‘I will return to Ekiti Government House’

The Minister of Mines and Steel Development, Dr. Kayode Fayemi, is a governorship aspirant on the platform of the All Progressives Congress (APC) in Ekiti State. He spoke with reporters in Ado-Ekiti, the state capital, on his ambition, agenda for the state and chances at the primary. EMMANUEL OLADESU was there.

You have been governor in this state before now and you are currently a Minister of the Federal Republic. Why do you want to return?

I have been governor here in the state before now, but I feel a profound sense of unfinished business. Unfinished business in the sense that all of what I did in office, have been abandoned to rot. Well, maybe, some infrastructure have been sustained, at least you can still see some of the street lights you can still see the government house on top of the hill, you can still see all of the physical things, particularly our efforts on the areas of human capital development, entrepreneurship, tourism development, Health care have actually been severely damaged. I will give you a couple of examples to demonstrate what I mean by that, over 40,000 people benefitting from our various social investment scheme have been put out to hang and drowned. The 5,000 that i was paying N5,000 to in the social security scheme, the 10, 000 benefitting from the youth volunteers and empowerment scheme who were being paid N10,000 monthly and being engaged in variety of our youth initiatives, environmental sanitation, teaching in schools, working in the health sectors, all of that were disbanded.

The youth in Commercial Agricultural scheme, which was at the time used as a model by the Minister for Agriculture, Akin Adesina, no longer exist in the state, although some of the beneficiaries had now gone on to other things in the agricultural sector. The Peace Corps that I established, which had about a thousand people across the state have also being disbanded and all those people out on he streets. So, when we go around Ekiti and when you talk to people, the young, old, pregnant women and people who benefited from the variety of things that we did, pupils in schools, university students benefited from our bursary and scholarships, that no longer exists in this state. Nobody gives scholarships again, nobody gives bursary again, then you can understand the pain of why I feel about missed missed opportunities for our people, if it were to be about me, I really do not need to be governor in order to live a decent life, and I’m sure you will agree with me, Abuja is an easier settings to operate as a Minster, if I were to see politics as business, it is also a better place to network and gain opportunities to  do other things but I will not be fulfilled if I were to ignore all of the damage that have been done in this state.

All what we did to better the lives of our people have been eroded in a lot of places. Just go to Ikogosi, most of you used to come here when I was governor, you knew what I made out of Ikogosi, you only need to visit Ikogosi now and see what have become of Ikogosi and the damage does not just focus on those human capital development, infrastructure development. You would imagine that somebody who have taking out 40,000 jobs or support scheme out of the budget of the state, would now be in a position and more stronger footings to pay salaries regularly in a known civil service state, civil servants are being owed six months at the minimum, Teachers are being owed 10months, pensioners are owed 10 Months, local government workers are owed 10months, traditional rulers who used to take 5 percent of the local government funds that came to this state when I was governor, not only reduced to 2 and half percent , they don’t even get it, for 5-6 Months, they never earned anything. So if you ask me, yes, I have been Governor, I’m not coming out of a sense of ambition, I’m coming out of a sense of duty, out of a profound sense of unfinished business which I believe only a Progressive and ideological driven government can deliver as far as the state is concerned.

A lot of people have predicted some kind of crisis in your party, owing to the presence of many eminent people…

I don’t think the problem you are envisaging would happen actually, where we may run into problem is when it is a close race and people imagine that some hanky panky had given one person or the other an edge. I do not think its going to be a close race, but that is separate matter. Everyone has a right to run and aspire in a political competition. I don’t think we should debar them from doing so, I have a track record of having been the first person to mange a primary process for the APC and I recall when I met the five presidential aspirants at the time , I made them sign an undertaking for the party in return I gave them an assurance that if they found any iota of hanky-panky in the race they should raise hell. But I think that is what need to happen, if people are confident that the process is fair, credible and transparent, I don’t think we would have that much of a crisis , however , there can be no doubt that you have people who are in this race not in the overall interest f the party, they are in their s race to play a spoiler role.

A section of your party members said that your effort might be a waisted one after all, in the face of a ten year ban placed on you by the state Government white paper, what is your take on this?

Do you mean the toilet paper?…common you are far too knowledgable about these things and you have a good sense of history of where this is coming from. Yes it used to be a case in this country that you can use an administrative panel report or judicial commission report to orchestra the ban of a political office holder but that period had since gone, because it became very clear that this was a witch hunting tool, either in the hands of a federal officer who have used this or at the state level and there is a settled matter by the Supreme Court of Nigeria on this point you are making and that is the Atiku Abubakar vs Federal Government of Nigeria, that you can not use the report of a Commission of enquiry or an Administrative panel of enquiry to ban anyone from holding public office. Only a court of record and what is defined as a Court of record in law, a High Court, either at the state or 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…

But, you were invited…

I was invited, but you should also be aware that I challenged that invitation in the court and that case was in court as the panel was seating, so, I can not approbate and reprobate, I can’t challenge a matter in court and then go to the same panel to show up, thus legitimising the activity of the panel. But I’m not INEC, however, there is judicial precedence. I have a friend called Rabiu Kwankwaso, who went through this 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 section in my party, who are saying that. It may well be traceable to ignorant of the Law and of the state of play, because it is not just settled in the Supreme Court case that I mentioned, it has also led to the alteration of that section in the constitution, so if you read that constitution today, it does not say what it says in 1999-2003, which why I described it as tissue paper.

There is this stringent agitation for zoning by people from the Southern part of the state, who believe it is their turn to have the governorship seat, how would you react to this?

On zoning, I ran in this state for Governor in 2007, the primaries was in 2006 December and the election was April 2007 and there was even at the time, there was a level of agitation for zoning to the northern part of the state but at that time I was very careful, if you read my interviews then, I have always said I was not running as candidate of zoning , I was running for office on the basis of competency, character, commitment to social democratic values. There is nothing that is wrong with correcting or addressing disadvantages but even at the time I ran in this state for governor, when there was preponderance of opinion that it should go north, I can count at least eight competitors who came from the south and central senatorial zones. You have candidates in my party like Dayo Adeyeye, Caleb Olubolade, Dare Babarinsa, Olowoporoku and several other candidate from the other parts of the state and the party did not debar me from running and if you look at the APC Constitution now, it actually does not subscribe to the principle of zoning, because, particularly now, we need a strong candidate. The man who is claiming that he’s promoting a southern candidate, he ran foul of that when he was contesting.

Many would tell you, in their own opinion, that he usurped the place of the North when he ran as candidate from the central. And frankly, the debate about zoning is the one that I’m always very uncomfortable about, not because we should not give fair and balance treatment to everyone, but because in a political competition, you also have other factors you must place on the table and if those other factors outweigh the zoning factor, ultimately there are going to carry the day. I do believe that, if we have strong candidate from the southern senatorial district, there is nothing to suggest that the party would not look in that direction.

What are the mistakes which APC made in 2014 elections, which would be averted in 2018 election and what are those lessons you have learnt?

One of the very first things I would say and I did say something about the sociology of Ekiti people immediately after the last election , the lesson that I have learnt have nothing to do with the loss in that election, because I still do not believe that we lost the election but that is not the point. However, I have learnt a lot of profound lessons governing Ekiti. One the key lessons I have learnt is that you can do a lot of programmes, the process is more important than the product in Ekiti, there is nobody that you meet in this state who would not say Fayemi worked hard for the people, anywhere you go people would tell you that. But there was a perception that I didn’t sell everything I was doing.

The second lesson that I believe we learnt also relate to managing relationship. We were very worker friendly, in fact, no government was as workers friendly as our government in this state but we were also very firm on certain things, when we introduced a biometric payroll system, some workers were not very happy about it , because the avenue for leakage was remove, even though I’m principe what we did was the right thing to do, you had headmasters who manually pay Teachers in the school and once we said all of you must have account and we were paying your money directly into your account, it became obvious that half of those teachers were not there, that person definitely would not forgive me, who have been making money out of the government illegally.

I also believed there was a perception that my government had a lot of technocrats and not grassroot politicians. Again wether that is true or not is not very relevant, the relevant point is that in politics politics perception is often stronger than reality. There are many people who actually genuinely believed that I had some Universities in Ghana but that was a perception sold as dummy but now that we know of Cambridge analytical, that you can sell a liar and repeat in socio media and it becomes the truth, even though we consistently denied that there was no University and even the people peddling the rumour could not give the name of the University or the location.

So, for me, I think enlightenment of our people is priority issue, that we must take very seriously if government is to succeed or you become a victim of your own success story.

The post ‘I will return to Ekiti Government House’ appeared first on The Nation Nigeria.