Tinubu’s reforms facilitated Nasarawa’s biggest lithium refinery in Africa —Gov Sule
Engineer Abdullahi Sule, the Governor of Nasarawa State, had a brief interactive session with journalists during the Renewed Hope National Media Tour. He spoke about the plans for the state, the interventions. . .
Engineer Abdullahi Sule, the Governor of Nasarawa State, had a brief interactive session with journalists during the Renewed Hope National Media Tour. He spoke about the plans for the state, the interventions in the areas of infrastructure, healthcare, education, and skills, as well as the support received from the President Bola Ahmed Tinubu administration. MUIDEEN OLANIYI brings excerpts:What is your thought on this inspection exercise in your state?I have always asked for this kind of verification. You are doing more than just verification; you are also doing an assessment. I have always challenged the media every time they ask questions. You have said you have withdrawn subsidy, what have we seen? I said why you don’t go to these various places. That is why I am happy. For us in Nasarawa, we are very transparent. I came from the private sector. So, every contract I give, I give the amount that we are spending on that contract. People can now make the difference with the kind of money we are receiving. You are right when you say that the first four years, everybody knows, Nigeria was sharing between maybe N590 billion to about N620 billion monthly as total FAAC allocation. For Nasarawa State, what we were getting was between maybe N3. 8 billion and about N4. 5 billion for the state. For the local government, it was between N1. 9 billion and N2. 5 billion every month. With the removal of subsidy today, Nasarawa State is receiving an average of N14 to N16 billion every month. But you have to go back and find out our expenses. That is why I said President Bola Tinubu took the bullet on our behalf. Now, based on what we are receiving, you may go to a certain state that things do not relate with the kind of resources they are receiving. The media will criticise you. I want you to remember that. And that is right also, because it wakes people up. There is nothing wrong with that. All the projects we are doing in Nasarawa State today, at no borrowing from the bank, is as a result of President Bola Ahmed Tinubu’s reforms. So, you must give him the credit for that. Without the reforms, we would not have had the resources to do what we are doing. So, I can’t take credit for those projects…. You are going to our first-class secretariat. You go and see the Office of the Secretary to the State Government (SSG) is better than my own office. And there is nothing wrong with that. Because the time they built my own office, Tinubu was not there. We didn’t have the resources that we have today. So, there is nothing wrong with me doing it better today because we are receiving the resources better today. In which areas is your government still investing the increased resources from federal allocations?One of the approaches that we have in Nasarawa State is ensuring that we build skill acquisition centres like the Wing Commander Abdullahi Ibrahim Vocational and Technology Institute in Lafia. The skill acquisition centre we have is going to do about 12 different trade vocations, from electrical installation to fit our machinery, carpentry and joinery, to cabinet making, to welding of applications, to radio mechanics, to agricultural mechanisation. So, people who have degrees in other areas are going there to learn trade and when they come out, I tell them throughout my work in the U. S. , in the oil and gas sector, people are not interested in civil service work. READ ALSO:Nasarawa can execute projects without loan because of Tinubu’s reforms — Gov SuleWhen they have a trade, they are more interested in working for themselves. And that is the idea about it. So, that is the centre we brought. And from all over the country, people are coming there to acquire education from that place. That is one thing we have done. When I was Managing Director, Africa Petroleum, I learnt something. I learnt people who have spent all their years, working inside the company, and that’s the only thing they knew how to do. When I actually let them go and then give them their packages, a lot of them didn’t know what to do with the money because they have no skill to do anything else. So, what I do here is that I have course retirement skill acquisition also at the center. It is all part of the programme that we are doing. So it is not just for the youth, it’s also for the old people like you and I, so that we can go, and learn skills and be able to take it on from there. So, that is one good thing, I think, that we are doing. What provisions do you have for the health, agricultural, and mining sectors of the economy?In the health care, Nasarawa is one of the few states in the federation that now have, in each one of the three senatorial zones, a tertiary medical facility. We have the teaching hospital here in Lafia. We have the Federal Medical Centre (FMC) in Keffi. We also have now the specialist hospital, the Dalhatu Araf Specialist Hospital, Akwanga (DASH), which is being built by the state government. You need to do certain things that are touching the lives of the people. On what we did in agriculture, in the whole of the businesses of Alhaji Aliko Dangote, the one that was given the least amount of revenue is actually that of agriculture. But the one that is impacting the life of the people the most is also agriculture. For that reason, in Nasarawa State, we have 10,000 hectares of land where we are growing rice. Our own rice is not just for the media. It is real rice that we are actually growing. You can see this food security they are talking about. You can see it in practicality. You can see the true picture of it. Those are areas that we are making a great impact. I am happy that you are going to see the lithium processing plant. It is a private sector initiative. So, somebody may criticise it, just as they criticised our refinery to say that it is Dangote who solved the problem of the refinery. Yes. However, what gave him the policy and the ground and everything to solve that problem is the policy of the federal government that we have. Today, the two lithium processing plants are there because of freeing the policies and ensuring that anybody who is coming to mine in Nasarawa State must also process here. When we talk about it with President Tinubu, he supported it, he took it and brought Dele Alake. From the beginning, I criticised it because I think he is a media man, he doesn’t understand anything about this. The man came in. Now, he is a better mining engineer than me. But why did he do that? It is because he copied from his boss, he agreed with the direction of his boss and he bought it and he is doing everything. And that is how we are able to build not only the biggest lithium mining facility in Nigeria, but the biggest in Africa. Now, what has that done for us? Because of the rush for lithium, it is at the highest peak of rising. The truth of the matter is that lithium is doing so well now that the chairman of GCL, which is actually one of the biggest buyers of lithium, sent his customised 727 Airbus, which is bigger than some of our own aircraft owned by some of our biggest players in Nigeria. He sent it all the way to Abuja to come and pick me and the Governor of Zamfara to China to discuss about lithium that we have in our own states. So, that is how important lithium is to him now. Those are the kinds of things that are very important for you and the media going with you to know, not just take pictures of flyovers. It is to understand that what is driving these policies. What are these governors doing with the resources that they are getting? How is it impacting on the lives of the people? So, it can come under the Office of the President or it can come under the Renewed Hope Ambassadors. It is very important that we understand that we give credit and encourage any leader that is doing well and is being encouraged, the leader gets up and does wellCan you speak on some of the road projects you have in the state?We have the combined overhead and underground flyover. We built it. Mr President came last year to commission it. We built it for N16. 7 billion. On dualisation of the Akwanga township, there are two of them. The real dualisation itself in Akwanga which is a new town altogether, is actually done for N7. 1 billion. Then, we have our underpass also inside the same Akwanga. We built it for N6. 6 billion. The Chemdam Road was just a single lane when I came in as a governor. So, we had to dualise it all the way to the House of Assembly. We spent N5. 6 billion for it. It’s roughly almost 4. 5 kilometers. The Amba Bridge where you are going to see storm water, every time it rains, people cannot sleep because they are afraid their houses will fall. I’m happy you are going there. You selected that also to go and see that storm water channel. We built it only for N3. 3 billion. And then the Kefi flyover, where a lot of accidents have taken place. So, many people died in that. So, today, we are doing it N11. 4 billion. And then we constructed the twin flyover in Karu. That is the one that a lot of you are happy about. For those who live in Karu, you will see it. It is bringing economic advancement in the area. The value of houses there has actually increased. By the way, my exco, I have not met with them since I came back from China. Just two days ago, we actually received 500 million Naira from one of the real estates as our profit sharing for that same site where we invested only about N100 and something million. So, today we received N500 million. It is not for federal government. It is for the state. Those are the businesses we do because I approach all these things purely like the way business is going to be approached. If you calculate so far, you will see that we spent about N90 billion. WATCH TOP VIDEOS FROM NIGERIAN TRIBUNE TVBack to School, Back to Business A Fresh StartRelationship Hangout: Public vs Private Proposals – Which Truly Wins in Love?“No” Is a Complete Sentence: Why You Should Stop Feeling GuiltyRelationship Hangout: Friendship Talk 2025 – How to Be a Good Friend & Big Questions on FriendshipPolice Overpower Armed Robbers in Ibadan After Fierce StruggleGet real-time news updates from Tribune Online! 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