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
