Former Governor of Kano state and chieftain of the newly formed All Progressives Congress (APC), Malam Ibrahim Shekarau in this interview, scores the nation’s security agencies low in the area of intelligence gathering and reveals that President Goodluck Jonathan refused to grant him audience to discuss Boko Haram crisis. The former governor, who was the presidential candidate of the All Nigeria Peoples Party (ANPP) in 2011, also harps on his political ambitions, relation with Muhammadu Buhari, the APC and his successor’s style of leadership in Kano.
One would find it striking that you not only chose to study Mathematics, but also decided to make teaching Mathematics a career, an area many dread. Were these conscious decisions?
Not really. In my primary school days, there was this serious and committed teacher, Alhaji Bello Ahmed Yakassai. He is still alive. He was my teacher and later, my headmaster and later, interestingly, he became my principal in secondary school as well.
He had one culture: anytime he came into the classroom, he would insist that you cram the multiplication table. If he told you, you must cram the second or third table on the multiplication, you must do so.
Otherwise, the side of one big ruler that he always had would land on your head. He did it in such a way that he wouldn’t allow you to prepare more than the time he had given you. He would just ask, “You, what’s 4x4, 5x6, 7x9?”
I didn’t want to disappoint him, so I began to take deeper interest in arithmetic. The teacher was a familiar person to my father and I could not just afford to disappoint him because he would readily report me to my father who was seriously committed to my schooling. So I became a very good student of arithmetic.
When I got to Aminu Kano Commercial College and began to study commercial arithmetic, I became very good in it and by extension, in mathematics as well. As students studying in a commercial school, the aspirations of most of us were to study accountancy, to become bank managers and the likes. My application to the Ahmadu Bello University was to read Accountancy. I filled the form, met all the requirements and submitted my form.
That was 1973. Unfortunately, my form got lost in their office. So I had to rush to Zaria to the Academic Secretary’s office. When he saw me, he started counseling me. He said you have good results in Commercial Arithmetic, General Mathematics and even Modern Mathematics. He said, “Why can’t you read Mathematics since you are very good in the subject?” As a young man, all I was concerned about was just getting admission into the university, and here was someone in the university urging me to come in.
Have there been some students you taught Mathematics who have excelled in the subject or in related disciplines?
Yes, there are many. There was a particular boy who I guided well on Mathematics and who went on to read it up to the doctorate level. He later got two other doctorals. I had forgotten about him. But not quite long ago, after he bagged his third doctorate, he sent all of them to my e-mail box. He then referred me, in the footnote, to page 27 of his notebook then at the Government Technical College, Wudil. He said I introduced them to Pythagoras Theorem and after introducing them to it, I gave them an assignment. He topped the class and I remarked in his notebook, “This is an excellent performance. You will make a very good mathematician. Please keep it up.” He is still keeping that notebook. He said that encouraged him to work harder on the subject and excel.
So at what point did you start departing from teaching to do politics?
I see politics beyond the narrow understanding of the practice in Nigerian partisan politics. I have been a politician long before I came into party politics. I was a politician in my Service year. I was active in the Nigeria Union of Teachers, which was their own kind of politics.
I was also active in my other professional body, the All Nigeria Conference of Principals of Secondary Schools (ANCOPSS). I started there as acting Secretary in 1981 and by 1982, I was elected the Kano State secretary. By 1984, I contested and was elected the state President. The following year, I was elected the National Vice President and three years later, 1988, I was elected the National President.
So it was that I was a school principal in five different schools over 13 years at a stretch. And along, I was involved in the politics of ANCOPPS. In 1988, I rose up to the post of National President; I was so elected. In 1990, I was elected for a second term. When I ended that term in 1992, some colleagues were even pushing for a third term for me when we had our congress in Ibadan. They moved a motion that the NUT constitution be amended to accommodate that. But I said no. I always tell the National Assembly that I was the first to kill a third term attempt. Consequently, they gave me a National Merit Award as a Life Member of the Principals’ Conference. They come to me for advice.
Last year, in February, on the Teachers’ Day, the NUT honoured me with a merit award because of the roles I had played as a teacher.
There was a particular instance that would be interesting to relate.
In 1985, when I was elected the National Vice President, one Mr Effiong or so from Akwa Ibom State was the National President. After 1985 when Babangida struck, the new military governor in Mr Effiong’s state appointed him a commissioner. Being the National Vice President, I naturally became the acting National President until the next congress in 1986. By the culture of our conference, we meet every three months in different states. So I had to lead the conference for three meetings before the congress in 1986. That acting capacity, leading the national exco in those meetings that is, exposed my abilities and capabilities, or my shortcomings, if you like, on how I could lead the body.
By 1988 when we went to Abeokuta for the next congress, I was made National President unopposed. Even those who supported Fagbemi in 1986 said that because of my magnanimity two years earlier, I must have it.
When I finished my first term, they also unanimously decided at the congress in Enugu in 1990 that I must do a second term. When they brought in the issue of third term in Ibadan in 1992, I said no.
By 1980, I was about 25,26 when I became a school principal and was still single and my father said, “look, how can you be a school principal of more than 2000 students and some married teachers and you are not married yourself?” So that was how by 1983, I had to marry, earlier than my elder brother.
What was the departure point from teaching to politics?
After teaching, I became a Zonal Officer and then a director in the Kano State Ministry of Education and then a Permanent Secretary and so on and so forth. But parents, teachers and students who knew my pedigree began coming to me, pressurising me to go into politics. But what really triggered it off was that in 1999 when and after elections were held, I was the Permanent Secretary in the Cabinet Office in charge of Administration. We always insisted that the right things be done. We asked questions, we spoke our minds. Apparently, the governor was not comfortable with the way I was doing things, for reasons best known to them.
Along the line, they transferred me out of the state Civil Service Commission as Permanent Secretary, saying they were transferring me away from the corridors of power. They saw me as a darling of the civil servants because I, among other things, insisted that the Commission must meet every week to handle and dispose of immediate and pending issues. Consequently, promotions were promptly done, cases were disposed of.
Then some people went to the government to say I was instigating the civil servants against the government, because the government had then placed an embargo against annual increment and wanted to suspend promotion. And the Commission said no, these are rights of the people.
But the state government mischievously felt I was plotting to deliberately increase workers wage bill to make life difficult for the administration. So they felt they had to remove me as the Permanent Secretary and I was asked to go back to the classroom.
I was redeployed to the College of Arts and Science as the Chief Lecturer in Mathematics. I received it gladly. It was this singular act that drew the attention of the public. To the government, it was a humiliation; they felt they were demoting me to the classroom.
Were you political when you were in the Cabinet Office? Did you have any sympathy for any political party?
No, not at all. The fact is to the contrary. I was sympathetic to the government. I was loyal to the administration of that day. I personally contributed my own money and money through friends to the election campaign of the governor. What I believe was that they got scared of my growing goodwill and of the agitation of the civil society, of the labour unions and of civil servants.
I remember when the governor was still governor-elect, the civil society and labour unions paid a courtesy call on him and openly agitated that he should make me Secretary to the State Government. I was already then in the Cabinet Office and I was sitting in for the SSG, because the office is a political appointment and the then SSG had to leave after the election. It was me who handed over government to the incoming administration.
Unfortunately, the governor felt I shouldn’t remain for reasons best known to him, hence my redeployment from the mainstream of his administration at the highest level to the classroom. As it turned out, it was that action that began attracting wide support and call to the governorship office for me. They said after all the sitting governor who thought he was humiliating me knew nothing about administration. They wondered what contributions he had made to government; that he was only a card-carrying member of a political party. They told me that for about 25 years, I have known no other thing than public administration and service to the people. The teachers, parents, civil servants and labour unions all pressurised that I must come in. The pressure was so much that eventually I had to succumb.
Did you make efforts to see the governor to pledge your loyalty to him and ask where you had gone wrong?
No. But some very prominent personalities tried to intervene, including His Highness, the Emir of Kano. The Emir called me, telling me he had known me for quite a long time. My father was an emir policeman and at one-time, the Emir was chief of emir police. They had worked together and he knew me very much. He asked me what was the problem? He asked me whether I had done anything wrong and I answered him not to the best of my knowledge.
He wanted to call him but I cautioned him, I said, “no, please your Highness.”
Why didn’t you transfer your service to the Federal Civil Service Commission, which is considered more prestigious?
The late Abubakar Rimi, who I saw as a leader, did call me and link me up with the Federal Civil Service Commission (FCSC). He got me the relevant forms to fill and tried to persuade me to transfer my service to the FCSC. I told him, “thank you, Your Excellency”, and rejected the offer. I told myself him nobody can succeed in frustrating me out of the state civil service. I wouldn’t give the governor or his administration the impression that they were frustrating me. There was no point.
I was happy I started as a classroom teacher and was redeployed as a teacher at the highest level. I wasn’t complaining. As a teacher, I had more time to myself than when I was a perm sec. I was given six hours of lecture a week as teacher at the College of Arts and Science.
I had two hours on Monday, two hours on Tuesday, no lecture on Wednesday, I think two hours on Thursday. I had time to read books that I had bought but had been unable to read. I was able to go to Islamic centres to advance my knowledge. I was able to write a number of papers. I wrote dozens of them. As a perm sec, I would make up 6am, many weekends, no Saturday, no Sunday.
So, for a year and half, I was happy practising as a classroom teacher before the pressure came. Initially, when the pressure began and I was resisting it, some friends went to report me to Alhaji Maitama Sule that, “we are inviting Ibrahim to come and run but he is refusing.”
Alhaji Sule then invited me over for a chat. He said, “Perm sec, people are agitating that you should come and serve them and you are refusing.” I said, “Sir, politics in Nigeria is money. I cannot even boast of my house to stay.” He said, “go and run.”
So we set up a small committee. We didn’t have money; we were so poor.
We were using rickety vehicles to campaign. Some people were laughing at us.
Well. That was how I came into partisan politics. Before then, I had all along been a political participant in my own jurisdiction as a teacher.
As Kano State Governor for eight years, what were your toughest challenges?
A major challenge was how to strike a balance between the state’s purse and the demands before me. This is always a challenge to all governors. Whenever we were doing budget preparation, we had to adopt a new budget approach. In the past, ministries would be asked to bring their proposals. That would bring a N1 billion proposal, this would bring its N2 billion proposal. But all the state would have would not probably be more than N3 billion. If you allow all the ministries bring all of their demand proposals, you would end up receiving proposals of say, a N100 billion.
So we had to devise new approaches, which even international organizations like the United Nations and the UNDP have adopted. What we began to do was to allocate envelopes. We assessed our expected revenues and do some prioritization to match each sector.
The challenge of budgeting was quite enormous, with every sector wanting to make some impact. As a professional coming from the education sector himself, I would have loved to vote all the money for education, but it just wasn’t possible. Water supply is there, the roads are there, hospitals, everything. When we opened the envelopes, we would see a lot of demands to attend to.
Another challenge is how to convince the people, the general public to have trust in you, to believe that this is all you can do. We need to do societal re-orientation, we need to build confidence, to build trust. I always remind the people it’s not just the physical infrastructure they see, but how judiciously their resources are used.
In Kano today, unless you are told of our investment in water works, which is close to N7 billion, nobody would know.
Another challenge is employment. It is another thing that you can do quietly and is hidden. Altogether, I employed over 50,000 people. In the education sector, for secondary schools alone, we employed nothing less than 7000-8000 teachers and the tertiary level, at least 3000. In the health sector, we employed nothing less than 5000. We employed about 5000 street cleaners.
Your successor has been flaunting an impressive growth in the state’s Internally Generated Revenue. Was that a goldmine that you didn’t really explore as you should?
No. The IGR is always a progressive area to explore. We moved it from N300 million to over N700 million. We actually started what he is now benefiting from as regards the IGR growth. Anybody can confirm that.
We enacted a new law for the state’s Revenue Board. Until we came in, the Revenue Board was being handled like a mere insignificant department in the Ministry of Finance. There was no law guiding its operations and the appointment of its chairman. Before that law, government would just appoint anybody, whether qualified or not, to be its head. And there was a lot of fraud there.
So we said there must be a law for it. We did a lot of study of, and lifting a lot from the Lagos State Internal Revenue Board law. Before I left office, we appointed a statutory Revenue Board chairman who was given a term of five years, according to the new law.
We also worked on the Ministry of Land which is one the biggest collection points, because the state collects various charges on land matters. Before we left office, we computerized and restructured the land process and record-keeping. It was so structured that the ministry could not see the cash; everything was tailored to the bank, unlike in the past when everything would be negotiated, the payee would payee would pay in N100,000 but the cashier would issue a N50,000 receipt.
We even engaged the consultant working for the Lagos State Government; we had a solid arrangement with them. We started seeing the rise in the income on tax and the willingness of the people to pay. We began seeing prominent citizens of Kano State and businessmen saying, “now that there is trust in the system and in the leadership and we can see what is being done with our resources, we are ready to declare the true assets that we have.”
The administration is even abusing the revenue law. I understand the Revenue Board Chairman that we appointed and was removed by them went to court and won the case. The state appealed and the case is still in court. Even the Pension Law is being abused. I left more than N45 billion in the coffers of the Pension Board but today, they are not ready to pay pension.
One of the major criticisms against your administration when you were governor was that you lacked control over your commissioners and aides and they could do whatever they liked with funds under their control.
It was alleged that whenever the complaint came to you, your refrain was na bar su da Allah, meaning, I leave them to God. How true is all this?
This is totally untrue. There was never a time any complaint of corruption or wrongdoing was made against any of my commissioners or aides and I said na bar su da Allah or whatsoever. I was just coming from the point of practicalizing democracy. When I give you a responsibility, I also give you the authority to discharge that responsibility. Here is a budget that has been established and the budget is so detailed that there was nothing we did in that government that was outside budgetary provision. I am challenging anybody to point out anything to the contrary.
Two, there was no contract that was ever awarded outside the Executive Council. And I never ever dictated one contractor. If, for example, we wanted to drill a borehole, I had the Ministry of Water Resources, I had the Rural Water Resources Agency, I had the Water Board, all populated with engineers, the technical people and the engineers. They would have done the presentation; they would have done all the assessment; the commissioner would bring the memo; they would have advertised; they would have shortlisted contractors.
That’s how it works. I, as a school principal, would prepare my budget, buy my requirements, get an imprest. Unfortunately, things degenerated, from the zonal office to the headquarters. Now, it has become so bad that governors buy virtually everything themselves. This was our own training, our background. You should allow people to work.
Today, it has gone terribly bad. Now, I am disclosing this to you, if the Ministry of Education is buying 1000 books, approval must come from the governor, and the governor would probably buy the books himself. In my days as school principal, I was buying thousands of books. Book publishers were applying to principals, not to the Education Commissioner, or worse as it is done now, the governor.
When my successor came and they were alleging stealing left and right, we challenged them to produce proof of stealing. We are still challenging them. We didn’t overshoot a single contract for any selfish interest. We insisted on quality and delivery. So it was all false claims and dirty blackmail, all that their na bar su da Allah.
What informed your choice of political party? What was your meeting point with General Muhammadu Buhari, and what was the yet-untold point of departure then?
I told you I was under intense pressure to come into politics. When I accepted, my next struggle with decision-taking was: which political party do I join? At that time, about 80 per cent of my associates were in the PDP. Rimi was our reference point for many years and up till when he passed away, I was with him. My supporters and I, including non-partisan people, sat down to analyze choice. Many of those in the PDP agreed that the government then was being arrogant and was not addressing the aspirations of the people. They decided we should go another direction to challenge that administration.
Then, the ANPP was so weak and virtually non-existent. The party had only five legislators out of 40, and was controlling only six local government areas out of 44. People thought we were crazy to join the ANPP. But we convinced ourselves it is not the size of the party, but who and who you are interacting with in whichever political party you are in. What matters is your level of confidence. Wars are not won totally on the weight of your arms, but also on the commitment of the men you have on the battlefield.
That was how I got into the ANPP. Incidentally, I came into politics at almost about the same time General Buhari did. He joined in 2002 and became the party’s presidential candidate, through a consensus, for the 2003 elections. Our political association naturally merged with our arrival in the ANPP.
Talking of our point of departure, I would be talking of departure in the ANPP, not as me, Shekarau, departing from General Buhari. It was in 2007 after the election and Yar’adua reached out to us asking for our hand to move Nigeria forward. A letter was brought to the caucus and read to us to that effect. We dictated conditions to him. The demands included that the 2007 elections had to be revisited, the Electoral Law, too, revisited and the sale of some government assets through privatization reviewed. We were not asking for any position or reward.
This man wrote back accepting all our demands. For goodness sake, if you want to be fair, what you do is not to reject him but to start the process of ensuring the demands are met. The ANPP was instrumental to the setting up of the Justice Uwais Electoral Reform committee, which was one of our demands. Our concern was how to move Nigeria forward.
After going through all these, some party members said no. Then some of us then said we can’t say no. If the President hadn’t accepted our conditions, our demands, that would be a different matter. If he had accepted all and we say we are not accepting him, then we are not being sincere. Let’s go and see him first. If in the process of meeting these requirements, he starts showing signs of insincerity, then we can get out.
That was what happened by 2009/2010. That was was led us to the Government of National Unity. We went through the process. The National Executive Committee, the Working Committee, the caucus all agreed to it. It was in that process that the agreement was made. The party’s National Chairman, Chief Ume Ezeoke was Buhari’s running mate.
But Buhari had gone to court. In the end, the Chairman was part of the Buhari team that seconded the decision.
It was the National Chairman that had to implement the decision of the party. The party then asked him to pull out of court because that was the understanding with the government. He said he would continue. The chairman, being the main umbrella of the party and yet the running mate, chose to toe the path of the party while he, Buhari, chose to remain a candidate. That was where the whole thing fell apart.
And then the agitations started. There was no internal democracy, there was no this, there was no that. I want to emphasize that between General Buhari and I, there was no direct disagreement, there was no parting of ways. Up till now and through when we were in different parties, we were relating well.
When the television debate for the 2011 election for presidential candidates held, you were voted the best performer and as the most articulate, with quite some stuff upstairs. You struck quite a chord with many Nigerians. Now having gained that wide level of popularity and acceptance, would you be ready to drop your 2015 presidential ambition in the APC for General Buhari’s sake?
One, the APC has just taken off. Two, our concern is consolidating, registering members nationwide and having substantive leaders in all the zones, wards, local government areas and at the national level. We have not reached the stage of contesting elections.
It has never been insistence to occupy any particular office. My main concern is the stability of our democracy. I have always said that our coming together is a milestone in our efforts to sustain democracy. It has reduced contentious issues. In the past, we had five parties wanting to kill themselves. It is now two or three major parties.
When the time comes and General Buhari makes his intention open and known to the APC leadership and members that he wants to contest for the presidential ticket, I, Ibrahim Shekarau, will not challenge him, struggle together with him or confront him. But Buhari is yet to publicly declare his candidacy. For the sake of the peace and oneness of the APC and Nigeria, which we in the APC have promised Nigerians we will sacrifice everything to achieve, I won’t challenge Buhari’s candidature if in the end he decides to run.
Political stability was one of the World Bank’s guidelines to have good governance. There will be no good governance if there is no peace in democracy. If my contesting would add turmoil to democracy, then I am not helping the process. That was my philosophy in my conference days. What I did then was what I would have wished my friend, President Goodluck Jonathan did when he finished Yar’adua’s term. If I were him, I would say, fine. I would say I have finished my boss’ term and all I want are credible elections.
He would gain credibility. If he had done that, even after eight years, he would still be called upon. But failed to do that, and he is still failing to do that.
In November 2011, I, as a citizen, wrote to the President to have an audience with him. I still have my acknowledgement letter with me. Up till today, since I left office, I have not had any interaction with the President. I wrote to him, not for anything, but to offer my advice in the days when the Boko Haram crisis was still raging. I felt if I had governed Kano State for eight years and if that state happened to be one of the victims of the killings and the President didn’t feel it right to invite us to seek our advice and suggestions on tackling the problem in areas we had directly governed, then he was getting the wrong advice.
I wanted to give my personal assessment of the problem because I was, and am in an informed position to offer valuable advice to the President on it. There is no way one will govern a state for eight years and he won’t know a lot about its security challenges and how to go about tackling them.
You were quoted to have said any PDP governor who wanted to join APC will be screened thoroughly. Why did you say that?
I was shocked that I was reported to have made that statement. I didn’t say PDP governors who want to join us will be screened. What I said was that if any of them came with conditions, we would have to critically look at those terms. For instance, if a governor comes into APC today and wants the structure of the party in his state to be handed over to him, we may have to critically look at it. This is because, there are structures on ground in the states before such a governor came in. It is not possible to ignore this reality when you are discussing the terms under which a new person is coming into the party, else there could be confusion.
How safe is Kano State now from the Boko Haram scourge?
It has subsided, though there are occasionally guerilla attacks by people you can’t identify. I understand that these days, they wear military fatigue and go into villages and kill innocent people. I mentioned some of these things when the state of emergency was declared. I have no problem with the state of emergency because we can’t accept a situation whereby some hooligans are flying flags claiming sovereignty over some parts of the country. I will support any leadership to go to any length to stop that stupidity.
My worry is why did it take the government that long before it began to take decisive measures against the insurgency. It has taken them from 2009 till today. Didn’t their intelligence tell them the reality?
Where is all the surveillance? Did they have to wait to declare a state of emergency before attacking them in the forest? What were the military and the police doing before the declaration? Didn’t they know that these people hit and run back to the forest? It wasn’t as if the insurgents set up their camps in the forest within a year, or even two?
That is the point of my disagreement. There is a lot more than what we hear from the government. The military had been there before the state of emergency was declared and it is not as if they are doing anything different.
There is the belief out there in Kano State that the Kwankwasiya is overshadowing your legacy in the state…
If you say they are overshadowing me in Kano State, it means you are believing they are overshadowing me. The truth of the matter is that they are not overshadowing, and can’t overshadow me in Kano State. You should assess government by its acceptability. Anywhere in the world, it is the people that the government is supposed to be serving. But if the people you are supposed to be serving do not accept you, so not appreciate you, then where is the acceptability?
That is the norm globally. Government is supposed to address the aspirations of the people. That is the definition of democracy: government of the people… And the question is: are the people accepting you? Go and ask the people in Kano State, the taxi drivers, the market men and women, artisans, everybody: what is their assessment of government? The truth of the matter is that the people are not accepting them.
They themselves know they are not accepted. A situation where the governor cannot freely move about cannot be described as acceptability. Where a leader cannot move amidst the people, then he better go back home.
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