What’s your assessment of the just concluded Presidential, National Assembly, Gubernatorial and the State Houses of Assembly election?
I would say the election was free and fair even though there is no human activity that is perfect. It is normal since we started elections, especially in our modern democracy, since 1979 except in 2015 that there was never a time that candidates who lost in election accepted the verdict. They will always agitate, which is an African character. Even in some developed Nations some agitate and go to Court. What exactly is an issue here is that people were misled into believing that what we have was an electronic voting, as a result people expected that as they cast their vote the result will be transmitted electronically directly to the server, but in reality what we have was a situation where we have BVAS for accreditation and the results were suppose to be inserted into the BVAS then transmitted into the server manually. It is not as if you vote, it is transmitted. So, people need to understand what we have in place and once they do that it becomes easy to appreciate that you are only accredited using BVAS and then you go and exercise your franchise and after counting, the Returning Officer will now impute the result in the same BVAS and then transmit. How does the transmission happen? It uses a GSM network and you know that the network is clearly unreliable. You can clearly see what happened with some banks recently when we suddenly shifted to an electronic banking system. Some banks’ networks were frozen for a week and no bank was not affected. So, you can understand we have a weak infrastructure here. However, people need to understand that politics is a game and I can tell you there is hardly any player that is full proof. Malpractice is probably when some outsmart others and that is the game. In the judgement of an election, you give an error margin and at the end what we need to look at can we prove that the error was beyond the margin or not? Nobody should expect a perfect system, that is the reality. But in any case those who are aggrieved, they have a channel to go to court and seek redress if they can prove their points, that is the only way we can build our democracy. We cannot build a nation based on public opinion but based on fact and truth. This is extremely important and Nigerians are yet to understand this. If I feel very bad about you I just go about blackmailing you and I can influence public opinion in that light and that can even become detrimental to you but when we go to court and i present my facts and those facts can be substantiated then the court will rule.
How confident are you in the Kaduna State Governor-elect, Sen Uba Sani, to deliver credible leadership looking at the humongous challenges that have gripped the State?
Sen Uba Sani, what most people don’t realise is that he is one man that has a pedigree in civil liberty organisations. He was an activist before, he grew up under the tutelage of Gani Fayemi and Ransome Kuti before he eventually joined politics. He has served as political adviser to President Obasanjo and has held several positions and contested for several positions until he became the political adviser to Governor Nasir el-Rufai and today he is in the Senate. There is so much he has to show for being in the Senate for just three years. Sen Uba Sani had through his social corporate social responsibility, got NCC to build and fully equipped three Computer Centres; one in the Kaduna State College of Education Gidan Waya, Kaduna State University and Nuhu Bamalli Polytechnic Zaria even before he became the Senator to represent the Kaduna Central Senatorial District. Also, he was able to get a Federal Medical Center, attract a project to a tune of over N4 billion to build a brand new Faculty of Engineering at the Kaduna State University, upgrade all the Primary Health Centres all in his Constituency while he sponsored nine remarkable bills to his credit that have direct bearing to his people and Nigerians. We will experience rapid development under Sen Uba Sani administration.
Do you think the North will have a better deal in the Tinubu’s Presidency?
For me, I see Tinubu’s emergence as an answered prayer and a kind of turning point for this country economically. For me it is the answer to prayer for the poor people. One, there is a principle of rotation of the Presidency and that is the only thing that keeps Nigeria stable and peaceful. The emergence of Tinubu as a Southerner will stabilise and keep Nigeria peaceful because everybody feels a sense of belonging. Again, new ideas will come up on the issue of this banditry and terrorism and we might get some serious relief. For the poor man what else does he want rather than to go to his farm and farm peacefully and get his food first before he even thinks of an excess road to sell. Talking about the economy turning around, Asiwaju will be able to bring the best brain, identified talent to work for him. He demonstrated that as a Lagos State Governor where he turned the Lagos economy around from a N60 million economy to over a N50 billion economy monthly today. As I speak to you today, Lagos is the fifth largest economy in Africa. So, a man who has demonstrated this capacity cannot be ignored but he can only do more. Look at the Lagos mega city plan? That is gradually taking shape, integrating the economy of Oyo and Ogun State. That is one of the most ambitious projects in the whole of Sub-Sahara Africa today. What I hope for Tinubu Presidency is that we’ll have the right house especially the FCT Minister that will also develop Abuja Mega City plan integrating the economy of Kaduna, Niger, Nasarawa and Kogi States and this can form the nucleus that can drive the modern economy and by extension the Nigerian economy. Asiwaju understands economic development. 60% of Nigerian billionaires that make their money legitimately made their money in Lagos and 95% of Nigerian billionaires live in Lagos, why are they not in Potiskum or Kebbi? If I have the opportunity to advise Asiwaju I will advise him to replicate the Lagos Mega City plan in Abuja where you can leave Kaduna, Nasarawa or Lafia and work in Abuja at any time because you have a train that works in less than 45 minutes or 1 hour.
In Southern Kaduna, Ginger has remained the most important product growing in that part of Kaduna State which placed Nigeria in the World Map. How is the area thriving in terms of development?
The unfortunate thing is that the people who have this exclusive endowment actually live in oblivion and they are not even aware that God has given them this exclusive endowment, so they go about life without caring for anything that is why they are poor and it is pathetic. The reason is simple. A man cannot sit on top of gold and be poor except they fully embrace a guiding principle of life. It is totally unacceptable that somebody from Southern Kaduna should be poor because ginger is the most viable value chain in Northern Nigeria if not the whole of Nigeria but the people don’t understand it. So, we produce ginger but it is the Indians and the Chinese that are making the money. People can be quick to point at lack of government support but I disagree with that. Business of farming is a private thing. We all know that ginger was part of the old product that Dangote traded before he got to where he is today. Have we not had people that have the opportunity to create platforms where ginger will be highlighted and be a benchmark on the global market? We have those caliber of people. We only have people as long as they have money in their pockets and they can solve the problems of their family and until they are satisfied they don’t care about the generality of the people and that’s our major challenge.
One of the reasons for increased demand for the product in the export market is its high quality, rated among the best. Is Nigeria’s Government taking advantage of these demands?
You know to a large extent that oil has overshadowed everything. Which value chain has ever received serious government attention before this administration? None. It is left for the people of the region to know their own oil and to focus on it and develop it. When they focus on it and make progress it will become visible to the Kaduna State and the Nigerian government and at that point in time the government will step in. Before oil, we were agricultural giants but the moment we discovered oil everything went down the hill. Are we talking about Cocoa, rubber, Palm oil and what else receives government attention? Nothing, because there is free oil money. So, I don’t see Ginger particularly peculiar not having government attention because it’s not a big deal. It is just an agricultural product, so when people get free money they just get lazy.
Despite this stress, the local dealers of ginger are regulating the prices at will, leaving poor farmers helpless. How can they get out of the grip of local dealers?
That can only be possible if they organize themselves. That is why even when I left the Government, my company partnered with Master-Card Foundation and brought an intervention that supported about 60,000 farmers to grow ginger and scale them up to one hectare each because one hectare is the minimum entry point for ginger. What that simply means is that if you grow one hectare of ginger is enough to sustain you and your family. The challenges are there, our people are largely, if you want, say Republican because they don’t want to organize. They are too independent minded. They don’t want to be told what to do and they want to run free. So, you can’t have development where people have that kind of mentality because development is directed towards progress. If you are making a journey in a particular direction consistently you progress and then you will achieve development. One of the major challenges that I have seen is that our people don’t see farming as a business and there is very little interest. As impactful as the intervention we brought we didn’t achieve one of the purposes of that intervention which is the development of a very robust cooperative society for the Ginger value chain. So, we have to go back and try again. Places you see people progress, they are organized into cooperatives with their leadership and everybody knows that during the farming season they are going to collect farming inputs credit and during the harvest they know what they are expected to pay back. But there are times people will collect inputs and make a lot of money but refuse to pay and some of them don’t even have respect for the leadership of the cooperatives they are into. Years to come, you will see that they are back to square one. When you don’t pay their input credits they will have to invest elsewhere.
You were Commissioner of Agriculture under Nasir el-rufai’s first term in office, what are some of the interventions you brought to farmers in Kaduna State?
Quite a lot of them. We had the Commercial Agricultural Development Programme assisted by the World Bank. We had appeals which for the first time actually supported the ginger value chain in Kaduna State and the appeals project was actually an offshoot of the Commercial Agricultural Development Programme and also World Bank funded. I was also able to bring Olam Company which has created so many jobs and has improved livelihood to the people of Kaduna State. We also have the Tomato Jos which indisputably is one of the biggest processing companies in Nigeria today. We brought Vicampro which would have been self-sufficient today on Potato but a lot of issues came and they had to leave. We brought the Solar Company in Kafanchan, another Company that was interested in Lolanty. They were to invest in Kagarko but there were issues too they had to leave too. The issues that affected Olam spill to them and quite a number of them that I can’t mention.
What is stopping the idea of building industries that could take up the raw ginger from farmers and process them into either semi-finished or finished products?
Who will build the industries? We have people that have the capacity to build industries within Southern Kaduna but they are not interested. Who do you want to come and build an Industry for you? Considering the political landscape of Nigeria where the risk of annihilation is very high. Is it somebody from Sokoto, Zaria or from Kano that you want him to come and build an Industry then you wake up one day and say he is not from there? Look, I told you earlier, we don’t live based on facts and truths. Somebody can have a misunderstanding with you because you put your industry somewhere. He will just defame you and incite the community against you and they burn down the place. These are major challenges. If there is anybody that should build an industry to add value to Ginger and empower the people, it should start with the Southern Kaduna people. When strangers see you investing they will believe that you believe in your people, you believe in your geography, they will come up with an investment. There are about 3 to 4 companies that are there assisting farmers. If it is ginger that you want to grow there they give you the land free then you pay. Flour Mill Company of Nigeria have seen a place and they have indicated interest to enter the ginger business. Imagine we didn’t do that, who will bring them there? Everything starts with giving the people hope and you believe in your region and investors will come.
Agriculture is the mainstay of the north and a major employer of labour , especially the rural dwellers. As a professional in the field, what do you suggest the President-elect, Tinubu should do differently to improve this sector?
What I think is the master key to developing Agriculture is to set-up a commodity exchange rate. The Governors should also do the same because I am looking at the possibility that commodity exchange should be regional. These regions should have a commodity that will focus on specialty crops and competitiveness in that region and the government should take away its eyes from it. Government should not hold more than 25% equity. They should make the private sector invest in any of those commodities and do business.
Infact, if you ask me, every state should have its own commodity exchange. If you have a commodity exchange in Kaduna for example, you put ginger and vegetables, maize and soya beans as your priority crops including livestock. The money you will make from the commodity exchange will be by far more than the federal allocation and other IGRs . When you make money from commodity exchange, you will channel agricultural commodities and value trade in addition to giving direction for growth. For every commodity that is marketed within your jurisdiction or state, tax must be paid and it comes to the state coffers. So, if a commodity passes through 10 hands before it gets to your state the government will get tax 10 times, so it is a master key. It makes Agriculture a stable and productive business. With this, capital and insurance will just flourish. Farmers will be rich but of course the government must be deliberate about it.
How can we surmount the challenges of hunger bearing in mind that farmers can’t access their farmlands because of banditry?
Banditry is a very huge challenge and the government has its own reasons why they are taking the approach that they have been taking. There are issues of civil organisation accusing the Nigerian government of violating people’s rights. But I believe that all these things need some level of dialogue and transparency. I won’t just sit back and let my people undergo such a problem because I know that when I leave the government, I might be taken to the International Criminal Court (ICC) because I believe that this is some of the reasons the government took the approach they have been taking. There is no country or government that will allow terrorists to form a parallel government but the approach and the engagement matters. So, if you don’t engage appropriately, your approach might be seen as human right abuses and at the end you will have trouble in your hands.
How do we overcome the problem of subsistence farming in Nigeria?
I doubt if we can overcome that. There is poverty everywhere but what we need to do is to educate farmers more and improve their capacity to be more productive and they need to form cooperatives then it becomes easy to do peer review, transfer knowledge and innovations that will improve their productivity. If they form cooperatives they can be able to aggregate their produce together and that way they can bargain with big time buyers and get better value for their produce. But if every farmer will take 5 metric tons of produce to the market alone, he can’t get a good bargain. That is why today the middle men are short changing the farmers. It has been estimated that the farmers make only 30% of the profit while the middle men make 70% profit but the farmers don’t understand this until they form cooperatives and they are able to aggregate their farm produce into critical mass that manufacturing company and exporters can buy directly if not, they will never get that value. Only the middlemen who are the ones visible to the big buyers will continue to benefit.
