us as citizens. We pledge to avoid ostentation and foolish bigmanism,
and to value transparency, modesty and accountability. We will obey the same
rules that we demand of all of you. After all, the law is the difference
between civilization and anarchy. We submit ourselves to the principle that all
are equal before the Law.
Our problems are many, and therefore our priorities will be
the few key things that will allow all our people the chance to fulfill their
highest aspirations. We pledge to you today to focus on jobs, security,
education, and healthcare. We made these promises to you during the campaign,
and we fully intend to fulfill them.
Insecurity is an obstacle to progress. Too many of our
communities have suffered from communal violence, cattle-rustling and armed
robbery. We will work with law enforcement officials to drastically reduce
violent crime. We will reform the administration of justice to ensure speedy conclusion
of cases and send a clear message that there will be sanctions for unlawful
conduct.
As we seek to insure the safety of life and limb, so also
must we nurture the mind. It may be a cliche that our children are our future,
but that does not make it any less true. We will embark on school reform so
that even poor children stand a chance to make a better life. To that end, the
government you have asked me to lead will guarantee free and compulsory basic
education for every child up to JS3, regardless of gender, religion or
ethnicity.
We have to return to these fundamental values. Without
education I will not be standing before you today, a poor boy from a
hardscrabble village who lost his father at a young age but who nevertheless
got the opportunity of a decent education, which took me from a village school
to Barewa College to Ahmadu Bello University and ultimately to Harvard
University in Cambridge, Massachusetts, in the United States of America. That
educational journey prepared me for this day.
I cannot emphasize this point enough, especially to all our
children from however poor a home and however distant a village: I am you. I
was you about 50 years ago. I was lucky to have been born in a time and at a
place when our country cared a bit more than it does now for the less
privileged among us.
And so in the end this is my pledge to you. No matter the
inevitable mistakes that we make from the decisions that we take, I promise you
today that I will work myself to the bone in the service of our children. I
shall seek any help from any quarter, stay awake all night if I must, in order
to give our children the opportunities that were afforded me. I say clearly to
you today, in this our capital city and to the millions listening all over our
state, from its northern scrublands to its fertile valleys, from its commercial
centers to its university towns and its struggling villages, whatever my
shortcomings turn out to be, a lack of trying will not be one of them.
My brothers and sisters, the fate of Kaduna is in our hands.
The future of our children depends on our toil. The task is daunting but we are
willing and we are determined. Four years from now, by the grace of God and the
active support of you all, we will all be able to say that the leaders in whose
care you have placed your affairs today have given their all for the brighter
future that we all seek.
On behalf of my deputy and all the members of our team, I
thank you.
May God bless and keep you. And may God bless our state and
this country that we call home.
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