Dr Kayode Fayemi is the Minister of Mines and Steel Development, who at the weekend, kicked off his governorship campaign to seek a re-election in Ekiti State, having served as governor between 2010 and 2014. He speaks of his ambition, his performances while in office, among other issues, in this interview with journalists, shortly after his declaration at the All Progressives Congress (APC) party secretariat and the rally he held in Ado Ekiti. BOLA BADMUS brings excerpts:
You have been governor in Ekiti State before, one is wondering, why do you want to return as governor again?
Yes, you are right. I have been governor here in Ekiti State before now, but I feel a profound sense of unfinished business, unfinished business in the sense that all what I did in office had gone pear-shaped in this state, maybe some infrastructure have been sustained. At least you can still see the street lights, you can still see the Government House on top of the hill, you can still see some of the physical things; particularly, our efforts in the area of human capital development, area of entrepreneurship, tourism development, healthcare, have actually been severely damaged.
I give you a couple of examples to demonstrate what I mean by that. Over 40,000 people benefitting from our various social investment schemes have been put out to hang and dry. 25,000 people that I was paying N5,000 each to, in our Social Security Scheme, the 10,000 other people benefitting from Youth Volunteer Scheme, our youth empowerment system and being paid N10,000 each monthly and being engaged in variety of our initiatives; environmental sanitation, teaching in schools, working in the health sector and all of that, they were disbanded.
The youth in the agricultural scheme, which was at the time used by the Minister, Akin Adeshina, no longer exists in this state, though some of the beneficiaries have now gone on to better things in the agricultural sector.
The Peace Corps that I established and which had about 1000 people across the state, has also been disbanded and all those people are out on the street. So, when you go around Ekiti and you talk to the elderly, the young, pregnant women and people who benefitted from the variety of things we did; pupils in schools, university students who benefitted from our bursary and scholarships – that no longer exist in this state, you will get their reactions. Nobody gives scholarship again.
Then you can understand the pain that I feel about missed opportunities for our people. If it was about me, I really do not need to be governor in order to live a decent life. Frankly, and I am sure you will agree with me, Abuja is an easier setting to operate. As a Minister, if I were to see politics as business, it is also the better place to do other things, network and gain opportunities, but I would not be fulfilled, if I were to ignore all the damages that had been done in the state.
And it is also much that a lot of what I did had been eroded. Just go to Ikogosi. You knew what I made out of Ikogosi. You only need to visit Ikogosi now and see what had become of Ikogosi and the damage does not just focus on human capital development, but on infrastructural development.
You would imagine that somebody who has taken out 40,000 jobs or support scheme, out of the budget of the state, will be in a position and on much stronger footing to pay salary regularly in a known civil service state, but civil servants are being owed six months at the minimum, teachers are being owed 10 months, local government workers are owed 10 months, traditional rulers, who used to take five per cent of local government funds that come to the state when I was governor, not only have the pay being reduced to 2.5 per cent, they don’t even get it. For five to six months now, they have never earned any pay.
So, if you ask me, yes, I have been governor; I am not coming out for a sense of ambition, I am coming out for a sense of duty, out of a profound sense of unfinished business, which I believe only a progressive and ideologically driven government can deliver as far as Ekiti State is concerned.
You are said to be in this race because you have the support of President Muhammadu Buhari and not only that, people are saying that the party leadership in the state is one that you installed and, therefore, would deliver to you the party ticket at the primaries, what is your reaction?
I can also not detach myself from the government in which I serve, that is also going to play up and I am not going to say to you that I have not secured the approval of my boss to enter the race. I work for a principal, so it is not possible that I would be out running around the way I have been doing without having gone to my principal and say, sir,, I am thinking about going back to Ekiti and that I need your help for me to pursue my ambition, but if you don’t have any objection, I believe I would want to crave your indulgence to go back home and repair the damage that has been done in my state.
That is not necessarily an endorsement and anyone who knows President Buhari, the way he functions, would know that he is not the type that would insert himself in a race that is clearly based on clear guidelines and principles and you’ve seen him demonstrating it consistently, including most recently with the issue of elongation of tenure in our party. He is not the type we’ve seen with the PDP government where the president says yes, this is my man, and no one dares him; President Buhari won’t say that.
On the second purported claim that I installed the leadership of the party in the state, there is no doubt that the leadership of the party emerged at the time I was governor in the state and they don’t have the brouhaha going in our party. This leadership emerged in 2014 and four years after, according to the constitution of our party, the leadership must change in 2018.
But again, when you look at the background of this leadership you talked about in our party, you have in the executive of our party, party people who came from the PDP or new PDP. Also in the state executive, you have traditional ACN people from my own side of the party, you have people who also came from other tendencies, people within the broader ACN family.
So we are not all sleeping facing the same direction. But the most important thing for me is that people have a record to sell. If I am running, it is a market place, you need to look at your unique selling point and place that before the delegates. So anyone who says oh you have the president’s backing, and oh too, he has the structure of the party in the pocket, I believe they are mistaken on both stands.
What would you say about your achievements in the Ministry of Mines and Steel in the last three years?
As a matter of fact, what is uppermost in the minds of stakeholders in the mining sector is if I can use the word foundational. The work I have done over the last two and a half years as Minister is largely foundational, retrieving critical data for the sector, supporting private and small scale miners with low interest rate funds, ensuring that the regulatory framework is much more predictable and certain so that when you get a licence, you are not going to run the risk of another person coming to say it is not yours, it is mine.
It is also about strengthening the relationship between states and the Federal Government as well as the surveillance of the illegal mining activities.
But the truth of the matter is that as much as I love what I am doing, the mandate that the president has saddled me with, I also know that mining is a long term sector, the foundation for massive transformation has been laid since I got there, that is what I believe we should do.
On the critical projects that we have, mining does not subject itself to an electoral circle. Unfortunately, it is not a four-year sector, it’s a 2025 year sector to plan and I don’t believe that staying out would give me a sense of fulfilment of what is required in the sector.
Besides, I have a colleague who I have carried along very closely as minister in the sector so nothing is likely to change.
He would deepen the activities that we’ve put in place and I don’t see why he would not do well in continuing with the work I have done and we’ve both jointly presided over in the sector, even on more larger platform, you are right. You know there are so many competent Nigerians that can fix things at the Federal level and also at the state level, you only need knowledgeable people, you need people with experience. And in governance and politics, there is always a sense in which it is safer to hear from the side of people who you had served.
I outlined a lot of things this afternoon when I was speaking and the truth of the matter is that these are precisely what have been missing in this state for over the last three years and the sharp penury, hopelessness, the heartlessness that the Ekiti people have been experiencing is beyond belief. For a state that has climbed thus so high in all indices of human development to now in the last four years end it up in a situation where the rate of Children-out-of-School is now the highest in the country is a tragedy. This is a state that had the lowest percentage of Out-of-School Children in the federation not just South-West, now it has the highest because the parents that were not paid salaries, you cannot have been charging their children school fees. That was exactly not the situation in this state, before it was a state where pupils used to go to school free. So if I am coming back, it is actually out of pain that this should not be allowed to happen in a decent society.
Some people say your efforts might be fruitless after all in the face of a 10-year ban the government White Paper placed on you.
Which government White Paper? You mean the toilet paper or what? You are far too knowledgeable about this thing and you also have a good sense of history of where this is coming from. Yes, it used to be the case in this country that you can use an administrative panel report or a judicial commission report to orchestrate the ban of a political officeholder but that period has since gone because it became very clear that this was a witch-hunting tool either in the hands of the federal officers who have used this or at the state level. And there is a settled matter by the Supreme Court of Nigeria on this point and that is Atiku Abubakar vs Federal Government of Nigeria that you cannot use the report of a commission of enquiry or an administrative panel of enquiry to ban anyone from public office.
It is only a court of record and what is defined as a court of record in law? It is a High Court either at the state level or at the federal level. So for anyone to tell you, to the best of my knowledge, I have not even been asked to show up in any court over any allegation. And don’t forget I did not even appear before any panel.
Cuts in- You were invited?
I was invited but you should also remind yourself that I challenged that invitation in court and that case was in court as the panel was sitting. So I cannot approbate and reprobate. I cannot challenge a matter in court and then go to the same panel to show up thus legitimizing the activities of the panel. I am not INEC, however, there is judicial precedence. I have a friend called Rabiu Musa Kwankwaso who went through same experience. He was governor. He went to become Minister and when he was about coming back as governor, the governor of that state brought out a commission of enquiry report. Of course, it was rubbished and the man became governor.
So you have to ask yourself, what is the point of those saying that? It may well be traceable to ignorance of the law and of the state of affairs because it was not just settled in the Supreme Court case that I mentioned, it has also led to the alteration of that section of the constitution. So if you read that constitution today, it does not say what it says in 1999 to 2003. This is why I describe the White Paper as a tissue paper.
Can you shed more light on the N25billion loan taken by your government and the specific projects you embarked upon with the money?
Absolutely because what we did is clear to everybody. We took N25billion for infrastructure development, not for salaries, not for frivolities and those projects traversed the length and breadth of the state. The bulk of that money was spent on roads. When I was governor, the entire road network in this state changed and there were about 14 roads that went into that. We spent about N14billon out of that N25billion on roads alone. Besides, we brought back Ikogosi, we built the new Government House out of this money, we built a 12,000-seater pavilion out of this money, we built the Civic Centre out of this money. In fact, if you calculate what we spent the N25billion on, we spent more than N25billion. But you had a governor who really cannot be accused of showing fidelity to the truth.
Part of what you said I committed as offence, the people you were citing came to your own panel of enquiry. Access Bank came to your panel of enquiry and told you categorically that there was no missing N835million from the funds of UBEC, that we took our money back because the state did not meet the obligation attached to the grant. So if a bank lends you money and that same bank takes the money back and you could go to the entire public and say Fayemi stole N825million. You then set up an independent panel yourself chaired by a former Chief Judge in the state who is now a king, Oba Ajataye, and that panel came out indubitably that no money was missing, how can you pay serious attention to the report of such a panel? And these were the things you hinged your allegations of fraud and mismanagement on.
So what we did in the state, the record is there for all to see and we can defend our record any day. The Federal Government became the baby-sitter of virtually all the states because 30 states were not paying salaries when our government came into office. If not for the generosity of spirit of President Muhammadu Buhari, I don’t know where many of the states would be now. Even with all the support, take my own state for instance, I gave you a figure of $56billion this afternoon from the first bailout, second bailout, budget support, micro credit funds, Paris Club 1 and Pairs Club 2. I cannot imagine where Ekiti State would be today if President Buhari had not been as generous as he has been to provide the kind of support he has provided to states and to provide it to a man who daily insults him.
When I was governor in this state, I would like to think I had a very respectful relationship with President Jonathan. But you know what; President Jonathan had a very selective approach to distributing federal funds. Those of us in the opposition never benefitted and these were our entitlements. They will share Ecological Funds without ACN and ANPP states being part of it; they will do road refund and will not give us our own. But that is not what obtains in today’s government. So on very many grounds, I believe the track record of my boss is also worth selling; I’m not saying that this government has been perfect on all grounds. We also suffer from the tyranny of exaggerated expectations. A lot of Nigerians expected much from us, much more realistic considering the resources available to the country.
I headed the Policy and Strategy Directorate of our campaign and played a central role in the development of our programmes, policies and manifesto in that position. I know that we thought through a lot of things. What we are doing today with social investment is the same kind of things that I did in Ekiti– social security for the elderly, school feeding programme, youth volunteer scheme and so on. What we are doing in social investment today, everyday in this country, 7 million kids are fed; in Ekiti we have almost 11,000 people in the N-Power Scheme, bigger states have bigger numbers. If you look at other sectors and base your judgment, not even on our records, check the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS), you will see that we have not done as badly as we are made to look. We have a challenge of exaggerated expectation on one hand and communicating effectively on the other the success of this administration and those are areas I believe we can begin to work on. But I’m prepared to run on those records, my record in office and the record of the government I serve.
Can we have your take on zoning arrangement in the state?
On the issue of zoning, I ran for governor in this state in 2007, the primary was in 2006. Even at that time, there was a level of agitation for zoning to the northern part of the state. But at all time, I was very careful, I always said that I am not running as a candidate of zoning, I was running for office on the basis of competence of character and commitment to social democratic values. There is nothing wrong with correcting or addressing what you might call disadvantages, but even at the time I ran for governor, when there was a preponderance of opinion that it should go North, I can count at least eight competitors who came from the South and Central senatorial zones and the party did not debar them from running.
If you look at the APC constitution too, it actually does not subscribe to the principle of zoning because you need a strong candidate. The debate about zoning is one that I’m always uncomfortable about, not because we should not give fair and balanced treatment to everyone, but because in a political competition you have other factors you must place on the table and if those other factors outweigh the zoning factor, ultimately they will carry the day. But I believe that if we have strong candidates from the Sourthern Senatorial zone the party will look that way.
Question: What are the mistakes the APC made in 2014 that they intend in 2018 to correct?
Answer: The lesson that I learnt has nothing to do with losing an election because I still don’t believe that we lost that election. However, I learnt a profound lesson governing Ekiti. One of them is that you can do a lot of things, but the process is more important than the product. There is nobody in this state that will not say Fayemi worked hard for the people, but there was a perception that I did not sell everything I was doing. What became known as ‘Opon Imo’ in Osun State that was celebrated, we had the same here, we had a Laptop for school kids in Ekiti long before Osun came to that conclusion. We also had ‘Owo Arugbo’ before Agba Osun. ‘Owo Arugbo’ was in my inaugural speech as governor that we will establish a social security fund for the elderly. So I believe we didn’t do well in communicating our achievements. It is unfortunate, but that is the nature of the game, you must sell even the most irrelevant achievement for people to know that you are working. I believe it is a problem we must challenge. We are supposed to be a state of knowledgeable people, but the truth is that our educational system has depreciated. There is a horrific gap between the elite and the disadvantaged in Ekiti and if there is one person who knows how to exploit it, it is Ayodele Fayose, setting the elite against the disadvantaged in society and setting himself as the champion of these people who often do not know any better what is happening to them.
and then