Governor Abdullahi Umar Ganduje of Kano state recently played host to some editors and senior journalists; who toured projects sites in parts of the state. He also had an interactive session with the visiting journalists and fielded questions on the milestones of his administration; the challenges, as well as disagreements in the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) among others.
Isamail Omipidan and Magnus Eze were there for Daily Sun
Despite the current economic recession, your administration has embarked on several major projects. Where are you getting the funds?
First and foremost I will like to make two major comments on our funding and revenue generation. One, we formed the internally generating revenue board by removing all the civil servants from revenue collection and sending them back to the Head of Civil Service and employing the best practices in modern revenue collection. We engaged a recruitment outfit and invited almost everybody interested to work in that place, and after completing the recruitment which was transparent, we made the outfit independent. We don’t pay their salaries; we are only giving them a percentage of whatever they collect and a group of young men and women, who have the experience and knowledge in modern revenue collection, took the advantage. I think that is the beginning of the story. `
Secondly, sometimes it is not only the quantum of money that you have; the quantum of money of course is necessary, it’s indispensable – but another source of revenue is blocking leakages. What N10 million could do if business is as usual, you will find out that 7 or 6 million naira could do it if business is not as usual. So, to me that is revenue; which is not estimated in the normal revenue estimation. So by blocking of leakages, reducing cost of governance, being transparent in the award of contracts, having knowledge of implementation of projects with the timeline and having auditors and due process to be strong in the system, is another way of revenue, for me. The revenue board is still young, however we are expanding and we are studying other governments that we believe are superior in revenue collection and now  the board is engaging more hands. For example, last week we employed 765 university graduates in various fields to assist in the collection of revenue.
There is a notion in Nigeria that many state governors usually perform well in their first term in office while they relax in their second term. The slogan of 4+4 in Kano is loud now, what kind of pact do you have with the people of Kano state?
I don’t know how you drew your conclusion on this issue but in our own case we know that we want to leave a legacy; we know that we must leave a mark because one day we have to leave the scene and we want to be remembered for the good things we have done for the state. Don’t forget that I am not coming from the blues as far as governance is concerned. I have been a recruit in public service. I started from Grade Level 8 as a graduate and went through all the levels up to 17. That is for the civil service. For the academic environment, I am a PhD holder from the premier university,  University of Ibadan. First when I was looking for admission, I said I wanted a university where I will face tribal and religious challenges and somebody told me to go to the University of Ibadan and in my class, I was the only Hausa man and I liked it. I came out of that and I was a university lecturer.
In politics, I was secretary to a party at local government level, while an illiterate was my chairman. Later, I became state assistant secretary. I contested election and failed and I was rehabilitated by that administration; Shehu Shagari administration. So you see I have gone through so many sectors of development and I know it will be shameful for me to come and see and just leave. I have come to see and to conquer. So that is the issue. I don’t think I will belong to that category of administrators who work in their first term, after four years, they relax.  I cannot waste my time, planning on what to do after this, because we already have a template. And in intend to follow it to the later. Now, this 4+4 that you hear is because some people say I will do only one term then the people reacted, saying no, no. It is 4+4 and not one. Those things are words of politics anyway. There are the flavours of politics.
The APC seems to be losing grip of governance or acceptability given the fact of what is happening in the National Assembly, are you not threatened that the party might lose it, come 2019?
Let me start with what you observed that there is some lack of synchronization between the National Assembly and the Presidency, yes there is something like that. First of all, you know APC is a mega party; it is a party formed from different factions consolidating into one party.  It takes time; for those of you who read chemistry, there is difference between a mixture and a compound, a mixture is when you bring different substances; you will be able to separate the particles, while in a compound any party that you touch is the same. So, APC is a young party that is coming from a formation, those who read geology would know what forming a rock is from the beginning. That is one aspect of it and we should overcome that one. Another aspect is that democracy is growing because some of these disagreements you are talking about are part of the democracy because the executive has to swallow the bitter pills and the legislators too sometimes have to withstand bashes, but at the end of it, there will be a solution. It is even better than when everything is quiet, it looks like a stage managed kind of a thing or there are compromises here and there. But that kind of situation when there are no compromise here and there, it will eventually be resolved according to the dictates of democracy. Also, you know politics in third world countries is a very unpredictable phenomenon. Less than 24 months, before the coming of this administration, am sure if we invited you to come to Kano state in this number, you will not come because of the insecurity issue. At the time, churches were burnt, mosques were burnt, filling stations were burnt, motor parks were burnt, people were accosted on the highway and slaughtered, three quarters of local governments in Yobe and Borno were in the hands of insurgents but now it’s a different story. But just like I told you, politics in the third world country is very unpredictable. Now people have forgotten of that problem which was threatening everybody even trying to penetrate into the South. So, that achievement to most people, it may not look like an achievement simply because the problem has been solved. Then comes the problem of the economy, the cost of oil has gone down and we have to change the gear, we have to look more inwards and the bulk is that of agriculture and agriculture is not like the oil. It requires time; even the orientation of the farmers who are used to contracts in the offices, now you have to struggle for them to remain in the farms, for you to create an enabling environment to make agriculture profitable. That too, in itself is not something that you can do overnight.
But let me tell you when it comes to election it will be a different issue, don’t mind what are happening and all these comments – this is a go slow man, etc. When the variables of politics come into play, then, that is where you know that the assumption is faulty, when all the variables are put into play; then you will now understand that the gladiators of politics are on ground. So, I don’t believe that is an issue, it could be a temporary issue because of different perception.
Your party is alleged to be under funded at the national level, what is responsible for that?
Yes, it’s still part of the change mantra; people were used to getting cheap money, some struggle to be part of the officials in order to make money but the Buhari administration here is not like that, there is no money. If the party has programmes on ground, the governors have no problem to see how the party can be funded but let me tell you, the issue of taking government money to fund the party does not arise now, we have to look inwards. Like here in Kano we devised a system of funding the party, through the allowances from political office holders, and some form of activities by the political party that can generate money. However, we will not allow the party to crumble but at the same time we will not allow the party to flourish to the extent that business is as usual and corruption becomes attractive. Political party as an institution is supposed to create activities so that it will be self-funding but because we are used to bringing money from government to fund the party, people have become lazy. But it is time political parties think of ways even to invest, do so many things so that it will be self-sustaining.
What exactly did you do and what are you doing to sustain the current peaceful atmosphere in the state?
We have to thank Mr. President for destroying the nucleus of insurgency. Since the origin has been destroyed to a large extent, it becomes difficult for them to flourish. Here in Kano,  we work closely with the security agencies and also we work closely with communities in terms of security information, we work with various organizations, even the people and the security agencies get a lot of information, a lot of arrest is being made now without them being publicized.  After the insurgency of Boko Haram, the next thing was cattle rustling, and we have gotten over it too. We went to the affected rural communities where the herdsmen were losing a thousand number of cattle to just a few people who come with gun to take away the cattle. We have to even penetrate the herdsmen themselves because we discovered that most of the cattle rustling originated from themselves and that is the problem of herdsmen that have not been to school.
The herdsmanship has to change, we have to change it, if we don’t change it, we will continue to live with that problem. So, here we had to provide amnesty for some of them who agreed to lay down their arms and we compensated them for that and we have a request to the military to convert the Falgore forest to a training ground and also we intend to resettle our nomadic Fulani.
Already, we have identified five forest areas within Kano, we are already mapping out our strategy to resettle them so that they don’t move from one place to another, that is part of keeping the security intact. We have constructed security dormitories along the major roads entering Kano. Each security dormitory contains 40 security members, with all their communication gadgets; they sleep there and check all the major roads entering points to Kano.
What is the administration doing in providing education to the large army of street urchins, otherwise known as Almajirai in the state?
I have been saying it, that when you have a large population, you are at risk, because your population can be an asset or a liability and the only factor that can determine which way you go is education, so we have discovered that government cannot do it alone, people have to be committed, people have to show concern, people have to contribute. When we came in, we undertook a survey of the almaijiri issue, we have more than 3 million almajirai in Kano state but from our investigation, most of them are not indigenes of Kano state; some are from Niger, some from Chad, some from other states especially from the North-west and North-east. So we have taken two steps, one to introduce an element of integration, since we don’t have enough money to observe them by providing infrastructures, we don’t  have money to employ teachers because, the out of school children are  equal to those in the classroom, so we don’t have any money to employ teachers. So what we have done is that we introduced some core subjects into the almajirai schools, we introduced mathematics, English and social studies for which after sometimes, they can be able to take common entrance examination. Another part is to convince our counterparts, our governors who have a common boundary to avoid the migration of school children because we don’t have a law that will prevent any child from coming into Kano and any child that comes as an almajiri, we have an outfit that is taking them back to where they come from, but that is not a permanent solution. The permanent solution is for the states, especially the contiguous ones to have a law preventing the migration of school age children.
With what is on ground in terms of agriculture in Kano, can the state feed the nation?
Firstly, what we did was to eliminate subsidy because subsidy destroys whatever you want to do because it is easily captured by those untargeted groups, so what we did was to identify who are the actual farmers. Whatever enabling environment we create, we do it directly with the farmers. For instance, we identified those who are producing wheat, we discussed their problem of improved seeds, problems of mechanization, so if you sit with the farmers you will hear the whole story, you will see where you can come in, and that is why we are succeeding. I believe we are the largest producers of wheat in this country, just few days ago, we spent the whole day in the farm harvesting, visiting the farms, we are lucky that we have infrastructure, irrigation infrastructure built by the first governor of Kano state of blessed memory.  A foresighted man who constructed major dams in the state and that is what is giving us an advantage. And to add to that we also provided some level of mechanization, you find out that agriculture is now throughout the year not only for the raining season. As you move across the state, you will see thousands of men and women on their farms; they don’t even come to the city at all because they have something doing. We are also encouraging agriculture and we will continue to do that. In tomato paste production, we are still having some problems and we have requested Mr. President to come to our aid because up till now there is no strong fiscal policy on the importation of tomato paste. We succeeded in getting the richest man in Africa who is son of the soil here (Aliko Dangote) to establish a tomato paste factory but with the importation of tomato paste, the farmers are finding it difficult to fix the prices, so I believe the Federal government is working on that.