In
spite of his hectic schedule, the Governor of Kano State, Engr. Rabiu
Kwankwaso, spared about 30 minutes last Saturday to interact with three
newsmen at Kano Governor’s Lodge in Abuja. The session, which gave
insights into the politics of the ongoing constitution amendment, was
captured by our Managing Editor, Northern Operation, YUSUF ALLI.
Excerpts:
What difference did you make in Kano during your first term in office?
Well, you see first term, as the name signifies, was the first time I
became a governor. Definitely, we did things that are ordinarily given
the chance again, we will do them differently. And I believe that is why
the constitution made provision for second term to review what you did
during your first term and see where you can improve. So, there are many
areas, many things that we did during our first term in 1999 to 2003
and now by the grace of God, we have opportunity again after eight
years. And we are doing them differently.
An area that we realised that we did them correctly, we are now
doubling our efforts to do more. I am happy to say that in the last one
year or so, we were able to work very hard; we were able to bring in
some programmes and projects that are very important to the people of
Kano State.
First of all, we worked so hard to ensure that from our own side, we
do what we believe is correct, what is right and that is to ensure that
right from the governor, deputy governor, commissioners down to the
civil servants and politicians, everybody was made to understand that
government is about service.
And we are lucky that we made such statement right from the days of
our campaign. We told everybody that anybody who was looking for money
should go to the market and become a businessman. But you should not be
in government and start competing with Aliko Dangote and Mike Adenuga
and so on.
We now have no difficulty at all in ensuring that people are doing
the right thing. And that is why by the grace of God, we were able to
save a lot of money for projects and programmes for our people in Kano.
To crown it all, we looked at areas of wastages, especially various
governments are used to this issue of security votes and in the opinion
of the state government in Kano that is an area that governments take
money for their personal use in the name of security. So, we decided to
cancel the issue of security votes.
Can you be specific?
We have started so many programmes and projects. In education, we
have done so much on primary education, including feeding our children
five times a day. We are giving them free lunch, two sets of uniforms;
we are rehabilitating our classrooms, hostels and so on.
We have so far built well over 1,300 classrooms in just one year. We
have also built about 600 offices and similar number of toilets or pit
latrines and so on across the state. We have created four mega secondary
schools, the Government College and in three other local governments.
That is in addition to expanding many of them with additional hostels,
classrooms and so on.
We have employed many teachers. We employed the first batch of 1,200,
the second batch is now of 1003, and most of them (in fact 70 per cent
of them) are teachers. On secondary school education, we built 200
houses in various secondary schools, especially in the rural areas, for
teachers to go and stay there.
We trained all our teachers in primary and secondary schools. In the last one year, all of them have gone for various trainings.
And of course, tertiary institutions, if you go to any of them, we
are upgrading their facilities. If you go to the College of Education,
Komboso, all their equipment, materials and money for accreditation have
been provided for them. The state has no problem, we have settled them.
The same thing Audu Bako.So also, Aminu Kano College of Islamic Studies
and so on and so forth. Of course including College of Arts and
Science.
In other words, we are handling all those. I am sure you remember
that the state established Kano University of Science and Technology
during our first term. We have just received a report from the
Visitation Committee which the state government is reviewing now and at
the end of the day, we will come up with the white paper on how best to
improve the university.
Why are you establishing a new university? Will Kano State be able to sustain it?
When we came, we realised that the state was in dire need of an
additional university because the Wudil University is a specialised
University of Science and Technology and we realised that there are
thousands or even millions of young men and women who will want to go
for higher education in Nigeria but they don’t have the opportunity
because the slots are too few for them. That was why we decided to
establish 21 institutes. Most of these institutes have been completed,
they are working either on the temporary sites and some of them have
moved into their permanent sites.
And above all, we have the North-West University which we are
officially laying the foundation on the 29th of September this year. We
are inviting you to come to Kano to see what we are doing here. We are
working on the permanent site of the university but we realised that we
cannot finish the site before October, that was why we decided to use
Ado Bayero House at Kofar Nasarawa. We have now partitioned some wings
to create classrooms, laboratories, lecture theatres, libraries and so
on. I am happy that the NUC has given us the approval to go ahead. We
are working with JAMB for our first admission which is coming up this
October.
I am sure you are aware of the institutes, I don’t need to mention
them but they range from Kano Film Institute to poultry, fishery,
livestock, corporate security and Kano Journalism Institute where many
of you will even come there to improve your skills. And we have a total
of 21 institutes, including the university.
I am happy to say that so much is happening in the area of education
and because of these institutes, we know we will need manpower to manage
them and that was why we selected 501 indigenes of Kano who have got
First Class or Second Class Upper and we have almost finished the visa,
we have paid the school fees and all of them would leave end of
September or October to 11 countries across the globe. Next year, we are
sending another 500 to go and have at least Master’s Degrees to come
back and manage our institutes. And of course, if they like, they can go
to Leadership or The Nation newspapers to go and work.
What of funding of these universities?
We are building the manpower, we are working hard and I am happy to
say that the people are cooperating, especially when it comes to money.
People are always asking where you get the money. It is simple. One, we
decided to block all the loopholes, wastages within the government
circle and even beyond. Two, we have decided to improve our Internally
Generated Revenue (the IGR). And I am happy to say that when we came in,
we were getting N400m and N450m from the records of the last
administration but now we are well above N1.7billion per month, of
course, even under the present security challenge. And our salary has
come down because we had to do all sorts of screening, including
biometric and the figures have gone down in terms of the total number of
civil servants and money.
Our target is that by the end of December, the state should be able
to generate enough IGR to cater for salaries and allowances for
government officials, civil servants and all what you can call
recurrent. That is our target and we are working towards achieving that.
If Kano cannot pay its own recurrent expenditure, then to me, it is an
unfortunate situation. We have enough resources, we have enough ways of
getting the revenue to handle them. So, the game plan is to ensure that
we get enough money locally to handle recurrent and whatever money we
get from Abuja or elsewhere we use it for capital projects. And that is
why our budget for this year is 67 per cent capital, and 33 per cent
recurrent. And that is the position of the state government.
And any state government that cannot do much in terms of capital
projects, it has to look at itself or examine itself because government
is not just about coming to eat well and get big vehicles or big houses,
but it is all about service.
Is it true that your state is being deserted as a result of violence?
You see, there was never a time in the history of any country or any
state that there was no crisis. During our first term, that is why I
have a lot of respect for former President Olusegun Obasanjo. Some
people in Nigeria are very, very forgetful. When we came in 1999, there
were all sorts of religious crises, ethnic crises, killings of
northerners in the South-West and in the South-East, even in the
South-South and vice versa. We were just sleeping with one eye from 1999
and 2003 because the governors of Niger, Kano and others on the road
would say corpses are coming to Kano, watch it.
We had few cases they were bringing corpses and immediately people
saw them in Kano, they would start rioting in protest. And along the
line, they would attack people from those areas who were living in Kano.
These are things that people have forgotten. We also had the issue of
Sharia which started in Zamfara and came through many other states,
including Kano. And that was really an issue of interest at that
particular time. So there were many things. I don’t think there was any
time in the history of this country that leaders were not faced with
challenges.
And what we have today is our own version of the security challenge
that we are facing today in Nigeria. That is why we are all up and
doing, we are working around the clock to ensure that our states,
especially Kano and all other states, are safe so that Nigeria can
continue to be peaceful and so that people can continue to be running
their normal businesses.
I just saw somebody reporting on the situation in Kano but he has no
idea of what is happening. Maybe he just went through the Internet or
just phoned somebody who does not understand what is happening to say
the least. You see, Kano is peaceful and I can assure you that there is
no city of the size of Kano that does not have criminal activities. If
you go to any state , if you go to any country, if you go to the US, the
UK, France or Germany, we have people just taking guns to schools or
public places like cinemas and start shooting.
So, it is not something that is peculiar to Nigeria or peculiar to
Kano. What is important is that the state, the authorities in the state
are on top of the situation. We are working with security agencies, the
general public is working together with everybody to ensure that Kano is
peaceful. Kano is a centre for commerce and anybody who is there will
always want to support commerce. And we cannot run commerce and
industries without peace.
Of course, we had an unfortunate attack on the 20th of January but if
you checked the graph, you will see that it has gone down to almost
zero. During the attack, we decided to put a curfew of 24 hours, it was
reduced 18, 12 hours and now it is zero.
Really? Eeeh…
You could come out 24 hours to do your businesses. That is why if you
go to Kano now, we have our street and traffic lights working, we have
good roads, we have the interlocking on the walk ways, good drainages
and so on. Kano has changed. And we have worked so hard to put up
infrastructure, especially water.
So far, we are able to spend over N4billion to purchase ductile and
pipes and we were able to buy 600 millimeter by 42 kilometres that means
a distance of 42 kilometres, the pipes are on site and contractors are
working just to put all on the line. The water works is already there
and all that we need to do is to connect them.
We have millions of cubic meters of water additionally coming into
Kano. So also, we purchased 1000 millimeter, that is, one meter,
diameter, ductile and pipes which we are going to lay from Chalawa
waterworks to the tank and we have paid. The contractor assured us that
they will start moving the pipes to the city of Kano. So, we are working
in all the areas you can remember.
In agriculture, we have distributed fertilisers to farmers and they
are happy. Civil servants, we pay them 26th day of the month because we
have enough money to pay them. We have also started paying N18,000
minimum wage and with this level of management, we still have money to
do other projects, including major roads. Go to any road that leads into
the city, Zaria road, Gwarzo road, Hadeija road, these are brand new
roads that we have started working on. We are dualising them, we are
putting street lights and so on. If you go to Kano in the night by air,
you may think that you are in Dubai.
Let us go back to the recent violence in Kano. Is it true that aliens are the ones perpetrating it?
I have not heard or read about such a statement or conclusion from
security agencies. But you see, the security agencies are owned by the
Federal Government, they don’t take permission from us to go and make
any arrest or get any information and once they get that information,
they pass it to Abuja. And actually some of these things we hear are
from Abuja because we don’t own the police, we don’t own the Army, we
don’t own SSS, I am the chief security officer but they don’t report to
me.
So, you have not got any security brief?
No, no. I don’t have any security report on that. But all I know is
that whatever information we have or people have, they pass it to the
appropriate authorities.
In the light of this experience as the chief security officer who is
not in control of security agencies, why did the northern governors
oppose state police?
You see, people don’t understand really. All of us, probably 19 minus
one, are totally against the issue of state police; 18 of us are
bitterly against the issue of state police, we are not supporting it at
least for now because there are dangers; there are issues on the ground
that have to be sorted out before we land on the issue of state police.
That is the position of 18 governors of the north.
If you are opposed to state police, are you in support of state creation?
Yes, state creation is an area really which I do not want to comment
on but just recently, I was watching NTA, I was watching this
presidential retreat on constitutional review and there was a comment
made by the Chairman of the Constitution Review in the National
Assembly, Deputy Senate President Ike Ekweremadu. Now, he made
comparison between Lagos and Kano. He said Kano has 9.4million people
going by 2006 census and has 40 local governments and Lagos has 9.1m
people and has 2 0 or 22 local governments.
You see, that comparison did not go well with many of us but I did
not want to worry myself talking or chatting about the constitutional
review. But as the governor of Kano State and somebody by all stand, who
should, under any circumstance, defend the interest of the people of
Kano, I think I should comment on that.
What is your take on that?
Before I do that, let me say that because some people don’t know me,
they misunderstand my position. You see, right from my primary school, I
have been lucky. After primary education, I went to boarding school in
Kano and there I met so many people not even from my village or state
but people from across Nigeria. I went to school when at that time, we
had people from across the state and beyond. And when I came to
technical school, I had people from the North-East. Our technical school
was catering not only for Kano catchment area but also the North-East
and of course when I went to Kaduna polytechnic for five years, I was in
contact with Nigerians and people from beyond and I am happy to say
that I was in the UK for about 10 years. That is in the area of
education.
When it comes to politics or work itself, I joined water board RACCA
then in 1975. I was there for 17 years before I retired in 1991 and in
1991, I joined politics and I was very lucky to win my election, even
though I was not surprised. I have being working with my local
community, not only on the issue of politics but so also for development
and so on. So, I had no difficulty winning my election to the House of
Representatives and when I came to the house, I was also lucky to become
the deputy speaker of the House of Representatives.
When we were overthrown by the military regime of the late Head of
State, Gen. Sani Abacha, I contested again and became an elected
delegate to the constitutional conference in 1994 and 1995. We formed
PDM together with Shehu Musa Yar’Adua that time and so many things
happened between 1994 and 1995. When the PDM was not registered, I
joined DPN. I spearheaded DPN in Kano and as the leader of the party
then, even though it was not in the good books of the then government of
Sani Abacha, against their wish, we were able to get the majority of
the local governments in Kano State and of course, ex-Head of State,
Gen. Abdulsalami Abubakar, came after the death of Abacha, we joined PDP
and I was the first governor during this Fourth Republic in Kano from
1999 to 2003. And I made so many friends. So also, when I was Minister
of Defence, I made friends not only here, but all over the world. Of
course, I was adviser to the president on Darfur and Somalia and after
that, I am sure you remember that I was appointed a commissioner in the
NDDC and I am sure you know what happened. When I saw things were not
going well, I resigned my appointment and told them the reasons.
What are you driving at?
Each of these appointments and elections has its own version of
experience. If you take the issue when I was deputy speaker, you see
that what I learnt was how these presiding officers like the Senate
President, the Speaker and others operate. You have either principal
officer, minority leaders serving minorities. Majority leader serves the
interest of the people in the majority. Now, we take you to be the
presiding officer, who takes care of people from all over the country.
When I was among the presiding officers in the 90s, all the ethnic
groups were represented at that time, just as it is now. We were 593
representing each local government, which was the number of the local
governments in the country at that particular time.
When we came to the constitutional conference, based on my personal
experience, we decided that 593 are too many for the House of
Representatives. What was the appropriate number? We came up with 360
during the constitution review. That is how we became 360 and it was
accepted in the 1999 constitution.
Along the line, when we were in the House, I was in the defunct
Social Democratic Party (SDP). I am sure you will remember that during
that time, we had an election in 1993 where Abiola won the election and I
am sure you remember that I am from Kano, where Bashir Tofa who was a
candidate of the NRC from Kano lost.
In fact, our houses are within a short distance. Yet, we worked so
hard to defeat him in the polling booth so also in the in the ward,
local government and in the state in favour of Abiola who is from the
South. And throughout the days of Abacha, I was one of those who were
tagged as NADECO. Why? Because I was a member of the SDP and the
supremacy of the party was very important to us. We were loyal and we
were strong then and we supported our party, it did not matter if
somebody was from the south or from the west or somebody was a Christian
or a Muslim or a pagan. That was the nature of party politics at that
particular time. We worked so hard.
Could you be more forthcoming on why this background is necessary?
I am coming to that. I want to dwell on the experiences of the
constitutional conference because that is where the issue of this state
creation and issue of zoning came from. You see, at that particular
time, we had so many respected people from across the federation at the
conference. Many of them were appointed by the military and some
contested election and won like my humble self. We had respected people
like the late Shehu Yar’Adua, ex-Vice-President Alex Ekwueme and so on.
With Yar’Adua, we started the PF and we joined SDP together. We
supported so many people together. I am sure you remember that our own
candidate in PF contested election with that of the PSP and our own
group (PF) won the election. That was how we had Babagana Kingibe as our
chairman and so on and so forth and later, we had Chief Tony Anenih who
was also in our group and also in our party.
How relevant was that constitutional conference to the issue at hand now?
In that constitutional conference, so many things happened. I am sure
you know Alex Ekwueme, a much respected Nigerian, who has been our
friend, brought so many ideas. Why I am giving you this background is to
tell you that my personal politics is not about regional or about
religion or about ethnicity. We are the Aminu Kano descendants who have
worked so hard to ensure that Nigeria unites; we have worked so hard to
assist the poor and ensure that they are assisted. I always talk about
the poor because these are the people who need the support of
government, and all those who have got the opportunity to help them
should do so.
So… (Cuts in)
The issue of zoning came up in the constitutional conference. It was a
big issue, and we did not take the issue of zoning lightly. Few of us
went and confronted General Shehu Musa Yar’Adua of blessed memory. We
said, there is the issue of zoning coming from the South-East and
spearheaded by a respected Nigerian, Chief Alex Ekwueme and to us, he
has been very respectful and somebody the North supported.
We said to Yar’Adua that Alex Ekwueme was almost single-handedly
picked by northerners when northerners were very powerful in the
Nigerian politics. That time, there was no zoning, he was picked on
merit. now, he is bringing zoning and the understanding then during our
analysis was that South-East even during the First Republic included the
South-South or it was plus a portion of the South-South. So, what they
wanted was to carve out a particular tribe, a particular geographical
location, people who have got everything in common to one zone.
They proposed the South-South in the constitutional conference to be
another zone, and of course Yorubaland in the South-West has been a zone
itself, especially after the Mid-West was carved out of the then
Western Nigeria. The understanding then was just to hit at the North
because the North has been one. So, bringing this zoning-North-West,
North-East, North-Central- was really alien.
How did the zones come about?
Some us tried to convince Gen. Yar’Adua to oppose it. he said no,
don’t oppose it, it will not help their zone, let us support it. What
Yar’Adua told us that time was that, look don’t worry.
Well, we did not understand what he meant but in politics, if you
have a leader you accept, even if you don’t agree to what he says. So,
we supported it in a way and we had these zones but we refused to give
in to support what some people from the same zone now are propagating.
That is, giving it the constitutional backing. Yar’Adua said many things
and it was later I realised what he said was right. He said: “It will
not help the workers; it will not help the zone”.
In 1998 to 1999, all of us were in PDP and that was when the issue of
zoning echoed in Jos during the election. Ordinarily, people from this
part of the country would have massively supported the author of the
zones because Alex Ekwueme is a respected Nigerian. I respect him very
much and he is our friend but you see, that issue of zoning, rightly or
wrongly, people did not take it kindly and that was why despite his
political credentials, being the former Vice-President from 1979 to 1983
and he went for second term with our the President, Shehu Shagari; even
though Ekwueme was not VP under my party but most northerners were in
NPN. So, zoning was echoed in Jos and that gave ex-President Olusegun
Obasanjo an advantage and people massively voted for him.
So, zoning palaver has been on since?
Yes. Of course, there were other issues but this particular issue was
a pillar, it was very important at that particular time. Now, you see,
the North has gone through its own version of ups and downs; now, I
think it is down. If I say North here, I don’t mean these 19 states we
are talking about, we are talking about all those states and issues that
have common things with us. Here I mean poverty, illiteracy, disease,
all sorts of things. It does not matter whether you are geographically
in the North or in the South. You know economists have got their own way
of doing things in the world. When you say North, people understand
that you are talking about Europe, North America but there are still
some few exceptions that are down the line that are in the South but
still by that definition part of the north, so also in Nigeria. If you
say North-South, it is upside down in the economy.
In the world economy, if you say North, you are talking about
prosperous nations of the world and of course in terms of South you are
talking of the opposite. So if I talk of the North, I am not talking
about the 19 states, I am talking about those who have things in common
with us. Even in the North, we have geography but that is not the
important binding issue, the binding issues are what I just told you. If
you look at it, Benue is closer to the South than Sokoto, Keffi or
Kano. Kogi is closer to the South than it is to Sokoto, Kaduna or Kano.
This North consists of different tribes, different religions, but these
are binding factors.
So introducing that really to us was an agenda to partition the zone
and it is not flying now. How many years from 1994, 1995 to date now? It
has been so many years but where is the chairman of the North-East
zone? where is the chairman of North-West and others? We have one
chairman because zones cannot fly in the north at least for now, you can
put them in the papers but they cannot fly and it won’t work. That is
the reality of this country today that is the reality of the North.
How does the Deputy Senate President come into this?
You see, some people, maybe because they don’t know history or they
easily forget history, are bound to repeat similar mistakes. What we see
Senator Ekweremadu doing, he is making a big mistake at least for
himself. He is a young man, I just saw in the papers that he is just 50;
at the age of 50 you will begin to wonder what he is up to and for
whatever reason now, we have somebody from the South-East in the senate
who is the chairman of the constitution review. We have a young man in
the House of Representatives, Deputy Speaker Emeka Ihedioha, who I know
very well since 1992. At that time he was one of the young people who
were working in our office, the Office of the Speaker at that time.
Emeka is a good man but you see, some people take advantage of some
people’s weaknesses.
What I mean is that we hear that they want to create a state from the
South-East. They say the East has five states, the North-West has seven
states. Yes that is the reality but the truth of the matter is that,
during the constitutional conference, we tried to create eight states
for Kano and other places, we applied for it.
Kano should not be the Kano we know today under normal circumstances.
Kano by 2006 census was 9.4million people, we have states today that
are smaller in size and they are having three senators each to
represent; the same three are representing 9.4million’
We worked so hard during the constitutional conference to get
recognition but for whatever reason, people have refused to create
additional state for Kano. Kano should not be a state; it is a
combination of many states by using any criteria. There is an issue of
land mass, population and anything. About 1.6m or 1.7m is the population
figure of some states in this country, how many 1.6m do you have in
9.4m? How many square metres do we have in our states? I have some
figures based on 2006 census, Nasarawa is 1.86m. Bayelsa is 1.7m. Others
like Ebonyi, Taraba, Gombe, Kwara, Ekiti, Abia, Cross River, all these
states are over two million people and Enugu over three million
something. I think that is where he (Ekweremadu) comes from and he wants
to create a new state for them. How many square metres, how many people
are there?
Why are you personally touched?
Is it because we are weak now, everybody is putting his suit looking
good, pretending to be representing an ethnic group or state and that is
why I started with my history. You see, principal officers or presiding
officer, if you are presiding over the whole Senate, you are presiding
over the whole house not presiding over the South-East, not presiding
over PDP, not presiding over another party.
You should be seen to be fair and you see people are taking all these
weaknesses to do a few things. We hear they are inviting speakers, my
speaker and other speakers of state. What business do they have on
constitutional amendment? Why could they not go through the governors
and along the line they are instigating them, trying to cause confusion
and destabilise our state Houses of Assembly. Look at the constitution,
we have these tiers of government; federal state and local government.
As for federal, that is where they belong, they should stay there, they
should not be poke-nosing into our own businesses, we are politicians.
These senators, including Ekweremadu, come from states and how does
it feel now if I phone my senators and members of the House of
Representatives and start instigating them against the leadership of the
House or the Senate? We hear recently that they are talking about
independence, which independence? Independence for state Houses of
assembly? They want to get more money for them, how and from where will
they get the money? Will the money come from the Federal Government or
from our own money in the states? You see, state assembly members are
kings in their states, they are well respected. I think members of the
National Assembly should start looking for independence for themselves.
My state assembly members have 24hours access to me. They walk into the
state Government House and see me, they tell me their problems,
including personal problems. Anywhere I go, I take them along, we are
friends.
I have 40 in the state assembly, 30 are PDP. I raised their hands and
call PDP and of course we won election with them, we are the same
family. We are running the government with them though they are handling
their own side, we are handling ours as the executive. So, for people
to be talking of the independence of the state assembly, I say nonsense
because they do not understand. Don’t destabilise states, don’t poke
nose into our affairs. If you want to do state assembly member, go and
do that and look for independence. Look for independence for yourself
not for somebody. If you want to give them money, get money from Abuja
and give them, we will welcome that. All these instigations, I think
that will not be acceptable.
So, what is your opinion on the constitution review by the National Assembly which is ongoing now?
We have a situation where the chairman is already biased, he is
talking of Kano having 44 local governments. How many local governments
do we have in Enugu? three million population, you want to create a
state and if you look at it, in North-West, we have about 36 million
people, if you put the South-South and South-East together, they are
just 37million. The difference in population going by 2006 census is one
million. South-East plus south-south is one million difference. All
these points make people feel that something is really wrong with us.
Actually, the population of the South-East plus the South-South is 35,
786,000 plus and if you subtract this from the population of the
North-West alone, you will have 1.6million. With two zones, just one
million people difference and this is why they want to create a new
state.
What should they do? They are seeking equity and justice not population matter.
They are not talking of Kano. When they were mentioning Kano on the
television, they were clapping. I think our members should start talking
about merger of states. If you have over one million people, why are
you a state? I don’t know why our members are quiet on these issues. We
have so many things to do, including some governors in the north
behaving like our own almajiri. You know a leper in the North, they will
not go and say may Almighty Allah give me health, give me money, give
me job, he
DailyPost
