My plans for Kaduna if elected governor - El-Rufa’i Thursday, 11 December 2014 Malam Nasir el-Rufa’i, APC governorship candidate in Kaduna State, in this interview with the state correspondents’ chapel, lists his plans for the state if elected governor. Excerpts: How would you describe the experience at the primary poll? I strongly believe that the APC is a one large family. In the APC, we believe that as you run for position, you should not criticise anyone. This is because you do not say anything bad about your family members. If they are bad, you keep quiet. Secondly, we believe that unity is the hallmark of the APC. We do not speak ill about one another. Immediately the results were declared, one of the contestants, Hon Shamsuddeen came and congratulated me and offered to work with me. I visited the home of Isa Ashiru, another contestant and we both pledged to work with each other and to ensure that we vote out the PDP in Kaduna State and enthrone competent and transparent administration in the state in which all our supporters will have roles. I hope to visit the other contestants in due course. What are your plans for the state? You know that Kaduna is the second most indebted state in the country and unlike Lagos, we do not have the industrial base or the commercial capacity to bear the debt burden that we have. From our estimates, every child born in Kaduna State has a debt of N15,000. If you have a child going to be born tomorrow, that child already has a debt burden of N15,000, and there are about eight million people in Kaduna State. In spite of that, we are confident that we will find a way to work with the people, because there are areas of leakages and corruption, which we plan to tackle. There is large capacity to expand internally generated revenue. Despite the fact that oil prices are falling and we are facing a dire economic situation, more serious than anything that we have faced since 1984, we will do our best to improve the situation because we are committed to making Kaduna great again. We want a transparent campaign and we are not afraid of having the media with us. I hope you will be vigilant before the campaign starts next week or so. Keep an eye on all of us and ask us the most difficult questions and hold us to account and keep a record of all our promises and ensure that for the next four years we do not rest until we meet the aspirations of the people of Kaduna State. Your tenure as FCT minister was controversial, especially with your land and housing reforms. Are we likely to have the Abuja experience in Kaduna if you become the governor? I do not know what you mean by controversial, but I have always maintained that I am not controversial. Look at me, I am not big and I am not very strong. Until 1999 when I became the DG of BPE, no one had ever heard of me. If I was a controversial person, you would have heard of me. I think my fortune or misfortune in public life is that I tend to get the most difficult assignments that every other person is scared of doing. My first real job in government was DG of the BPE and my job was to sell public assets. That is controversial. As minister of the FCT, which is one of the most difficult jobs, I did it to the best of my ability. I do not think that the issue is whether I was controversial or not. The question you should ask me is whether I left Abuja better than I met it. And I think most people in Abuja will say I did. That is what matters. Kaduna is different from Abuja in many respects. So, there is work to be done here. Not everything to be done here will be loved by the people. A lot of it will be embraced by the people, but if there is a job to be done and I undertake to do it, if the people of Kaduna State elect me, it is because they want change. They do not want this place to be a state of bill boards and no action. They want schools to be better than what they are now, they want our health care system to cater for everybody, not the friends of the government that get sponsored to go to Egypt. They want agriculture to flourish and they want the state of insecurity to be addressed. Currently, these things are not being done, in the process of doing them, some people will say I am controversial. Around the Birnin-Gwari area, there is a lot of cattle rustling and armed robbery. Why has it persisted? It is because nobody has addressed it. If I go there with the security and we crush it, it may be controversial, but what needs to be has to be done and we will crush them if we have to. We will do some things which they may term controversial, but we will get the job done for the people. You will see results on the ground by the grace of God. You recently advocated for free and fair elections, but you were part of government when elections were said to have been rigged. Isn’t that double standard? It is a big mistake to say that the PDP of 2003 is the same as the Jonathanian’s PDP. They are completely different. The PDP that I was a member of had some rules and processes. As minister of FCT, I demolished a house belonging to the chairman of the PDP. Today, no minister of FCT can touch the house of a member of PDP National Executive Committee. So, it is a different PDP. The party has evolved over time and for the worse. I was minister on the platform of the PDP, but I was not a minister because I was in the PDP. I was minister on my merit. I represented no state in Nigeria. The minister for the PDP representing Kaduna State was Nenadi Usman, because the governor of Kaduna State at that time disowned me and said that I did nothing for the party. As minister of the FCT, I enjoyed two positions in the party. As someone from Kaduna State, I was supposed to be a member of the Executive Committee of the PDP, but go and check, I never attended their meetings. I did not see myself as a member of the PDP. I saw politics as a distraction from the work I was asked to do. I was also the leader of the PDP in Abuja. So, I enjoyed that dual position, but go and check, who won the election in 2007. The ANPP won, because I called all the leaders of the PDP and told them that anybody that rigged the elections, I would ensure that the person was arrested by Nuhu Ribadu who unfortunately has gone back to the PDP. I did not care who won the elections. All I cared was that the elections should be free and fair. I have never manipulated the results of elections, because I will never sleep if I change the results of elections. I have never done it. Why did you demolish the NUJ national secretariat in Abuja? The NUJ had an illegal national secretariat in Abuja. Let me give you the history and why we did what we did. When the seat of government moved to Abuja in 1991, the NUJ was asked to move but they did not have an office. One of the primary schools at Garki was given to it as temporary office, which at the time was not populated. The NUJ was given a site to build a permanent secretariat and government even gave them a grant to build it. Go and ask those who got the grant what they did with it. When I came in as minister, I checked the records and found out that the minister before me, Abba Gana, had pledged to give a further contribution of N3 million to the NUJ to continue the building of the secretariat. He did not redeem that pledge, but I approved the payment. When we were reviewing the status of our schools, we found out that we had a primary school that was congested, because Garki district had become populated and we needed that primary school for our pupils. Now, which is more important, the NUJ or our children? I called Smart Adeyemi who was NUJ President at that time. I told him that ‘government gave you land and also gave you money to build it but some people diverted the money. I am giving you six months to get out of that place.’ He said they could not finish the building in six months. I said ‘but school starts in six months, and I want to move children from that congested primary school to the one you are occupying.’ I told him to go and find an office accommodation and I will pay the rent for two years. The NUJ also built a hotel in that place. They did not move. We did not revoke the place because one can only revoke what you own. It was never the property of NUJ, it was given to you to use temporarily, and I chased them out. We demolished the hotel and put our children there. I am proud of what I did and I have no regrets. I know I did the right thing and I sleep well at night. If the Kaduna NUJ secretariat is a school, the same thing will happen if I become governor. But I do not think it is a school.
Posted on: Thu, 11 Dec 2014 09:29:57 +0000
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