Former Niger State governor, Dr Muazu Babangida Aliyu, popularly known as Servant Leader, speaks to OLAKUNLE MARUF, on growing insecurity in the country and other issues.
What can the government do to curtail growing insecurity in the country?
Before you solve any problem, you have to understand what it is. Today, I gave two theories, one more of a rumour, the other one more of understanding the main challenge of our society. The rumour mill has it that there were Fulani from other countries that were brought in by some people for a purpose. Their coming in was not known because what was expected did not happen. But like I said, that is more of a rumour of discussion elsewhere.
Of course, any observer would have noticed the nature of our Fulani cattle-rearers, their population; their culture is all about their cattle. Anything that happens to a cattle, happens to a Fulani man. Now they have more population, the cattle rustling, the way they have been treated even by the nature, for a very long time, they have not been given any special consideration and they are a major part of our economy.
So, whether these bandits are Fulani or other people have joined them, the fundamental thing is we must realise we have problem and we must resolve them. Secondly, if you take the cattle-rearers and farmers’ problem, that one too has increased in proportion, because we used to have cattle routes all over where they were passing; they could graze there and move on to other places. All these have been shut down in many of the places.
During the time of President [Goodluck] Jonathan, we started talking about ranching just like many other countries. Anywhere you see a cow; there would be such [ranching]. Talk of Latin America or anywhere where they used to move them around, but when the ranching thing came, they embraced it and it was domesticated in one place.
We talked about that; we had many seminars as governors, other people and, unfortunately, nothing came out of it. Maybe, I don’t know what exactly is our problem in this country that when a good policy is there, and a new government comes in it means the new administration must dump it and start a new one.
I said this because when this Ruga issue came up… Ruga is the same as ranching, so why give it a name that people don’t understand? The moment you say Ruga, it is like saying only the Fulani can come and have the Ruga and it created a lot of problems. Many people misunderstood it, so, in other words, we must go back to the basics to understand the problems.
Another part is when something starts and it becomes lucrative, other people will join it. This is because so much of money is being paid to the kidnappers, and this will make them continue. We are hearing rumours of movement of helicopters and many others like that and we also need to hear from the government to debunk the claims as lies. We have a radar in every airport and we need to monitor the movement of anything. Is it that there are some people, who sit comfortably with us but who have been sharing from the proceeds of kidnapping.
This is where government needs to talk and not leave talking to those who think their profession is to lie. You remember what happened in Kankara where schoolboys were kidnapped. Somebody said only 10 students; some said 500; some said 300 and others, but up till today, nobody has come out to tell us the official figure. That is not how to solve a problem.
So what do we do? I can only refer to what I did when it started, particularly, in my state as a governor. What I did at first was to ensure that all the security agencies in my state were my agents. I didn’t look at them as indigenes or non-indigenes, Muslims or Christians. I saw them as people who have come to Niger State to help me administer my state. The DSS operatives were supposed to write a report every day to the governor; they were in every local government. Everything that happened they would write. I made sure I never slept without reading their report. Even when I saw a sign that this might not be true, I would follow up to confirm that it is not true. If you don’t read such security report, you may not know what is happening. You have to take them into confidence, because if you don’t, many things would happen that they would not let you know until the crisis has gone beyond their capacity.
I made sure anytime I heard a crisis would happen, I send the army, police, and civil defence corps to go to the place and at the expense of Niger State government. I didn’t wait for federal government to give me a pin because; I was elected to protect lives and properties of the people of Niger State
There was a time I had to hire a helicopter to make sure that part of Shiroro local government and the present area of Kampala that appears under to be under attack every day. In fact I was just reading that in Kampala, which is near Minna, bandits went and killed somebody. I learnt they had attacked the person three times and failed. They killed him and abducted his three children. If someone had been attacked once or twice, government should not allow the third one to happen.
So I used to hire helicopter to go round that area. You know we shared that boundary with the forest alongside Kaduna and Zamfara. What I did was to ensure that we were contributing money, Kaduna, Niger, Katsina and Zamfara states to make sure that the military headquarters in Kaduna was helping us. We were meeting regularly to share information on what is happening.
Again, I chaired another meeting of states bordering Abuja, Niger, Benue, Kogi, Nasarawa in Abuja. Anybody who has a problem must look at his neighbour, because once they strike in your place, they run away to somewhere else and that is your neighbour. So, you must always cooperate with your neighbour.
But what we should do now is to adopt a two-way approach. The first approach is military, security-wise. The second is the economic or social policy that will give assurance to the people that if something goes wrong in their lives, somebody somewhere [government] is there to take care of them. If they have such confidence, you will see them protecting themselves by themselves. Why we don’t want these is because some people think if we allowed Nigerians to take care of themselves, it means, we would have more weapons in many houses and then simple matters that should be solved by negotiation or discussions would lead to people fighting one another. And we don’t want that to happen.
Also, we don’t have enough security personnel on the ground. The population of Nigeria Police is about 370,000 or thereabout. How many of these policemen are serving private individuals? You will see a big man with about 10 police officers who are not doing the major security jobs. You will hear announcement that policemen have been withdrawn from VIPs, but only after three days, they are back. The last statistics that came out puts our country’s population at 206 million. That means we must have about one million policemen, I mean thoroughly trained policemen and that is the kind of people that can deal with this kind of insurgency.
Most of the insurgency we have in Nigeria is not a military job. The army is to protect the sovereignty of their country and not to fight within the territory of their country. So we must come to terms in determining some of these issues.
What is your take on the allegation by the APC that a North-West governor is behind the insecurity in the North?
It is very irresponsible and stupid for a whole political party to come out and say one governor is sponsoring whatever they say. That is a security issue; give that information to the right people and they will know what to do. I saw someone responding. To me, if you say something which involves everybody, why should I talk?
There are seven governor’s in the North-West, but I saw someone responding. If you checked, this thins has been there eight or 10 years before he became governor. So how could he have been the one who sponsoring them? You see, we have allowed charlatans to be leading us in politics in Nigeria. Some people think for every little thing, they must say something to divert the attention of the people.
If you confirmed that there is a governor that has been sponsoring things, the security is there on the ground that you can reach out to and make him pay for whatever he is doing.
What was the greatest challenge you faced as governor?
My greatest challenge was the misunderstanding of people in Niger at the beginning of my administration, because I changed virtually all their ways of doing things. I clearly went out to implement free education and came out with a policy that abolished issue of non-indigene. Whether you were born in Niger or not, the fact that you are in Niger, you are there to help and if l hold on tightly to you, you will be able to give us the best you can.
My happiest moment, surprisingly, was after I left office as governor. All along, I heard people saying this man has done a lot, this man has achieved a lot. Wherever I go now, people always shout Talban, Talban, with prayers everywhere. Believe me, I am happy with what I did. Please, nobody should go into governance simply out of ambition or out of another desire apart from serving the people. God will test you based on what we don’t see: our heart and what we think about ourselves.
There are too many interests in the administration and in governance in our country. Some people are used to having it easy. So anytime you come to say they have been cheating, somebody will say who are you to challenge that kind of person. Anybody who is honest must always be ready to answer criticism. But if you are there with honesty, you will progress. You know the nature of my state; they will say, ‘tomorrow he cannot wake up.
We have given him six months; we have given him one year’. But till I finished eight years, I never had headache. My time has not come and when it comes it will not be their Mallam or herbalist that will kill me.
The federal government is talking about full diversification of the economy and has taken agriculture as the way out. What is your take on that?
Agriculture has always been the bedrock of the economies of most countries. If you remember when the Northern region was contributing money to the federal government, the whole oil industry that you see today was funded by groundnut money from the North. I am sure you heard when Maitama Sule gave the background of that. So, diversification is wonderful, but again we must look at the policy environment. The policy environment is that of insecurity today. Whatever noise we make will remain a bad policy. Also, a lot of money that is being put into agriculture; many of our people thinks it’s a gift and not a loan and so long as they continue to see it as a gift, then it will not do what is supposed to do. But if they see it as a loan, then they will try to do so much to help them pay back and keep the profits.
What is your advice for the Nigerians on the second wave of COVID-19 pandemic?
My advice is that this pandemic is not limited to Nigeria and we need to be careful. Any big town you go to, even here in Sokoto, people behave as if nothing is happening. Now, if we have such a problem in the country, we need to go back to educate the people and make them appreciate what is happening.
What is your take on politicians who defect to other parties after using the tickets of some other political parties to win elections?
If I had my way, there would be a constitutional amendment to the effect that if you are elected on a particular mandate, you must either use that mandate in full or if you want to move to another political party, you forfeit that mandate. It is very important that we did that, otherwise you would have people who in their lifetimes would have changed political parties up to seven times and this sends a wrong message to the people. You cannot have your cake and eat it, as they say. If you are elected here, stay, serve and if you want to move, drop that mandate. If you want to move and your people think you have done very well under the particular mandate, they will still vote you wherever you go, but you cannot be jumping from one party to another.
Sir, SSCOE is your alma mater which has contributed a lot to your development. What can you say is your contribution to the school?
When I was a governor, I called them to ask about alumni association for many years, but it didn’t happen. And you respond to people when they make requests; you don’t just jump to do things.
When my other alma mater, Bayero University asked me for something, I built and renovated some departments. I have never had a request from the institution and now I am pushing for the alumni association so that it would not be like a one man show, but I am happy that TETFUND has been doing what we were supposed to do.
What do you think government should do to reposition Teachers Grade II certificate?
For me, even when I was a governor, I did not buy this idea of elitism, because it is elitist to say you are scrapping Grade II, you only want NCE and at the end of the day, you didn’t think of the implications of what you are talking about. Today, a senior secondary schools person, go and ask them all, you will hardly see anyone of them saying he or she wants to be a teacher. But as I said, when I was writing my final examination and was asked, what do you want to be, I said I want to be a teacher or a lawyer.
They asked me why and because I used to read newspapers for my father then, I said ‘yes, of course, because Awolowo is a lawyer and Aminu Kano is a teacher’. So, to me, the image was very good and that was it. And when I passed to go to Teachers’ Training College, I did not fail any subject because that was what I wanted to be and from there, with Grade II, it was easy for me to go for NCE. Iit was easy for me to go for my degree in education, because inside me it was what I wanted to do.
So what I am still thinking, even if you don’t want college as Grade II, call it by whatever names whereby in some schools, either at the senior secondary schools level where you will teach them principles of education. It will help to determine who will want to be a teacher. Even in those days, the teachers in the rural areas had what they called hardship allowances. There were houses for teachers in many of the schools. When I taught in Government Science College, I had a two bedroom apartment and other things as incentives, but, today, the salary of a teacher would not even last him one month and before it came he has run into debt. Some teachers if they seek for the hand of a woman in marriage nowadays, people will say no, we can’t give you our daughter.
We were all happy when the president approved special salary for teachers, but later when I discovered that some governors were asking me if the documents include states and private school teachers and I said this should have taken place in total, so that a teacher anywhere or moving from one place to another will equally benefit from it.
Believe me, from all the universities, institutes of education, and colleges of education that we have today, teachers are not enough, not even up to a quarter of what we need. We need to sit down, in other places; they go and beg those who are well to do to establish this or that. As you all know, for whoever establishes a secondary school, it used to take about seven years before that school can break even but now, in four or five years you can break even.
Universities used to take 10 years, but now in eight years you break even and when you do that subsequently what you make becomes your profits. But we need to encourage people in this area. Most of our businessmen want to do something that they will see profits by tomorrow, but this is an investment that will take some time, but the moment the profits start coming, it comes in full.
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