By Henry Uche
Two term governor of Kano State, Ibrahim Shekarau, who was a former senator and minister of Education, in a monitored interview on Channels TV spoke on President Bola Tinubu’s administration and other salient issues in the country.
Eminent Nigerians visited the president and proposed a constitution of a Constituents assembly. We’ve seen confab 2014 and other documents gathering dust somewhere, what do you think that is the way forward?
I have always had the opinion that Nigeria has enough on the nose to govern our operations. The Constitution, various legislations, national, state, left, right and centre. Our problem is attitudinal. Our leaders must accept that there are a certain number of things that are not necessarily written down in our law books, not necessarily written down in the Constitution. I have always argued what I call ‘the constitution of common sense”, there are a number of things that ordinarily, irresponsible leadership and organized leadership that recognize its responsibility and the responsibility of others should not be a problem. Agreed. The constitution has defined the role of the Federal Government, has defined the role of the state government and the local government. These definitions are likely to allow smooth operation and some level of independence, but that does not mean we should be operating at very parallel dimension. Because ultimately, it is the same common pool of people that are in government. The people at the local government are the same people at the state level, same people at the federal level. So, there has to be some synergy. There has to be some understanding there. There have to be some cooperation. We have had this in the past; there were instances that I remember when I was governor, Obasanjo called us, he said look, while the Constitution agreed, or spells out that you are independent of the Federal Government, but there should be some synergy and some understanding. And I remember very well the issue then was that he was complaining that most governors don’t even inform him when they wanted to travel out and he would want to reach out to a particular governor and somebody would tell him oh, I saw your governor yesterday on the streets of London in the UK, and he feels very embarrassed. He said, just let me know. The Constitution doesn’t have to say that no governor should move out of his state without the approval of Mr. President. It’s not about approval. It’s not about taking permission from the president. But you’re operating within the similar environment, whatever the President does, affects every citizen of Nigeria, whether at state level or at the local government level and visibly the state. So, I think, in my opinion, we need not go this length of new Confab, or new conferences, the question I kept emphasizing with all due respect to people occupying offices, we need to put our thinking cap, know what is right at any given time, give due regard to the various levels of our operation, and some understanding. So, I don’t see any reason why, I was in opposition for almost all the period I served as governor for eight years, but we operated very well, we cooperate with the Federal Government. There were points of disagreement and we do that with due respect. And I recall very well, President Obasanjo also reciprocated by respecting some of us in the opposition. The opposition doesn’t mean you should be subservient to the Federal Government. Of course, my state was independent, we were in different parties, but we knew the central government that coordinates all that we do.
Many believe the constitution is our main problem; do you think jettisoning the constitution is the right way to go?
Well, you see, no constitution on earth, no, any law on earth is perfect. And hence our constitution no matter what changes you make, with time circumstances do dictate what to adjust, what to change, what to remove, what to add, what to cancel, what to improve upon. So, while I agree that the Constitution is full of some discrepancies when there are disagreements, which were discovered through the process of operation, that I think is not totally the issue of the Constitution, no matter how perfect the rules and the regulations, or content of the Constitution, it still boils down to the operators of the Constitution. Let me quickly give you an example. The Constitution suppresses powers, between the executive and the legislature; it is just to give a defined role of each of the two arms of government. But what I kept emphasizing is that the ultimate goal is the generality of the Nigerian populace. So, whatever law you do, it is affecting the general public and therefore there must be a meeting point. I have said the executive should always carry the legislator along. If I may quickly give an example of my operations in Kano, I had 40 assembly members, out of which about a dozen were in the opposition in the PDP then, there was nothing we did that they were not carried along. I met them regularly till the end of my government; 40 of them. We ate lunch, dinner and exchanged felicitations; we joked, then we sat down to discuss issues of the state. They would advise us and we would advise them. There was no time I sent any proposal of any legislation to the state assembly without we sitting down to discuss the details, dotting the ‘I’, and crossing the ‘ts’. So, by the time we sent anything to the State Assembly, almost all of them were in the picture. There was no time we prepared any budget without the State Assembly. I expect such a thing to operate even at the national level, where the President will be interacting, not only even with the leadership of the National Assembly, once in a while. If I were the president, once in a while, at least twice in a year, meet all the legislators in the room, declare an immunity for all. Let everybody say whatever he wants. Anybody that will abuse you inside the room will not do so outside on the street. Allow them to vomit. Let the opposition be there. Let there be discussion with the members. Do it regularly. In fact, I was doing it monthly in my state. So, for the eight years, I have never had one day disagreement with my state assembly. The traditional rulers too, I didn’t have to wait for anybody to make provision in the Constitution before I involved the traditional institutions, I set up an advisory council of about 50 wise men with all categories, the youth, the women, the young, the old, the bureaucrats and the politicians, the religious leaders. I and the Emir of Kano, we were the co- chairmen, we were chairing the council, we meet every last Thursday of every month. We discussed issues of the state. And I told that council you have no-go area or anything. There were instances when the council would invite me to explain what we have done in government, what policy we brought, what is the wisdom. So, we interacted. I carried the traditional institutions along. I met all the district heads. I set up committees in the local government and the wards, and we met them, chairman of the committees. They meet every month. We met the local governments, giving them sitting allowances. We met the local governments, bought new brand vehicles for all the districts to enable them to take a tour regularly to their local governments and visit and for that reason every week, every district must turn in a report of what is happening in his constituency, so we carried them along. We reviewed their salaries, we reviewed their scheme of service, we made them to be happy, and we carried them along. We didn’t have to wait for the Constitution and for the legislature. I remember when late Yar’Adua came into office, the very month he was sworn in, he invited all of us, the governors, regardless of our political affiliation. He said, Look, you and I are now elected. Let’s forget our political differences. Let’s forget our parties. You are my number one liaison officer in your state, and he made sure there was nothing he did in the state without involving us. I was an opposition then in the NNPP, Yar’Adua was in PDP, but he invited me. There was no appointment he made from Kano, the minister, Ambassador, adviser, without calling me to make my own input before he even announced it to the appointee. There was no disagreement between me and the Minister or the issue of the federal fighting the state governor.
You mean the president should bring more stakeholders to himself?
Absolutely. Interaction with the state governors. An open one. Not just the usual formal council meeting. No, let there be an atmosphere of friendliness, an atmosphere of relaxation. Send out all the media people, the aides and so on. Sit with them, let them open up! Through that, you learn a lot, and then you share with them your policies.
How do you handle the disconnect between the government and the people?
You see even a child of two, three years, when you recognize such a child, the child will respect you. The child will respond. So, it depends. There is a total disconnect. There is loss of confidence. People are not carried along in governance. So, we need to restore confidence in governance in Nigeria at all levels. We have a situation where a governor will just wake up behaving like a military governor, deciding, on Project A should be there, Project B should be there without any consultations. What we’re doing, as I told you earlier on, if the child, if the youth know that you are involving their elders in the process of governors, they will certainly listen to them. If you know that I respect your father, I visit him, he visits me, we discuss and whatever we do, your father will be telling the child that I’m involved in this. There is no way you as a child of your father will disrespect me, because he knows that his elders, his father, his leaders, are involved in the business of governance. That’s why I said the problem is that of attitude. Fortunately, I’m not speaking of anything abstract. I have done it. It is possible. It is working. It worked for us.
Underaged protesters, are you worried?
Oh, definitely. It’s very, very unfortunate. You see, unfortunately, when you don’t involve the leaders, I’ve told you just a moment ago, we set up consultative forum in almost every ward, 484; in every ward, we had a committee of not less than 10, and they sat to meet every month, they discussed issues on the locality, youth were being involved. So, even this so called lack of employment, poverty does not mean madness. The people are carried along. People have confidence in the government. I remember Amino Kano, 40, 50, years ago, he used to say that, ‘if the ordinary man on the street will go into the market and be a load carrier and get three pence, if he has confidence and trust in government, he will bring two pence to the government and live on one penny because he knows the services of two pence will reach out to him’. We have situation still where a city or any of the major towns in our state is lacking very good water, drinking water, is lacking good network, route connection and rural infrastructure coming up, but they see frivolous projects worth billions. If your father is a pensioner, for example, he is being held his pension for months or for years. There is no way you and the family will respect the government. That’s why, when we came in, the first thing we did, I took back 20 years back, and within two years, we cleared every one kobo of the pensioners, they became happy. Their parents became happy.
A young man was sharing with us that before we paid his father who retired 15 years earlier on, he could not pay the fees. He could not feed the house and he dropped out of school, but immediately we paid him his pension, he decided to open a small shop selling some provisions. He now said, they can now go to school. No pensioner would be given his pension and he goes to deposit it in his account. They go to the market. The money would circulate. I always wonder why the leaders would not have that godly mind to settle these people. Back to what you’re saying, these street things are an outburst of the anger and disconnect from the government. People just feel right inside them that the government is not for them.
What about this narrative being painted that there is a particular action against the Tinubu government coming from some northern elites?
No, I think that is very naive. I don’t trust that. I don’t believe in that. You see, we have had crises in the past when we had the answers. There were killings, there were destruction of properties in Lagos. That didn’t mean that they were after the government of that particular time? No, I don’t believe that. I think even these excuses of it is from the opposition. Does a hungry man need anybody to instigate him when he gets the slightest opportunity? A hungry man, people say, is an angry man.
Are you worried as a leader of Kano about the Emirship and what is happening in the emirate?
Well, I think I beg to decline, because, you see, I’m a very senior member of the emirate Council. Apart from that, I have governed that state. I’m a very senior citizen of the state. And the matter is in court. The day the matter went to court, I said, I will not discuss. I will not intervene. I will not interfere in the matter, because the matter is in court, I don’t want to talk about it.
But does it bother you?
Naturally, I am from Kano, I will want everything in Kano to be peaceful, so we are waiting, and my prayer is that we overcome it soonest, and there will be peace, because we need the traditional institution. I just told you, how I engaged them, how I involved them, and that led to peace. So, I think I wouldn’t want to go into that because I belong to the institution.
Would you rather prefer a more political way in resolving it?
Well, unfortunately, it is the political angle that seems to have led us into all these crises. If the politicians have kept away from all of these things, and of course, the traditional institutions properly engaged, I don’t see any area of disagreement; just the same way I explained the Federal Government, state and local government, the same way the traditional institutions are leaders by their own right in society; the governor or the government and any government appointee is also a leader. There has to be this synergy of understanding, I’ve just told you the 50 people Advisory Council I set up. It was I and the Emir of Kano that were presiding over such a city. So, you find that by involving the Emir himself, bringing myself and all categories of people in that assembly, we were already working together, and everybody was happy.
With trillions shared among the three tiers of government, the big question is, how responsible are the federal and state governors to the local government? Can we sustain the way things are going?
No, certainly we cannot. And people have been crying out, this system is certainly too expensive, and unfortunately, apart from the high cost of running the government with all due respect, we are getting not the right people all the time in position of offices. A situation whereby people get to office because of the money they have, because of the godfatherism, because of the party influence and so on, we can never get it right until the process is cleaned up enough; the process is such that the right people with the right background and experience are allowed to go into office, either elected or appointed. So, I think our greatest problem, as I see it, as you said, having gone through all the processes, is the problem of getting the people occupying offices, be it executive position or appointment at any level, appreciating the fact that they are there to serve. That’s one. Number two, you need to have the ability to weigh and identify people’s priorities. Is not about your priority as President, is not your priority as a party, is not the priority of the governor and so on. It is what is the priority of the people you are governing.
But they sold a manifesto to the people.
Well, with all due respect, I’ve said it sometime, I think in this platform or some other places, I challenge more than 50 or 60 percent of those elected; I asked maybe social scientists to conduct a research on this. Most of them have never set their eyes on the manifestos of their party. There is hardly any party that does not have a manifesto with the Constitution. There was a time our party went as far as saying you have to sign undertaking as a candidate that you will operate the manifesto of the party by the time they get into office. The way we are operating the manifesto is the manifesto of the mind of the chief executive. Otherwise, you will not be seeing all of these rubbish going on, misplacement of priorities and very bogus projects, elephant projects, billions of Naira being wasted while the people that you are governing are dying. Basic things are not there. So, I think manifesto, yes, I think we need a lot of societal orientation, not only on the electorate, to understand the need to elect in the right people, but also a review of the process even within the political parties, so that the process is such that the political parties will have candidates that are really acceptable to the people, candidates, that people are judged to have got all what it takes to be there. But what will happen today is a matter of people coming into office behaving as I said earlier, with all due respect to the military, like military governors, you just wake up, and a governor will decide a particular project, no checks and balances, no consultations. It took us months when I was building up our budget, the planning department, we held series of consultations with elders across the board. As I told you, the council, the local government, and we went out to ask people, what are their priorities? There are peculiarities. There are demands different from one local government to the other, and people’s aspirations are not being addressed.
Do the governors need to change their attitude?
Absolutely!
Capability of those handling the economy, what do you think this government needs to do urgently to turn around these negative indices?
Well, I think, as many opinions have been expressed since the beginning of the protest and the address of Mr. President, from what we read, from what we hear, the analysis that most people are not satisfied with what the President has given in his address. Honestly, what I expect personally is, out of the list of all issues identified, I expect one or two looks at what people call low hanging fruits and address them. You see the issue of this subsidy matter, to be or not to be, everybody agreed, I think I was here on this platform when I said that if I were the president, I wouldn’t have mentioned anything about subsidy the day he was being sworn in. To be fair to him, Buhari government did not put it in the 2023, budget, and he came midway. Instead of sitting down to see what it is, if I were him, I wouldn’t make any reference to it until I get into office. I get my economic advisers, experienced people and tell them let’s look at what the previous government had done.
So, it’s a misstep, according to you
Yes
Some people said it was audacious, how do you reverse the consequences that we are seeing?
Well, reversing the consequences is going back to the drawing board. From the address he gave to the nation a couple of days ago, it is as if he was saying the issue of subsidy is gone and they are not going to revisit it. I think that was very, very serious error. If I were him, we admit, accept that there were problems, accept that there were some errors, that you’re going to look at it, and immediately after that, people will see you putting in place, looking into that matter. Let it be public, for example, immediately the crisis started, and he discovered that the issue of subsidy is the number one thing people are complaining about, high cost of fuel and petrol, set up a technical committee. Let there be some open public hearing, technical people sitting down to see what exactly is going on, and up to this moment, there are arguments that subsidy is still being paid in some whatever name you call it. So, if you are still paying subsidy in different name, in different ways, why now telling the nation that there is no going back on subsidy? We look at it. Every person in Nigeria, especially at the elite level believe that, yes, subsidy was found to be a source of wastages. That does not mean it should not be revisited and looked into. If I were him, I will set up a technical committee. I hope that is being done, but the public are not being carried along. It’s like throwing the baby with the bathe water along. If there are problems in a particular system, if there is a problem or a particular policy, that does not mean scrapping it totally is the solution. You go into it, find ways of adjustments to carry people along. I think this was being done by previous leaders in Nigeria. It was being gradually attended to, and anytime a government takes a decision and discovered that it has given rise to serious problem, there’s nothing wrong in revisiting it.
So, it was a political suicide?
Well, I think that is it, I said it before. The very days that subsidy is gone, most Nigerians didn’t even remember that it was Buhari that started it, that removed subsidy from the budget. But the day Tinubu was being sworn in, he said, subsidy is gone.
Buhari has left him a dead economy, a dead baby to be resuscitated, would you blame President Tinubu?
There is hardly any new government that does not inherit problems. No government leaves without issues. This blame game should not be there. Buhari spent almost 2/3 of his time blaming PDP government. And if Tinubu will come and start blaming Buhari, it’s not the issue. There are always going to be problems on ground. What is important? What are you doing to address the problems.
You contested for President but today, if you were on that seat, what would you do differently?
I have told you, one. It’s not just to say that I recognize that there is hunger, we identify these issues mentioned. Don’t forget, the protesters gave government almost four weeks notice. If I give you notice that I was coming to fight you, and you went to sleep, that’s your problem. So, I think there was enough time for the government. I don’t know, I don’t have the details, probably they were doing a lot of backyard measures, but the public were not carried along. The leaders of identified civil societies and organizations were not carried along. We waited until there is fire on the mountain, then we came running, running, running, within the period of the notice. Probably they naively did not expect it to be at that level. I pray for him, as we say in the teaching job, the best learning is when you learn through your mistakes. Let the government sit back, identify what areas have you made some errors, what mistakes have you made? What pronouncements were made in error. What policies were put in place that are really breeding this kind of crisis of hunger, high cost of living, inflation to about 40- 45 percent.
What would you do immediately?
Well, immediately, as I said, the issue is appreciate item by item, that these problems are real. They are there. And then you identify relevant sectors, relevant people that will come in and carry the people along.
You don’t think he has the right people to get the job done right now?
I don’t know who’s who in his appointment. I can’t assess whether they are the right people. The question is the people are not being properly carried along, I think, therefore they are working up to that. Now I’ve seen a lot of publicity, a lot of communication. I was watching the Minister of Information visiting the media houses and exchanging some discussions, some information. The people need to be carried along as to what you’re doing.
Do you believe in the capacity of President to get the job done?
I think if he knew he wouldn’t be able to do it, I don’t think he would have put up himself to do it. I pray for him, and I pray this is going to be a learning process that, as I said, you learn through your mistakes. Admit there are some wrongs that have been committed, some errors, probably certain things have been taken for granted, and this is the time to sit down back and we are still hopeful, and I pray that the government succeeds regardless. My own opposition is not a blind opposition. Once you are in office, we pray for you, because if he fails, it is the same citizens that will be suffering.