Governor of Bauchi State, Malam Isa Yuguda, has said that the state urgently needs N15 billion to complete ongoing vital projects that will change the lives of the people and drive further investments into the state.
Yuguda told journalists in an interview in Abuja that out of the amount, N5.48 billion would be used for the completion of the Bauchi International Airport (BIA), while N2 billion would be channelled into the completion of the Bauchi Specialist Hospital. The balance, according to him, would be used in financing existing bank loans and cost of issuing the bond.
The governor, who defended the request for the bond, currently being processed by the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), pointed out that the state had already met all the requirements listed by the approving authorities.
He expressed the hope that SEC would expedite action in approving the issuance of the bond, which, according to him, had already been approved by the Federal Ministry of Finance.
Yuguda equally explained that the idea of the BIA was to open up the state to take full advantage of available agricultural and tourism potentials, create business opportunities and enable the state to attract foreign exchange as well as increase the nation’s balance of payment position.
He said the state opted to build a new specialist hospital as a replacement for the old one, which it ceded to the Federal Government and converted to a Teaching Hospital of the Abubakar Tafawa Belewa University in support of the desire for the training of indigenous doctors.
Yuguda said, “the hospital project has just been achieved after a struggle that lasted more than 15 years, wherein only one teaching hospital had existed in the entire North-East sub-region at Maiduguri.
“But more worrisome to us has been the fact that the area boasts of the worst indices in terms of infant and maternal mortality in Nigeria. That is one of the reasons we plead for approval of the bond by SEC,” Yuguda said.
Source : SunOnline