The emergence of Governor Idris Wada as the candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) for next month’s governorship election in Kogi State was not without challenges. In this interview with reporters in Lokoja, the state capital, he speaks on the intrigues and challenges that characterised the governorship primary and his chances at the poll. JAMES AZANIA was there.
How did you survive the hurdle to become as the PDP governorship candidate?
For me, everything I do, I put God first. I have a very plain heart and a very clear agenda for transformation of the state and the essence of my desire to seek a second term is to be able to consolidate on some of the things I have done so far, to ensure that we put the state on a path of sustainable development. So, with that determination, I was not deterred when challenges started coming in the course of the primary; I was not under any pressure or stress because of my faith in God Almighty and the clear and transparent agenda that I have for the transformation of our state. A lot of efforts were put in by the national leadership of our party, the elders at the state level, to try and broker peace to ensure that we stick together as a party and face the challenges of the primary. So, in Abuja several meetings were held to try and come up with a consensus candidate, but it did not work. Afterwards, we had no choice but to go and test our popularity with the delegates. Thus, I willingly subjected myself to the process. With the grace of God Almighty and the trust our members have in me, we went for the contest and the rest is history. But, I think it’s a credit to the PDP that we went through that process and came out basically unscratched, because there were three aspirants; one of them is working very closely with me and we are still talking with the other one. I have also set up reconciliation committees, to talk to various aggrieved groups within our party. This election is critical to the survival of the PDP. So, it’s about the PDP and not me as an individual.
With the picture you have painted, will it be right to say that the PDP is going into this election as a united party?
Yes, it is going into this election as a united family. Of course, in the party, like in a family, it is almost impossible to have 100 per cent carriage of people on one platform. There may still be a few issues that are not fully resolved. But, substantially, we will go into this election as a united family, because members know that the success of the PDP in this election is critical to the survival of our party nationally.
Following the flag off of your campaign in Ayingba recently, how would you assess your chances of re-election in November?
The impression I had during the flag off was that of being highly overwhelmed. We started the process of this rally abruptly. We concluded on our campaign time-table and decided that we will start with zonal rallies in the three senatorial districts; we just decided on Ayingba as the place to start and few people were tasked. We inaugurated the campaign committee a few days before the rally. But, the kind of turnout we witnessed was overwhelming; we have never seen that kind of crowd in a rally inAyingba. Even in 2011, I didn’t attract that level of popularity. We were all there. There was nowhere to pass, nowhere to park, people waited. When I went in and had a meeting at the university with the vice chancellor and the leadership, then we went to the traditional ruler before the campaign started. What this portends is that our people are beginning to see that this government has a clear agenda for the development and transformation of the state. They can see sincerity of purpose in the style of my administration; everybody is relaxing in the state now, nobody is afraid or under tension that the governor is going to victimize them or officials of government will victimize them. There is heightened security arrangement in the state; it’s very clear. Of course, there are minor crimes and all that, but you cannot foreclose such. We have worked hard to ensure peace and security in this state. We are also working hard on agriculture and infrastructure, as well as human capital development, education, health and industrialization. You can see sincerely that there is a sustainable path of development and transformation of this state and they are coming out now to show their support by coming out for this kind of rally. You could see they were not a rented crowd. We don’t have the money to rent crowd. There are 239 wards. So, I was highly encouraged and confident that our people are appreciating our efforts and they will support us into the next election.
What new things are you bringing to the table?
When I came in, I had a think-tank that produced a blueprint for transformation of this state. So, we have in mind a 10-year plan for the transformation of Kogi State. I know the maximum tenure I have is eight years, but by the time if we implement the 10-year agenda and you finish eight years it will be sustainable. Even if somebody comes and say I am not going to complete the next two years, substantially, a lot of the work has been done to put this state on a modern platform for development. So, it’s not about new things, it’s about consolidating what we are doing, so that in four years we would have done a lot of the things we have planned for the state in agriculture, industrialisation, education and health. These are key and critical elements of our economic and social agenda for the people. So, what I need to do is to work out on the implementation, work out on the improvement and work out on making sure that there is buy-in by all the critical stakeholders for the transformational agenda I have for Kogi State.
What is the true situation of the bailout funds concerning Kogi State?
The true situation with regards to Kogi State is that we were one of the first states to comply with all the documentary requirements of the CBN for this state. We applied for about N86 billion because this is a window that is rare in the economy of Nigeria; for the Federal Government to offer you a 20-year loan at nine percent. Given the interest rate of commercial loans, it as an opportunity to aggregate all our financial challenges and take this loan to clear outstanding commitments and move forward. After assessment, it was reduced to about N50 billion, because the issues of pension, gratuity and bonds are not included. The priority is to restructure commercial bank loans. Kogi State had the lowest commercial bank loan in Nigeria. What we owed banks at that stage was N860 million.
The next stage was salaries of workers. So, in our state we looked comprehensively at the loans. For some years we have been paying percentage salaries because the money from local government as a tier of government comes directly from federation account, and because our local governments are generally overstaffed because of our own social setting — this is a civil service state — I have hesitated to take any step that will lead to relieving workers of their jobs. I felt that whatever we have it is better we make sure that it covers as many people as possible; so we tried to pay something to workers. What we have done is to calculate some of the shortfalls in percentage payment and to utilise this loan to pay the workers, so that those who have lost some money over the years will be paid back. So, that was approved for our local government employees and our teachers and also for the civil servants that were being owed about two months’ salary. It’s actually one month, because we use money from other sources to pay salary, that’s why we are applying for two months, to sort out ourselves in terms of civil service. We are basically up to date in the civil service, but when you add workers of the state government, local government workers and then teachers, these are the three components of our bailout. We now returned the documentation, then the CBN sent us an email, saying they want to have biometric data on all the teachers and all the local government workers that we are claiming for, and we supplied. We have done biometric verification… then later they said they want BVN (Bank Verification Number) of these people, so we said, look BVN has just come in, many have complied, but there those that have not complied. So, we have notified them to go and get their BVN. But, that does not disturb the processing of the funds, because our workers are in expectation. They were threatening to block this highway to express their anger over the delay in payment of their salaries; because once you have now published N50 billion for Kogi State, if you go back it will cause a lot of industrial problem. So, I spent one week in Abuja pursuing it.
I can tell you now that we are very close and by the grace of God within the next three weeks or two we will be able to access this loan and come back and fulfill out our financial obligations to workers.
There are insinuations that the opposition parties are working against it because they feel it might shore up your popularity…
That is politics; we are in politics. You can expect that from the opposition. They will do anything to make sure that they ensure that the PDP does not win the election. So, if they can use their clout at the federal level to stop us accessing the funds, they would do so. But, it’s a message to our workers that this a government that cares for about them; we are prepared to take a 20-loan to sort out their financial affairs. Any party who is blocking such effort by government is not a party they should support. They should support a party that cares about them. I have been very prudent with the management of the resource of this state; not taking loan anyhow. If I had taken N300 million loan and built things everywhere anyhow, by now that would have been restructured to 20 years. States that borrowed anyhow, their finances have been restructured. Those of us who were prudent have shown diligence in the management of public finance are now being made to look… and not to benefit from this window which President Muhammadu Buhari has opened for Nigerians. You are workers too, you may not be working for government, but you should recognise this sincerity. Our state could not have been approved for this kind of amount if we had over borrowed, if already half of our allocation is for paying interest and going into financial banks, we would have not qualified. We won’t be able to amortize the loan over the next 20 years. So, our efforts need to be recognised and not serve as punishment or for any political shenanigans. So, I praise President Buhari for opening this window to enable us restructure our finances, carry our workers along on a progressive agenda for our country.
The APC challenge is real in Kogi State. What strategies is the PDP employing to overcome it?
We recognise the APC challenge, particularly when they have the federal government. My appeal to President Buhari is to please create the enabling environment, an equitable environment, level playing field, for us to test our popularity and acceptability by the electorates. Let’s not have overwhelming federal presence in this election. It’s a state election, it’s not a federal election. Let the people freely express themselves, let’s have unbiased security and environment for us to test our popularity.
So, the challenge is real, but I am confident that with what we have done and with what we plan to do for our people over the next four years, with the peaceful environment our people have, progressive agenda of my government and administration and with sincerity of purpose and honesty, I am confident that our people, looking at what will we do over the next four years and what we are doing now, will re-elect us to remain in-charge of the affairs of our state.
Power shift has become an issue and is being used as a bargaining power by the political parties. How is the PDP going to implement it if re-elected?
My position on power shift or power rotation has been consistent since I came into office. Within the first 100 days, I made a speech, outlining my vision for the state. I made it very clear that I want us to unite our people for a common purpose of leveraging on the human and natural resources of our state for transformation and moving the state to the next level; to make our state one of the 10 states to be reckoned with in Nigeria. So, I started on the platform and agenda of bringing our people together, trusting each other, that we are all equal before God and we are all equal stakeholders in the affairs of the state. I noted that what has made power rotation a dream rather than a reality is because it always comes into the political agenda whenever people are running for governorship. If they are running for House of Assembly or National Assembly, you don’t hear about power shift or power rotation. It’s only when people are running for governor and this topic comes up every four years.
After we win the election, everybody forgets about it and people are running away from it. So, my position is that we should make it a continuous agenda, a topic for discussion, a topic for continuous engagement of the stakeholders from all the three zones, including the minority tribes in each of these zones, because each of these zones has a minority tribe. We are all talking of Igala, Igbira and Okun, how about the minorities among them? We have Bassa, we have Koto, and we have Ebira in Ajaokuta… a mixture of Igbira and Igala people. We have various minorities, we have Akpayan, we have micro groups, mini groups within these broad tribes and people that we have in the state.
So, what are the social implications? What are the political implications? What are the economic implications?
Where should it go to first? Is it Okun or is it Igbira? And then,when does it come back to Igala land, is it Igala, is it Bassa Komo… all these details need to be discussed openly over the next four years, for us to have a clear framework on how the power rotation can be actualised. These thing was debated during the recent National Conference, so there is already some kind of framework which were presented by about 20 members at the National Conference. So, this topic has already been discussed at nationally. We can borrow from there and use it to guide our steps here in Kogi. I am a leader you can trust because once I take a position I will do my best as a human being to actualise it. So, I am asking our people to let us engage ourselves over the next four years, trust me to provide the environment and framework to have this discussion, arrive at a position we can that we can actualize power rotation agenda and it will happen by the grace of God and the cooperation of all our citizens.
For me, it is a matter of trust. Which of the candidates can you trust to deliver on this agenda?
