“I’m not afraid of Juju” – Governor Abubakar

Governor of Jigawa State, Alhaji Badaru Abubakar, Thursday said he is not afraid of charms or diabolic objects and will conduct the governorship primary election of the All Progressives Congress, APC, in Ondo State transparently.

He made the declaration while briefing journalists in Abuja after being sworn in as the Chairman of APC Ondo Primary Election Committee.

According to Gov. Badaru:“Free and fair election will solve the problem. If they believe we are free, fair and transparent, they will accept the result.

“Well in the first place, I don’t believe in juju so certainly I am surely not afraid.

“I don’t know of any imposition, my duty there is to be free, fair and transparent and I think that is the only thing that will help the party”.

He said the issue of identifying the delegates was important and their international passport, permanent voter card or national identity card would suffice.

 “Any one of the three will be able to solve the identification problem”, he said.

The governorship primary for 24 aspirants jostling to clinch the APC ticket is scheduled to take place tomorrow, Saturday, in Akure, the Ondo State capital.

Mr. Abubakar advised other governors to cut expenditure in order to overcome the embarrassment of owing staff salaries.

He said once the workers were paid and happy, any state could move forward and be productive.

“In Jigawa, we are not owing salaries. In fact we always pay on the 25th of every month whether the federation account comes in or not.

“We are not owing either local government or state salaries and we are not owing pension. In fact pensioners collect on the 13th or 15th.

“We are not owing gratuity as well. We are really very clean as far as staff welfare is concerned and even this week or next week, we’ll be paying the annual leave grants as promised.

“The magic is being prudent. You just have to do what you think is good for the people.

“Paying workers is of paramount importance and we have to sacrifice all what we do to be sure to pay our workers because workers have to remain focused.

“We do a lot of cost savings and employ cost saving techniques to reduce expenditure of the government.

“For instance in the government house, the expenditure has been reduced by as much as 80 per cent, while general overhead has been reduced as much as 47 per cent.

“The security vote has been reduced as much as 87 per cent. We use only 13 per cent of what they normally used.

“So, all those expenditure that have no direct bearing to the common man have been reduced drastically to give room for service to the people”.

The APC Primary Election Committee is made up of Bruce Ugbide, Hamma Ali, Prince M. Martin and Mohammed Lawal.

The Election Appeals Committee is headed by Helen Bendeha, with Musa Umar and Nicky Ejezie as members.

(NAN)