Governor of Kebbi State, Usman Dakingari, is convinced that airports wherever they are sited are pivotal to socio-economic development as social infrastructure and speaks amidst plans to engage foreign carriers to consider the strategic location of the Sir Ahmadu Bello International Airport in Kebbi into a cargo hub for West Africa. Kelvin Osa-Okunbor met him. Excerpts:
What is the moivation for building a N17 billion airport, the Sir Ahmadu Bello International Airport in Kebbi State?
In Nigeria today, in the north, only one or two states is without an airport and that is Zamfara State; all the rest have their airports. So, everybody has understood that airports are part of development and they are catalyst to development. Economic development is facilitated both in short and long term by having a quick gateway in and out of the state. This enhances the movement of human, good and services and give rise to a burst of economic development. Movement of goods is made easy; at least it is the best thing that can happen to any state and airport happens to be one of the best ways to do that.
Given the fact that Kebbi State is an agro-allied state, how will this airport jump-start your capacity to export those produce that are here?
Let me say this, Dangote’s company approached Kebbi state and expressed the desire to put an investment of about $9 billion, in sugar cane, rice and maybe ranching. I have seen it in Kenya and other places in Namibia. They send meat overseas to Europe. If people like Dangote come in and say this is possible; we have fruits, onions; we have one of the best markets for onion in Kebbi State. These days we produce watermelon too, we produce mangoes and all these are things that can go overseas.
And we have the weather to produce also flowers; we can also export. At present there is a farmer just around the airport that has started warehousing; he will build warehouses for both export and import. These are things that will not happen in one day but the airport is futuristic. In the last two weeks, we started flying in and out of Kebbi, today the aircraft that we started with was full all the time and at times we had to leave passengers. So, by God’s grace, we are likely to improve and get a better aircraft and we are sure we will take 60 per cent of the passengers in Sokoto.
So the airport will be busy and with the sophisticated equipment we have on ground at the Kebbi airport, during harmatan, there is the likelihood that airlines will not fly Sokoto route and the Sokoto passengers will likely come to Kebbi where flights can take off at low visibility because of the precision and the sophisticated instrument landing system and other equipment that we have, so there are a lot of viability in that airport and this is why we are looking for a next governor who has the exposure, who is well educated to continue to sustain the tempo of development when we leave and for the next five years.
How did you source funds and how much in terms of cost component did it cost your administration to put together this project?
The cost of the project is within the range of about N17billion and when we were building the airport I said it is futuristic, we want the best out of the airport and I also want a situation whereby we can lease it out. You just talked about states not having funds; maybe airlines like Emirates, Ethiopian Airlines can lease this kind of airport and make use of it for cargo and passenger operations. If you have regular flights no matter where you drop cargo or passengers they can connect to wherever they want to go to. And with airlines like Emirates, I am sure they can make this place busy and connect even West Africa from here like Niger, Cotonou, Ivory Coast and other countries like Morocco, Libya and Algeria are shorter from Kebbi State than any other place around here.
Given the geographical location of this airport, partnership is key to driving traffic into this airport more so that you are looking at partnership with global carriers like Emirates and others, what is the level of engagement with those airlines with a view to attracting them to come and operate from this airport?
What we are trying to do is to commission a consultant who will go round, introduce this airport to other people, like you are here now you have just seen the airport, I am sure from the time the president came here to date, I am sure the airport is well known around the country and maybe, sooner or later people will start asking questions and people with interest may likely invest. This is a state airport, it is available to people who want to use it and what we are trying to do is that once we have the airport, the services is what we are looking for. So, even if somebody takes the airport we still get the services.
Are you favourably disposed to discuss with other airlines with a view to having daily flights in and out of Kebbi?
Yes we are. We started with one airline but we saw that they were dragging their feet and we have to engage Air Peace so that we can start the operation as quickly as we can. So, now we can sit down and plan, Air Peace comes in four days in a week, there are three days available so we can open discussions on the three days. And maybe also Sokoto has been having two flights we can take a bigger aircraft for a daily flight. We have Aero Contractors and Arik coming into Sokoto so we can equally, maybe take one and leave them with one there.
For human capacity development, are you training indigenes that will work in this airport?
We are training a lot of hands and we have recruited young graduates whom we are likely to send to schools around the country or even overseas so that we can run the airport efficiently and we can have hands that can handle any type of task at the airport.
Are you in discussions with neighbouring states on how they can benefit from the airport by moving their produce from here?
We are doing that and this is why I said we are envisaging having inland ports Lolo just at the boarder of Republic of Benin to take traffic from Cotonou. And the airport is well situated, you can take passenger from Kano to Kebbi, you combine it to Cotonou or to Niger Republic or to Abuja. Somebody who is coming from Niger Republic will spend three hours on road to this place, so you can leave by 7:00 am and 10:00 am you are here. You can board an aircraft in Kebbi and be in Abuja or in Lagos maybe within two hours or four hours.
We heard you were able to offset the debts owed by your predecessor and Kebbi State is now debt free. How have you been able to galvanise all these projects with the limited resources at your disposal?
The internally generated revenue is maybe about half a billion Naira annually and what we get in terms of allocation from the federal government usually is what we use. Two things, once you block the leakages and you are prudent and the corruption is minimal and with self-determination, you can get what you want. This is first state among all the states in Nigeria that started e-payment; that is way back six years ago. So, we came with a vision that, look, this is what we want to do.
I think in Nigeria today, Kebbi has one of the best rural network of roads. And it was deliberate because that is the only way you can develop a state. This is why when people talk about rice in Kebbi, it is not difficult to see; once you can evacuate it and people can access areas in the state they can go and buy the farm produce directly, you find out that producing those things is not difficult.
Now we produce rice three times in a year and you will find out that we do dry season farming twice then the rainy season production once. And some people are more prepared to produce more during dry season because they can control all the elements rather than where you cannot predict anything during the raining season. So I think Kebbi now has a foothold on food production, especially rice.
Now people have realised that you can get income from farming. Civil servants who have retired now go into farming. So they use their gratuity to invest in farming. In Kebbi we have a policy of paying everybody’s gratuity at once, so you can use it to invest in rice production or any other area you want. And we have been paying this entitlement in bulk, we don’t cut it. You find a permanent secretary getting up to N20 million, so if that civil servant goes into the production of rice, you will find out that he will be okay. And I can tell you that for the last seven years the price of food is stable in Kebbi State.
What has your administration done in the area of healthcare?
We have hospitals in all the local government areas; in some cases we have more than three in one local government. We have rural clinics, and we had collaboration with MDGs. In every ward there is a clinic which is manned by federal government midwives scheme. And this is why healthcare is improving in Kebbi very rapidly. If you look at the statistics of Aids, you will find that there is less than one per cent of the prevalence in Kebbi State. We are the first state in the north that had no polio case for a long time. We have a programme for children under five years, from the day they are born we give them free medical attention until they are five years. We have the nutritional programme for children that are nutritionally sick. So, with the collaboration with UNICEF and other agencies, we had so many programmes that have helped Kebbi to raise the health indices.
We have a programme in Kebbi state where we removed all the mentally challenged people on the roads to a hospital. We don’t keep them in the hospital; we treat them every week on Saturdays. You bring in the patients and they are treated for stress, madness and whatever disease that is related to madness. And this how we were able to get this feat accomplished. Today, as I talk to you, you can’t see any mad man on the streets of Kebbi State.
Release of letters of employment to about 4,000 teachers, to what extent is this going to galvanise educational development in the state?
We had a problem of enrolment before I came in. I think Kebbi is one of the lowest in terms of enrolment. So we now had built a lot of schools, we now have over 400 schools for both junior and secondary schools. More than 60 per cent of those schools are boarding, now we have over 400,000 students. So, it is only right after producing so many schools to recruit teachers. And the next item on our calendar is to also buy books and other materials for teaching. I think with that we will be rest assured that the indices for our education will improve in Kebbi State. And it has become a source of employment to reduce the graduates on the streets of Kebbi State.
On succession, what mechanism have you put in place to ensure that the right person who will continue with your development philosophy succeeds you?
You should expect a better person than me. We would want to build on what we have, we should not destroy and I am sure the person who is coming will be more competent than I am.
