Encomium
Governor Ibrahim Shehu Shema of Katsina State, has an understated personality. He is not among those susceptible to noise-making. For that reason, few people outside Katsina State have realized the much he has so far done. His government has made an enormous investment in education, transport, road construction and networking, youth development, water provision, health, agriculture, etc.
Now, six going to seven years, there is a network of routes everywhere. And it is bringing the world there. A destination indeed. Katsina is the home of hospitality. The people have risen and never to fall again, anchored on the Almighty.
It is now attractive and beautiful to behold. A dream come true, borne from the collective efforts of leaders whose philosophy of liberty, unity and excellence feared no bounds. The man on the ground is Ibrahim Shema, and wherever those past leaders may be now, he has surely made them proud.
Beyond guessing, he has converted the demeaning peasantry rating which had formed a sad past for his people to a symbol of a turning-point transformation where purpose is driven by passion. Interests are now synergized in respect of the emancipation of a hard-working people, especially the youths, whose rights and visions were blurred in the past by a socio-political misplacement of ideals because of the politicking forces which held sway back then.
These days, there is a bold face of change in Katsina State, and this statement is accompanied with a proof of how Shema delivered the dividends of democracy to his people.
In this interview with ENCOMIUM Weekly, Alhaji Shema, opened up on the crisis rocking the Peoples Democratic Party and the opposition to the alleged 2015 aspiration of President Goodluck Jonathan, especially by the northerners and much more.
As a former deputy national chairman of the PDP and now a serving governor, you must be familiar with the crisis in your party?
Yes, I was honoured by my party to be a deputy national chairman. I was chairman of its disciplinary committee; I was chairman of its Democratic Institute, I was chairman of its South-West Reconciliation Committee, and if you like, I was in the fire brigade team to solve crises in some states. I was in Imo, in Benue, in Edo and Ibadan to resolve crises. So, it is something that I am quite familiar with.
There has been stiff opposition, especially from northerners to the alleged plans by President Jonathan to seek a fresh mandate in 2015. What is your take on this?
We have spoken about it several times. Whenever it is time for elections, the temperature goes up. Even if it is the chief of a market that we are electing, the human temperature will go up, so this is no exception. The President himself hasn’t declared whether he will run or not, but there have been speculations that he will run, that he will not run and so and so forth.
I have always told people especially (beginning from) last year, up to this time, it is only in Nigeria that people start running for elections right after swearing in. What worries me is, are we really thinking of providing service to our people? Because, if we are thinking of service, the time isn’t ripe for politicking, but I can tell you that 70 per cent of the time, people are talking about who contests, who will take over from the incumbent and so on.
Unfortunately, that is Nigeria for you. Maybe it is because our democracy is just coming up. But we can’t be so much in a hurry that we will say we have caught up with nations that have been practicing it for over 250 years. It will be stupid to do it.
Are we really learning?
It is good to learn and make corrections when mistakes are made and it is good to try to reform. The president will come out and make a statement at the right time. And for the stiff resistance you hear, in my mind, it is because some of the people challenging him are also interested in the same office. Some of them have made categorical statements; some speculations are rife in the air. So, if somebody is interested in your office, yes, he can go to any length. That is the truth.
Your party is facing a lot of crises that led to five of your colleagues defecting to APC. Do you see the new chairman addressing these challenges?
We have our challenges. That is not to say other parties don’t have challenges. The reason why people see our own is because of our size and in politics, size matters. It is always easy to talk about differences in political parties, or any organization. What people fail to realize is that the PDP has succeeded tremendously in Nigeria since 1999.
First, in retaining power, the party has succeeded in the first transition, from one civil rule to the other. I know PDP belongs to Nigerians and that is why everybody talks about PDP, even the opposition political parties. Because it is truly a Nigerian party, every Nigerian thinks PDP is his own. Unlike other parties where you can say Mr. A owns this party or that party belongs to group A, but PDP really belongs to Nigerians. It is truly a national party; that’s why whatever affects PDP, affects Nigeria; even you journalists, as if you belong to that party, you are worried about what we do. It is because it is truly a national party.
On the challenges we are facing over defection, I am sure you are aware of the efforts made by Mr. President to make sure that they (five governors) didn’t leave the party, to change the tide of those who wanted to leave. Even in a family, there is bound to be a quarrel but to resolve the issues maturely is the way of the PDP.
Look at the issue of the resignation of our former chairman, Bamanga Tukur. At the end of the day, PDP is the only party in Nigeria where a party chairman can resign and another one steps in without rancour and breaking of heads. I don’t know of any other party in Nigeria that does this except PDP. Hope is not lost on the question of reconciliation. We can reach out and reconcile with those people. Of course, politics is a voluntary business.
Those who don’t want to belong to PDP, I am sure they have their reasons why they don’t want to belong to PDP, but as they are leaving, let me assure you that others will be moving in. That’s politics. In fact, there are those who left PDP, who rushed back.
It will be in the interest of Nigeria if PDP continues to do what it is doing to stabilize Nigeria. You people know the situation of this country in 1998. It is the emergence of PDP that was probably the saving grace of our nation that helped to put the nation back to the path of peace and harmony.
What do you think can be done to douse the tension and restore peace in Rivers State?
On Rivers, the crisis is something that the leadership in Rivers should be able to address. I am not from Rivers so I am not in a position to comment effectively, truly and deeply on Rivers because Rivers State have peculiarities and those peculiarities are best resolved by our leaders there, in the interest of the Rivers people and in the best interest of Nigeria.
In 2015, you will leave office, what will be your next move?
You see, planning ahead, you forget the saying that man proposes, God disposes. You can plan whatever you want, I can plan whatever I want, but our fate is in the hands of God Almighty. I have said several times at both international and local fora that as for me, my plan is to continue to serve this nation in whatever capacity, even when I go back to my Law practice.
I am grateful to my God, I have a second address. When you enter politics and you don’t have a second address that is when you run into trouble; but I have a profession, I have a second address.
Your state is not one of the high earners from the federation account and from all indications; it is not an industrialized state per se. How do you source funds to run the state?
Whenever leadership performs and it is effective and accepted, it is due to the guidance and support of our Creator and we must give gratitude to Him. Second, I have no other source of revenue other than the usual sources of revenue for all the states in Nigeria- the Federation Account, which for Katsina, is just an average of N4bn per month and of course, the Internally Generated Revenue.
When I came into office, I met an IGR of about N130m and now, it is an average of about one N1bn. So, if you put it together, may be N5bn in a month. We are one of the first states to start the implementation of the minimum wage in the country and that takes more than 50 per cent of my allocation every month; that is to pay salaries. So, you can see that what I am left to work with is probably about one quarter of the total amount.
In short, I have no other source of revenue beyond the IGR. We devises some methods and those methods are yielding results. One, we don’t awards contracts of more than N1m without having the money to pay the contractors. We try to imbibe financial discipline. I am a lawyer and also have a master degree in Business Administration and another master in International Diplomacy. These help me a lot and I started running my Law firm immediately I left school. Based on that, if we award a N1 million contract, we keep N1m aside for that contract. We give the contractor N400,000 and he has to give us bank guarantee or bond for that. The other N600,000, we keep in project savings account and that account will generate interest and we do that for all our projects without exception.
So, at the end of the day, once a contractor finishes his job, he comes for payment and takes his balance of N600,000.
Do you apply this in all facets of the economy and governance?
We are not just talking about the level of available resource alone, we are talking about resources utilization, effective utilization of the meagre resources we have in the service of the people, that is why we have built over 48 new roads in the state, we completed every project started by late President Umaru Musa Yar’Adua, and these projects are no mean ones.
It included a university, 165-bed child-maternal care hospital, expansion of Katsina Airport, and for our administration a stadium, a brand new/fully-equipped government house, over 200 secondary schools around the state, over 2000 housing units, 34 girl-child secondary schools built in collaboration with the LGAs, free education policy, special foreign scholarship fund scheme where over 700 students study abroad in critical areas of need, pharmacy, medicine, computer engineering, environmental engineering, marine engineering, physiotherapy, dentistry and geology.
There is no LGA in Katsina State today that does not have a medical doctor, a pharmacist, marine engineer, environmental engineer, physiotherapist and radiologist. At least five have been trained from every LGA.
– PATRICK OKON
