Governor Ibrahim Shehu Shema of Katsina State has explained how his government was able to increase the girl child school enrollment figures in recent years. Shema, who says he is not only deeply concerned about the insurgency in some parts of the North but also touched by the plight of the abducted Chibok girls, wants government to take proactive steps in tackling the development. In this interview with Adetutu Audu, he revealed how his administration has been using agriculture to drive the economy of the state.
Many have argued that your state is an investment destination. Can you confidently attest to this?
Without doubt Katsina State has grown in leaps and bounds since I came in as governor. We are very focused on the need to open our doors wide. There is no serious economy in the world that can hope to grow and prosper at the pace which we hope to grow and prosper without partnering with the private sector. That is why Katsina offers tremendous opportunity in the field of agriculture, soil mineral development, livestock development and other critical areas of infrastructure, education and health.
Tell us the kind of strides you have made in the agriculture sector which engages about 75% of the population of the state.
Absolutely, agriculture engages about 75% of our population. Because of the importance of the sector to our economy, you can’t depend on rain-fed agriculture. We are establishing some kind of synergy between rain-fed agriculture and irrigation. Consequently, you can grow crops from the first day of January to December; when it’s chilly winter in Europe, you can come to Katsina and grow practically anything under the sun. We have five major dams. It is yielding result as we have moved from about 1, 000 cultivation per hectare to more than 13, 000 hectares in the last five years. On top of that, we invested hugely in terms of training, extension services, chemicals, seeds and fertilizer. Of course we established the Shongai farming initiative which is a partnership with some farmers in Porto —Novo in Benin Republic. This initiative is aimed at creating young farmers who not only engage in agriculture produce but also in the utilization of the produce to provide employment for teeming youths in Katsina State and to indeed unbundle the chain of the activities in the agricultural sub-sector and livestock development. Attached to that closely is the issue of how we can drive production and the agro allied section. We also create market opportunity, market potential for farmers so that at the end of each farming season we buy off their produce. We buy the produce at competitive prices so that the farmer would not lose on the investment he has made that year. We now sell the produce to our consumers at subsidized prices. In that pattern you can see that the farmer does not lose and the consumer equally has access to controlled prices. Besides that, Katsina is the largest reserve for cotton in Nigeria. It is called the Cotton Profession Center of Nigeria. The quality of cotton we produce in Katsina provides raw materials for the textile industry and exportation of cotton related materials. Side by side with that is the way we move in the direction of livestock development. So, in a nutshell, agriculture remains one of the key fundamental areas for job creation in Nigeria, not only in Katsina State.
The produce from the farmers are in large quantities. What are you doing in the areas of storage and preservation?
Preservation is critical in dairy and dairy products because without preservation the entire agricultural process would be in trouble. We have to teach farmers how to preserve their produce and large crop growers and developers how to process and preserve milk. That is what the Shongai initiative is all about. And we are trying to get into partnership with a foreign firm to re-energize what we used to have in Ronki grazing field where we have a diary facility to see how we can make it an effective facility for use by our cattle rearers because the market for diary products in Nigeria is quite large. All our cattle rearers need to do is to be assisted and to be redirected and be guided on how best to manage their cattle and how to engage with other entrepreneurs who have the skill and capacity to grow this critical sector of the economy in our state and our nation.
One thing I found out is the cost of transportation of the cattle from up North to the South which is a big challenge. Are you doing anything about it?
Transportation of agriculture produce poses a challenge like any other product in Nigeria because our means of transportation remains the roads and the cost of petroleum products keeps going up. But with the ongoing development of the railway by the Federal Government to move goods in large quantities, in the next couple of years when the railway system is very well established, the cost of transportation of goods will simply come down. But in Katsina State, what we have tried to do is to have infrastructure on a massive scale so that the farmer can have access to road to bring his produce to the market. As I am talking to you, we done over 52 roads and rural feeder roads spanning over 2000km to enable people move their produce from the hinterland to the mainland or to the central market. And we are reaching out to some Chinese companies to see how we can establish a local rail in Katsina State.
Another issue is beef. How is it preserved?
We have centres in Katsina since 2007 where we have facilities for meat processing and freezing for meat and dairy products and we have a large grain center. In addition, we have established a committee headed by a former President of Court of Appeal to look into the possibility of bringing back the marketing board in Katsina, like we had in the days of old so that the farmers don’t just produce but are assisted to access to market within Katsina or market within Nigeria or market outside Nigeria. Nigeria should come together and address this issue of establishing or reenergizing the market structure for farmers and their produce and how we can process and even export. Nigeria is a beautiful country; our land is cultivatable from the first day of January to the last day of December. There is no excuse Nigeria cannot feed the rest of Africa.
If I am a young graduate and I don’t want to do any white collar job, I want to go into farming, I will think of land and access to credit facilities. How are you dealing with those two issues to encourage people to go into farming?
One of the approaches we are adopting in Katsina is, after the development into full scale the Shongai initiative, we are waiting; because it’s a modern trend and it is a current way to go for development and training young entrepreneurs. Our intention is to get land; we have in abundance of land and most of it is land that you can cultivate. All the young boys and girls we are training under Shongai in the three senatorial locations in Katsina, when they come out, will be given pieces of land to settle on the type of production they have learnt and they want to pursue in terms of agriculture activity.
Speaking about education, i am looking at some figures and wonder how it was done. I see there was this massive enrollment at primary school level of about 1 million in 2005 now close to 1.5 m in 2011. Some other states have the same free education but they don’t have these figures. What did you do to ensure that this came to be?
Education is number one tool for breaking the cycle of poverty. When I came into office in 2007, I left no one in doubt that my number one priority is education. Without education, no nation can progress; no nation can hope to move to the level of development or success they need to. That is why we unbundled the problems around education and we made sure education is free from primary to secondary and government pays WAEC, NECO, NAPTEC, SSCE fees. And we felt there is a challenged group, young girls in northern Nigeria have little or no opportunity to go to school and, when they do, poverty remains an issue for the parents. So we came up with a strategy, we set up a special department called the Girl-Child Education and Development Department, and I appointed a Special Adviser who is doing a great job. We went out to establish one girl-child school per LGA which of course attracted young girls in the 34 LGAs of the state who are who are doing pretty well. And then we introduced the conditional cash transfer grants. We are working with donor agencies like UNICEF, USAID and others and this conditional cash transfer grants are meant to assist mothers and the kids to stay in school. Stipends are given to the mother every term and the same stipends are given to the girl to stay in school.
You call it conditional.
Yes, conditional cash transfer grant.
Why is it conditional?
They have to remain in school to receive this stipend from government and donor agencies and of course the apparent increase in the number of children that go to school in Katsina is not only because of free education but also the additional facilities. We built over 200 new secondary schools, we expanded our primary schools, we hired more teachers, we bought more teaching aids and equipment and we introduced bus services in some of the LG headquarters to convey our students at 10 naira per drop, we improved the salary of our teachers because you know they say you can afford to have a school without a classroom but you can’t afford to have a school without a teacher, we increased the salaries of our workers in tertiary institutions I think twice at the end of my first tenure. You cannot run away from giving quality education to the people. The nation, not only Katsina, needs to put together strategic education development plans for the next 40years in order for us to break our people from the cycle of poverty.
You said you made education your number one priority and you have done this for over six years now. Regarding the insurgency in the North-east and the girls who have been kidnapped, Boko Haram doesn’t want them to go to school. This completely is against what you have been doing and maybe what others have been doing. What do you think?
Job creation is a critical tool to break insurgency. My understanding of the insurgency we are experiencing in Nigeria today is that it came from the fact that Nigeria has about five serious challenges that we must face head long: electricity, unemployment, drug addiction, transnational crimes, and indeed the electoral process which brings about perceived injustice. It is a sad story that a beautiful country like Nigeria with tremendous human and material resources and should be the most dynamic business destination in the world is the one suffering insurgency.
