Kayode Fayemi: We Must Rise Above Partisan Concerns to Fix Nigeria

The atmosphere was genial, but the interaction wasn’t. Perhaps, Governor John Kayode Fayemi of Ekiti State, came to the table with a mindset – one that suggested his THISDAY guests had also come for the kill. He wasn’t just battle-ready, his responses implied even more. A sound mind without pretences, the little over two hours’ engagement was intense. From the local politics of Ekiti to the topical national concerns and of course, his mediatory interventions as the Chairman of the Nigerian Governors’ Forum, his rumoured presidential ambition, the alleged animosity between him and Asiwaju Bola Tinubu, his speculated political intolerance, his take on the Muhammadu Buhari leadership, misgivings about the APC federal government and the fantasies of the Nigeria of his dreams – it was all an essentially idealistic interface wrapped into one, and which largely upheld his background as an intellectual, politician and media man. Excerpts:

In 2014, you surprisingly lost your re-election. Many attributed that to your style as being elitist. You gave a very interesting concession speech. Much later, you renounced your concession. Why did you recant that beautiful speech, which many at the time believed had set the tone for a new chapter in Nigeria’s democratic march?
I didn’t renounce it, if you were talking about my concession speech. I said if indeed, it was the will of the Ekiti people, then, I stood in deference to their will. And I didn’t go to court to challenge the outcome of the election as announced by INEC, not because I was convinced that I lost the election, but I felt challenging or resisting or resorting to alternative means of keeping myself in office would have just led to a bloodbath – an unnecessary bloodbath that I did not believe and I still do not believe politics is worth, especially, our electoral democracy.

Frankly, whether it was a result of the cumulative effect of manipulation, harassment, stomach infrastructure, as deduced by pundits at the time, I felt at the end of the day, INEC had its own responsibility as the adjudicator of the election. And it had come to that conclusion, right or wrong, and it was time for me to move on. But I also spoke in that speech, if you recall, about the fact that a new sociology of Ekiti people may have evolved but the task of understanding how the election defined Ekiti people was now the task of scholars and academics.

In fact, The Economist magazine wrote about that election, that this was a setback for Africa’s democracy, where a politician deemed to have done reasonably well enough in terms of performance on every governance performance index lost an election, and the fear expressed by The Economist then was, would this not lead to a situation in which people would not find value in working hard, when elected into office and just look for ways – whether it’s stomach infrastructure or any other approach to just ingratiate themselves with the people and get the results declared one way or the other to remain in office – performance or not?
So, I really didn’t renounce. But I thought it was important to query what happened, not for myself as an individual but for the democratic journey we had embarked on.

Why did you think you lost the election given your performance in office at the time?
Well, I must concede to the climate that was created for the wrong perception to be formed. Even the whole question of stomach infrastructure, you’ll be surprised to know that it came from my own party members, not from the opposition. It came from party meetings held with members, where some complained that ‘roads were being tarred up and down in the state, physical infrastructure appearing, but what about our stomachs?’ You’re not ‘tarring’ our stomachs.

You’re tarring the roads, and you’re doing things for people, but we put you here. We’re the party, and we’re not getting enough benefit. Everything you do, you will subject it to objective principle. You started social security benefits for the elderly; you designed it in a manner that everybody could benefit, not just our party members. We started the youth volunteer corps, and you granted students that were just out of school scholarships, and you said it should be done objectively. Then, what’s in it for us? Why did we put you in office if members of the opposition too can benefit from the goodies supposedly meant for us?’
These are questions that we’ll always have to deal with in our local environment, because some feel more entitled than others, when they’ve contributed to putting you in public office. They will always feel that people in opposition, or those who were neutral should not get the same benefits that we’ll get: free education, free health care service, and social security for the elderly? Everybody gets it.

So what separates us since some of us in the grassroots will never get appointments anyway? So in a sense, they believe they are suffering from the tyranny of meritocracy. You may be right that some felt my government was too technocratic and too meritocratic even if it delivered public goods to a greater number of our people. I have learnt some lessons from that. But I also honestly believe that it was a case of manufacturing populist consent in order to exploit the gullibility of the electorate. It was more to do with brigandage and electoral heist but populism was used as an explanation for the brigandage.

But the accusation was that you were too elitist, too detached from the realities of the Ekiti people?
People say that, but I beg to disagree. What was this detachment? People will tell you that you’ll never find Fayemi eating boli by the roadside. He’ll not go to the marketplace, and I used to say to them, well, I’m guilty of that. But I was not a toddler when Chief Obafemi Awolowo was still active in politics. I never for the life of me saw either a script or anything written about him when he was premier or leader of the Unity Party of Nigeria, going by the roadside eating boli or corn in order to prove how popular he was to people. His popularity stemmed from what he did for the citizens – how he took them out of squalor, illiteracy and provided opportunities. He never pandered to populist demagoguery.

So do you think values have changed, generally?
Oh, clearly. I think our values have transitioned, and Ekiti is a good example of that. And when I talked about the evolution of a new sociology, that’s partly what I was referring to. Ekiti used to be very pristine; we were hinterland people. We were the ones they call ‘ara oke’ in the city, and it’s to denigrate us, somewhat. We were seen as very value-driven, very pristine. We produced our first graduates in Ekiti in the 30s. But by the sixties, seventies, we had almost caught up with the Egba and the Ijebu, who were pioneers of education.

In a whole range of view, my own school, Christ School, Ado-Ekiti, which was the first high school in Ekiti, had by the fifties and sixties almost at par in Cambridge School Certificate Examinations with schools like Igbobi College, Government College, Ibadan and King’s College, Hussey College – a rustic school in the backwater of Ekiti competing against King’s College, Government College, Ibadan, Hussey College and the like – all the top schools. Sadly, by the time I became the Governor in 2010, something had happened to our people, and I think it was a bit difficult explaining to people, who had gone to school, struggled without jobs to preach the merit of meritocracy, because they were disillusioned.

Okay, you said we should go to school, we went to school. School was supposed to automatically provide us with jobs. So in order to eke out a living, some resorted to criminality and get-rich-quick schemes, and this was around the time that 419, Advanced Fee Fraud, was all over the place and some of those who did this injected the money back into politics.

To really worsen the situation, and this is not a denigration of my predecessor in office, for a lot of Ekiti elite, we were absolutely shocked that Ayo Fayose could become a governor, especially, after an urbane ‘Niyi Adebayo. The contrast was just too much for Ekiti people, and the Ekiti elite just could not wrap their heads around that, and many became completely detached from politics.

But then again, it’s like having Barack Obama and Donald Trump. You may argue against it. You may hate Trump or hate Fayose. Fayose was at the time a representation of where the people’s frustrations were: populist, gregarious, unorthodox – however, you may describe it. It was in that atmosphere that I came into Ekiti politics. In fact, a lot of my friends and family members were worried when I picked up the gauntlet. They thought I had a death wish. I used to be described as a ‘Tokunbo’ politician at the time, with many conveniently forgetting I grew up in Ekiti. But this new Ekiti was not the one I grew up in. I think something has changed about our values.

After your first term as governor, and unsuccessful reelection bid, you went on to become a minister and not a few people were surprised when you announced your intention to return to Ekiti Government House. Why did you feel the need to come back? What did you forget in Government House that you wanted to go back to pick up?

I wrote to all our royal fathers and community leaders when I decided to run in 2018. I explained that I had unfinished business in Ekiti, because the agenda I shared with Ekiti people when I entered the race in 2006 remained unfinished. Yes, I had accomplished a lot on that agenda in my first four years in office. But there was still a lot unaccomplished, and I’m glad that I had the opportunity – a very rare one when you look at the politics in Nigeria, probably only Rabiu Kwankwaso of Kano had the luck, I mean, grace that I had.

He was the only first-term governor, who lost (reelection) and came back (to win another term), interestingly after being a minister too. I followed in his footsteps. My campaign to return to office was hinged on what I described as ‘reclaiming the land and restoring her values’. I was convinced that we really needed to do something much more fundamental about what was happening to the character of the society, beyond being seen as a fountain of knowledge.

So we changed from being known as the ‘Fountain of Knowledge’ which, rightly, was associated with our passion for education and commitment to enlightenment to a new motto: Land of Honour. I have always felt honour is a more worthwhile value than knowledge. Yeah, knowledge is great, we need it. But you can be knowledgeable and yet be crooked. There are so many people, who are knowledgeable but severely lacking in the Omoluabi values associated with Ekiti. Beyond values’ restoration though, there were also unfinished bricks and mortar challenges, several of them left unattended to since I left office. I felt I needed to complete the various projects, revive industries that had become moribund, strengthen the knowledge economy and restore the various social investments schemes in the state.

Coming back four years on, how much progress have you made finishing the unfinished business?

I think we’ve made some considerable progress. But Ekiti is still a work-in-progress. I must concede that as well. I am happy that some of the things that were abandoned by my predecessor have now been restored and completed. Many of the projects that were literally just left to rot, I came back and had the opportunity to put them back. Also, all the moribund industries in the state I had to put back and then added more.

The Ikun Dairy Farm and Ranch, for example, that we just brought back to life in partnership with Promasidor is today producing 2,000 litres of fresh milk every day and targeting 10,000 litres by the end of the year. If that were to be imported by Promasidor, we know what the implication will be for foreign exchange.

Having that back on, we have also been able to attract other investments, particularly in the Agriculture sector such as JMK, Dangote and Stallion – all establishing rice mills in Ekiti, others like Promise Point are putting cassava mills in place, developing major cocoa initiatives, because, really, that’s one of our core strengths – agriculture and education. A total investment of about $300 million had come into the state in three years in this respect.

Drawing a parallel between your first coming in 2010 and 2018 when you returned, what markedly distinguishes these two periods?
Don’t forget, my first term in office, I had a lengthier period of preparation. Accidentally, I was prepared, but then I did not assume office until after a three-and-a-half-year spell in court. In those three and a half years, we presented an alternative budget every year to Ekiti people, which represented our objective critique of the budget released by the Segun Oni administration at the time.

Don’t also forget that Nigeria’s GDP growth rate during my first term was averagely 6 per cent and oil prices were for the most part around $100. So we had a little bit more resources to address the challenges that confronted us. There was also a lot more enthusiasm and exaggerated expectation for a first-term government naturally. However, when you’re a second-term governor, it’s what our people pejoratively refer to as ‘see finish’. They’ve known you. They’ve seen you operate, and usually, civil servants don’t like second-term governors, because by the time you’re a second-term governor, for the civil servants, you already know where the bodies are buried. It’s more difficult to manipulate you and you’re no longer a greenhorn in the ways of public servants and the average citizen. Whatever they say, yeah, you’ll listen, but you know what to do. They always like freshers.

This second term has called for more creativity and innovation and more realism due to the limited resources available. COVID pandemic also came and took the better part of one and a half years of this tenure in which we kept our public servants at home and yet, salaries were being paid. One of those innovations was getting used to the virtual way of work, which is also an advancement in governance.

Add to that the larger responsibility that I assumed as chairman of the Nigeria Governors’ Forum. You could say I was spending a lot of time out of the state attending to, if you like, non-Ekiti matters, but they’re really Ekiti matters, which also affect other states, and I have to be the interlocutor between my colleagues, the Central Bank, multilateral and bilateral development partners, various MDAs, the National Assembly, the National Economic Council and the President. That added responsibility has also broadened one’s horizons, without a doubt, in understanding this country a lot better and engaging it in its multifaceted, complex nature.
Is Nigeria really that complex?

It is complex in the sense that every country is an imagined community. But what makes it easier in some countries than others, in my view, is the degree to which there is elite consensus on what the country means to them and how they want to take it forward. Unfortunately, we haven’t been able to forge an elite consensus here.

Bricks and mortar aside, what policies and administrative initiatives do you consider as likely to outlive your administration?
I’ll think it’s our values reorientation, knowledge economy and social investment initiatives. We’ve introduced a values curriculum, for example, in our basic education schools. We put together, when I came in, the experts in the field of values, philosophy, the Omoluabi phenomenon – all of that – and they produced not just a curriculum but also the books from primary one to primary six; and from JSS1 to SS3.
We came to a conclusion that for those of us who are already jaded, simply put, there’s no point worrying about changing our values and our orientation.

But by focusing on the younger ones, it may be possible to start resetting our nation’s clock. And it’s no surprise for me. I think it’s beginning to bear fruit. A couple of days ago, it was Teachers’ Day. Out of the four prizes in the National Teachers’ Day competition, Ekiti carted away three. Last year, the person who won the ‘Best Teacher’ was from Ekiti at the National Teachers’ Day competition, and is now representing Nigeria in Africa. By leading by example, people are beginning to internalise our idea of values re-orientation.

People don’t easily notice the intangible. People are more concerned about bricks and mortar: ‘How many kilometres of road has he constructed? How many schools has he built? Hospitals? Gigantic buildings?’ That’s what sells, and I hope we’ll get to a point, where people will begin to examine government from the perspective of the intangibles as well: prudent management of the finances of the state, transparency and accountability; values re-orientation, service industry, creating alternative economy by increasing productivity beyond the focus on civil service jobs. But then again, when people are confronted with existential challenges, it’s hard to focus on intangibles.

Ekiti is 25 and in the mood of the celebrations, a renowned legal icon and elder statesman, Chief Afe Babalola, knocked her leaderships from inception, including you. Can you dispute his submission?
It’s an opinion and he’s entitled to his opinion. To the best of my knowledge, he is someone we all have a lot of respect for. He’s achieved a lot for himself by sheer dint of his own efforts but it’s helpful to take a variety of opinions, negative and/or positive. For example, the chairman of the Committee for the creation of Ekiti State also spoke around the same time, Chief Deji Fasuan, and he had a different opinion that if Ekiti had not been created, the opportunities that are available to the state now would not have been there.

What I recall Chief Afe Babalola saying, is something about Ekiti being landlocked, being airport-locked, being this, being that. But he forgot to add that he was able to put a university in Ekiti that is thriving – one of the most successful universities in Nigeria today, and if the climate had been as negative as he claimed, he wouldn’t have been able to do that.

On Ekiti being airport-locked as he claimed, in my first term in office, I asked Chief Afe Babalola, for example, to chair the committee that examined the viability of an airport in Ekiti, and he graciously did so. Yes, at first, I had expressed my skepticism about an airport being a priority, when Akure airport is not very far from us in Ekiti. I was however impressed with the committee report and the strong case they made for an agro-cargo airport that is also passenger-driven would be appropriate for Ekiti covering the market, which is in the North Central, Kogi which has no airport, and Osun with no airport

And even Ondo with a small airport, which is not a cargo airport. It’s just a small landing airport. And Osun also has no airport. I accepted the recommendation and promised to implement it. This was in 2013. We were not able to build the airport then but now Ekiti is building one. So it was a bit uncharitable that he didn’t mention that in that statement that he made and you have to ask yourself: what was the motive for issuing a statement like that, because sometimes we get frustrated with things in Nigeria and if you’ve been reading Chief Afe Babalola’s column regularly, you’ll know that he’s not exactly in the most positive mood about the state of things in the country, and it’s understandable.

He’s an old man, who has sacrificed a lot; who has put in a lot of effort, his personal wealth, his personal commitment to the state. He is one of the founding fathers of our state and we should give him the right to his own opinion. But when you’re the man in the arena as the late President Theodore Roosevelt once said, you must excuse those who are unable to see the full picture. But I can assure Chief Afe Babalola and those who share the views that Ekiti is certainly not in Jerusalem yet, but Ekiti has left Egypt a long time ago. We have noted the comments though and we will do more to satisfy the expectations of Ekiti people.

Curiously, his views ran contrary to a recent ranking by the Transparency and Integrity Index, which rated Ekiti as one of the top three states with the highest compliance. How do you reconcile that with the submission of someone like Chief Babalola?
I saw that report; that’s the BudgIT report. The report must have been based on objective analysis. His own was an opinion and opinion could be right or wrong. It’s still an opinion and it could be objective or subjective. He was expressing a view but I’m sure upon reflection, if Papa (Babalola) were to sit back, probably he’d modify some of what he said in that statement. But I wasn’t surprised to see that report in which Kaduna beat us to the second position of the 36 states. But this is not the first time.

In 2014, as I was leaving, Ekiti ranked first on the Transparency Index and it’s basically because we are a values-driven government and part of the values we subscribe to is transparency and accountability. For example, we’re the first state in the country to domesticate the Freedom of Information Act and I personally declared my own assets publicly, which if you go online you will still find, when I became the governor and we have tried to extend this to a government-wide approach to transparency, because if you go to our Bureau of Public Procurement website now, every single contract that has been awarded in Ekiti by my government – the amount, the contractor – the details you will find it there.

For us, we feel it is important to live up to the billing of our people. In Ekiti, we’re three million people. But there are three million opinions. Even a day-old Ekiti baby has an opinion on how he can run the state better than the current occupant of the office. Everybody has an opinion on what the government is doing or not doing right; or how we should be running things. It’s a measure of enlightenment. It’s a measure of commitment to improving the quality and standard of governance. Our people put our feet to fire regularly. And it’s a good thing. That’s what Chief Afe Babalola just did in his remarks.

Let’s go to some specifics. There are complaints about the general state of roads in Ekiti and those leading to it from neighbouring states. People share horrible travel experiences every time, especially about the Ado-Akure road. Why is this so?
Let’s start by saying the road infrastructure in our country today is not in the best of shape. Ekiti is not an island and we have our own share of bad roads. But I must also say that a lot of the roads in question suffer from the invidious confusion brought about by our unique federalism. The major roads that people complain about in Ekiti State today – Ado-Akure road is a federal road adjoining two state capitals; Ado-Ifaki-Otun road is also a federal road; Osun boundary to Aramoko to Ado-Ekiti, also a federal road; Ado-Ekiti to Ikare via Agbado and Aisegba is also a federal road.

Virtually all state roads in Ekiti are fine. But we have also intervened in the federal roads. I will give you the unique example of Ado-Akure road that you asked about. When I assumed office in 2018, I was very, very agitated about the condition of the road, and I took it up with my friend, the president of the African Development Bank, Akinwumi Adesina, who had also travelled on that road, when he came to receive an honorary doctorate degree from Afe Babalola University, and he agreed to help us.

Of course, this was going to be a request for credit from the African Development Bank, and we did everything that was necessary: we produced the feasibility report, design of the road, the environmental impact assessment, among others. At the time we were going to start, I informed the federal minister of works: ‘We want to work on your road. We have support from the African Development Bank. Should we go ahead to do it?’ If you know Minister Fashola very well, he’s a serious-minded individual. He’s not given to emotional attachment.

He wrote back to me and said, ‘Governor, leave our road alone. If you touch our road, we’ll not pay you any refund.’ I said that’s okay, and I asked if the Ekiti and Ondo governments could toll the road to recoup whatever had been expended on it to pay the loan that we would have gotten from the African Development Bank. The response was: ‘No, don’t toll our road.’ But I didn’t leave it at that, I said, ‘Tunde, you’re my brother. You’ve travelled on this road yourself. Are you going to take it over? I’ll ask the African Development Bank to give the money to the Federal Government of Nigeria, and he agreed. He said, ‘Okay, let’s work on that. We’d award the road.’ True to his promise, the road was awarded in 2019 or 2020 to Dantata and Sawoe.

As with many roads awarded by the Federal Ministry of Works, there are funding challenges. It’s 18 months now that, that road has been awarded. The AfDB in principle agreed to the transfer from Ekiti to the federal government, but they insisted that due process must be followed. Everything I’m telling you has taken the better part of 24 months – back and forth. Eventually, we had to recommission the feasibility study, and we had to bring road specialists from South Africa. Ekiti bore all the cost.

In fact, about a month or two ago, I just sent the minister the final environmental impact assessment. He read it and got back to me. Meanwhile, the three of us: the Federal ministry of works, the senior director of African Development Bank in Nigeria and myself, are having regular meetings on this. Eventually, the money will be released. But the average user of that road does care about this explanation I’ve given you. They are not even aware of the difference between federal and state roads. ‘I have a governor here; he’s not doing his job. Period!’ And this is happening all over the country.

But you can also understand the reluctance of the federal to refund claims by state governments for their work on federal roads. Over the last three years, I would say, the (President Muhammadu) Buhari administration had done an unprecedented thing: all the federal roads constructed since Obasanjo’s administration, Yar’Adua and Jonathan, up to Buhari, constructed by states, no president paid for those roads. No refunds. The Buhari administration must have paid close to 1 trillion naira as refund to states, and it was on the basis of this that I believe the Federal Executive Council took the decision that the federal government will no longer pay for roads not approved prior to the work being done.

So that’s the challenge we’re dealing with. It’s a challenge that we have to address. For our people, the primary interest is for the roads to be fixed. What’s also more difficult? You talked about Ekiti roads, which are suffering from what you can call double jeopardy. Ekiti State roads are some of the best roads in the South West and they are being damaged by heavy-duty trucks using Ekiti to connect the northern parts of the country. That’s part of the challenge that we’re dealing with. It’s one that’s not going to go away in a hurry, but we must address it. We must meet our people at the point of need. I’ve just awarded one of the federal roads now, in spite of the fact that I know Ekiti may not get a refund. We’ve decided we have to fix it. That’s all we’re doing in the larger interest of the people.

But could it be that the governors inflated the cost of constructing the roads and so the federal government felt cheated?
No. You cannot do that because the Federal Ministry of Works will come and assess everything involved, including the cost. It’s not up to you to tell them how much it cost to build the road. Even if you do by presenting evidence of contractual obligations, the Federal Ministry will still review what is submitted.

Security is a general problem nationwide, but Ekiti is alleged to be battling a share too much for the state to contain. What’s the peculiar challenge in terms of security?

There’s no peculiar challenge. There’s nothing that’s happening in Ekiti that’s any worse than in any other states in the South West. Don’t forget that Ekiti is the state on the outer boundary with the North. Kwara, Kogi are the states on the boundary of Ekiti. So if you hear of a jailbreak or an attack in Kogi, the likelihood is that if jailbirds or prisoners escape towards the South, Ekiti is the state that will first bear the brunt of that attack. And the truth of the matter is, I’ve said it before – there’s an inextricable link between the fallout of the insurgency and banditry up North and what we’re experiencing in many parts of the South in the form of kidnapping.

We can’t say Nigerians of a particular extraction; a particular state don’t come through here. All you can do is sensitise the people on the dangers they are likely to confront and also set up security institutions – to address this problem. That’s why we ordered drones in Ekiti In spite of the difficulty that we went through to get end-user certificates to procure tracking search and rescue equipment to support the mainstream security institutions – the military, police, civil defence, and our own Amotekun corps that’s already active – on this issue.

But we can still do more, because to the family of somebody who has been kidnapped and has had to pay a ransom, what does he care about the challenges the government is having? All he wants is for this not to happen again. But no matter how much effort we put into this, we cannot solve this problem on a state-by-state basis. It has to be holistic, and we have to engage the federal authorities as well.

This is really the position at the level of the governors’ forum, that look, if you’re going to give amnesty to Boko Haram insurgents, who are leaving the war zone and declaring themselves repentant, you must look at the deradicalisation programme you want to put together in light of potential threats it will constitute to other parts of the country.

Be they North West, North Central, or even the South. You must also factor in other issues that are responsible for insecurity, particularly, the larger human security issues: poverty, out-of-school children, climate change challenges like desertification, flooding, etc. All of these we have to consider holistically and respond to them with some kind of Marshall Plan, addressing the problem, where it has emanated first and then stemming the tide of the crisis, where it’s spilling over to. But we cannot just behave as if these issues are not there because we’re dealing with them on a daily basis.

Even in cosmopolitan Lagos, where you won’t expect that to happen, we’re now witnessing kidnapping on the streets of Lagos. It’s not that Governor Babajide Sanwo-Olu is not alive to his duty. He’s doing the best he can to keep the people safe. But then, this is also an opportunistic thing. What’s also happening, as discovered in Ekiti, is that ethnic profiling of criminals is complex. Some of the kidnappers in Ekiti are Ekiti citizens, who have resorted to kidnapping as a means of making quick money.

So it’s no use just saying, ‘it’s these people, who are doing this’. Let’s treat criminals as criminals irrespective of where they hail from and ensure that there’s access to justice in a very swift manner, because that’s part of the problem. People commit crimes; they get away with it, because our criminal justice system is defective, right from the investigation level at the police station to the judicial bench. We need to look at things holistically to address the issues.

Away from insecurity, what’s the economy of Ekiti now in relation to her IGR?
Ekiti is what you’ll refer to as a civil service state. That’s how people derogatorily refer to the state, and it’s understandable. But part of what we’re focused on over the last few years, which has yielded significant progress on the internally generated revenue side, is expanding the economy, bringing in a lot of private investors. That’s what brought Promasidor, Dangote, JMK, etc. All of these are agric institutions. Then you have educational institutions like the Afe Babalola University, also wholly private sector-driven. And there are several SMEs operating here.

That has seen a significant rise in internally generated revenue too. On average, a billion naira a month from about 400 million monthly when we came into office. It’s instructive to understand that the bulk of the people paying taxes are civil servants. So we have to go after the informal taxpayers by capturing what they’re meant to pay, not by expanding the tax net. That has seen some progress, but we can still do a lot more in that regard, particularly, through the use of technology and then, through the charge on items that are pretty much left in abeyance.

Land Use charge, for example, has aided us in the collection of informal tax, and I think gradually, we need to get away from our obsession with salaried jobs. That’s what will ultimately unlock the economy. People need to be more creative and less dependent on just earning a salary, because that creates a false sense of security, but ultimately, when they leave the government job, they discover that they could have done a lot more with their lives in the private sector.

But in order for us to encourage people to do that, we need to open up vistas of opportunities in the state. We need to see the possibilities in the other sectors. I talked about producing 2,000 litres of milk, and Promasidor is trying to get to 10,000 litres. We set up the Ekiti State Development and Investment Promotion Agency, for example, which is a vehicle that has focused on creating an enabling environment and opportunities for investment.

We also have a special-purpose vehicle, the investment arm of the state, Fountain Holding, that engages in all these public-private partnership initiatives. For example, in our partnership with Promasidor, we have 24 per cent of the equity, and we do this with other investments as well. That’s the way to go. For us, the vision is also one that develops the knowledge economy. This is a state that has a passion for knowledge, but it’s unfortunately not being turned into a wealth-creating opportunity. Even for those who have the requisite qualifications, they get drawn away from the state to Lagos, or the diaspora. There’s no university in Nigeria where you don’t find an Ekiti professor. There are some universities that have half of their professors from Ekiti, like the Obafemi Awolowo University or the University of Ibadan.

So you have that. Even abroad, I marvel at the number of Ekiti academics and intellectuals that I run into. But turning intellect into wealth is the challenge. We have what we call the Ekiti Knowledge Zone, which is a dedicated space that’s designed for investors that are interested in technology start-ups – biotechnology, information technology, the agric technology right next to the airport that we’re constructing. We see that as a way out of this, if you like, locked-in wealth in the state and refusal to be more aggressive and innovative about the possibilities that are out there, which our people are reluctant to pursue. For us, these two areas are the special purpose vehicles for Ekiti accelerated development: knowledge and agriculture.

You don’t seem enthusiastic about the collection of VAT by state governments. Is it because you know Ekiti will be badly affected?
On the contrary, when you’re the chairman of the Nigerian Governors’ Forum, you must always be sensitive to the yearnings of all your members, and VAT is one issue that’s been divisive among the governors. To that extent, the position that the Nigerian Governors’ Forum has taken in its meeting, which must reflect in what I do or say, is simply: let us await the court’s ruling on this. If I’m quiet or seem not to be as voluble as others on this matter, that is simply it. It has nothing to do with whether Ekiti is going to benefit or not, because there are various contributions that states make, and we’re not always going to make the same contribution.
Your opponents believe you’re highly politically intolerant. One would have thought that with a scholarly mind like yours, all views are welcome. Where are all these coming from?

Honestly, I’m dumbfounded. I am because if you asked the ordinary political being either within my party or outside of my party, I think the most common accusation is that I’m too tolerant. I have no reason to be intolerant of other people, because I come from the school that believes a thousand flowers should blossom. People should be given opportunities. People should come out with their own views.

When I ran for office in 2018, no fewer than 20 aspirants were in the race with me despite the fact that I was the leader of the party in 2018. There were people who ran for office with me, who were in my cabinet; my first-term cabinet. They lost. Nevertheless, many of them I supported to go into other things. Some of them, like Honourable Bamisile went to the National. Assembly, for instance, and he is in the House of Representatives. He ran against me. Not only did I encourage him to go, I also ensured that nobody ran against him in that Federal constituency.

Five of the people who ran against me in the governorship are in my cabinet as we speak. So when people say things like this, they should be asked the facts to back up their allegations. There are some of my friends who are very close to the media, so they create an impression partly because they have that access. But they know deep inside that there’s no truth to this allegation.

Let’s transit from local to national issues. Your party, the APC, has messed up the country. There’s no better way to put it, because that will be trying to minimise the damage the party has done to the country. This view is widespread. The country has become increasingly unsafe. Travelling from one place to another has become a suicide mission. The economy is down, corruption is on the rise – everything – is broken. The key parts of the promises your party made in 2014 and 2015, have remained unfulfilled. Why?

I wouldn’t say it’s an unfair comment, but context matters in everything that one does and in every assessment one makes. I was there at the foundation. I was there when we made those promises. I was the director of policy and research for the presidential campaign. I was actively involved in putting together the manifesto and policy guidelines, and campaign programme. Yes, we promised security, improved security. We promised a better economy, and we promised improved governance. When you sit back and look at what we met, that’s why I said context matters, you’d recall in 2015 that oil was $30 per barrel. In fact, $28, and we quickly ran into headwinds.

You’d argue that ‘okay, didn’t you see that coming? Weren’t you prepared for the potential setback in the economy since you were coming in and you were criticising the Jonathan administration on a number of issues? That criticism could be made, and it’d be a fair criticism. But the reality is what we found when we came, in addition to the malfeasance that everybody, objective journalists and roadside assessors, had accused the Jonathan administration of. So coming into that headwinds and we’re a party that was if you like, how delicately does one put this – that was more familiar with opposition terrain when we came into office.

We had to deal with all these challenges. There’s no doubt that the inclement economic situation resulted in a recession. We quickly came out of it because of the steps taken by the administration to reflate the economy: bailouts for states that couldn’t pay salaries and budget support, excess crude support and even infrastructure refunds to states, so that provided some cushioning effects for states and the citizens and salary backlog was paid, the economy was able to return but not to its normal, vibrant state. But we’re able to get things moving.

And then, we focused on investing in people via an extensive social investment programme, investing in infrastructure, and you know what’s happened in that regard. The reason we’re in this situation is not for the lack of efforts on the part of the government; it’s simply because tokenism cannot bring an economy back to its full steam. This is an economy that’s in need, in my view, of a $50 billion, $100-billion injection. It’s not an economy that can rely on $2 billion from China Exim Bank to fix rail and get $1 billion from the World Bank to do social investment. No. It’s not going to get us anywhere. If we’re serious, we need to be able to pump more money into this economy, leveraging support from the World Bank as the multilateral institution that’s recognised by all in the world and then using that to attract private finance into the country.

For me, that’s what would have been transformational. And there are examples to back this up. Egypt, under President Al Sisi, who transformed himself into a civilian president, had this experience. They were at our state, when he came in via a coup d’etat, following the emasculation of Muslim Brotherhood in the aftermath of the Arab Spring. The government came in, entered into a programme with the IMF, and in three years, they constructed 5,000km of new roads; and in two years, 15,000MW of electricity; all foreign money, because they were able to agree on a framework that allowed them to get a higher injection of funds.

This is a massive economy. Four hundred billion naira is $1 billion. The four hundred billion naira budget of the Federal Ministry of Works is only $1 billion. What are we talking about? I think that’s what we need to be focusing on as a government; that’s my own criticism of our government. This peanut will not work. It will not take us anywhere.

But a lot of people still criticise the nation’s debt profile as unsustainable?
But the way to address debt is to expand the economy so that growth would come, because what we’re even borrowing for, largely infrastructure, which is good, is still not nearly enough. Many of these projects would end up not being completed. I pity Minister Fashola every time I see what’s going on in his ministry. He’s doing a huge amount of work, awarded all these roads all over the place, but no money to pay for them. Then, you go into creative approaches, enter into partnership with companies that are ready to use their tax credits like Dangote to fix Apapa-Oworonshoki road, Obajana-Kabba, etc; all those roads. But it’s still a drop in the ocean. We need a Marshall Plan to generate more traction in this economy.

What about the country’s security crisis?
In the area of security, I think we frankly have not done as well as we should. I think what’s been responsible for that is that we did not follow through with our earlier success. When we came in, there was a myth around the president. Everybody I met would quote the Chatham House speech to me and say, ‘You’re there. We saw you. He said, ‘hold me responsible. I’m going to lead from the front.’ I said, ‘yes, we said so.’ And the very first time he spoke about this in government, he directed the generals, ‘go, relocate to Maiduguri and lead from the front the way I did when I was GOC 3rd Division and penetrated Chad to go and deal with those who came into our country’.

He did that, and I think in the first six months, we noticed a significant respite and then, it became a case of ‘Boko Haram has been degraded, and they’re now carrying out opportunistic attacks against soft targets’. ‘Technically defeated’. The critical point to even make is that I personally felt we could have changed the service chiefs earlier than we did, inject a lot more equipment in the theater of war to boost the morale of the soldiers, work on our order of battle, which has been a challenge. Take equipment, what we contributed as governors to procure equipment including the Tucano jets paid for three years ago, and just arriving now, and all this contributed to demoralising the troops, and then, we started overstretching the military. There’s hardly any state that the military is not involved in the internal security of the state, when they should be focusing exclusively on issues of external aggression, insurgency and so on and so forth.

Then, our neighbouring territory, the Sahel, became a playground for the insurgents and violent extremists like ISWAP. Although we are collaborating well with some of our neighbours in the Multinational Joint Task Force, it is also true to say some other countries around have not been as forthcoming and enthusiastic as they should. They also at a point, depended on us. Meanwhile, the morale of our soldiers had already diminished significantly. I think this is still an area we need to focus attention on: the equipment, more men and then synergy between citizens and the military.

As a student of war, does the president ask you for advice, or do you volunteer based on what you see not being done?
Well, you know, the truth of the matter is the Nigerian military is a conventional military. A conventional military understands symmetrical wars more than asymmetrical wars. When you go into asymmetrical wars, more often than not, you don’t even know your enemies. And that’s where counter-insurgency comes into warfare. I think, lately, we have improved on our counter-insurgency and counterterrorism strategy. But it does not detract from our normal training, which needs to change in order to address the challenges of the moment, because you cannot fight an insurgency with mainstream combat.

Some supporters of Bola Tinubu don’t pretend about not liking you for some reasons, and they’ve tagged you a traitor to him. What do you understand is responsible for this?
I don’t understand what you mean by this problem between the supporters and me. These undefined supporters that you’ve spoken about, I’d have been more responsive if you said there’s a problem between Asiwaju and me, because I do not believe that Asiwaju has ever said to anybody that he has a problem with me, and I don’t believe anybody has ever heard me say I had an issue with him (Tinubu).

I have always been extremely generous in my remarks about Asiwaju as a mentor, as a leader and as a father figure in my own political journey. I’ve never hesitated in acknowledging that. But I’m also known not to be an obsequious person. I have a mind of my own. I defer to elders: I’m a Yoruba boy. Let’s face it. But I have an opinion on things. But those opinions, even if I disagree on any issue, I share directly with Asiwaju. There’s no third party who will say he was there. So on what basis would you form a position that I have a problem with Asiwaju? But then, you know, leaders naturally would always be used to fight real and imagined wars, and it’s not unlikely that maybe some of what is happening in the circle that you have mentioned.

But as far as I am concerned, I am not aware of any issue with Asiwaju. I was with Asiwaju – I went to greet him in London a few weeks ago. I don’t see how I would do that if I had any issue and how he would enthusiastically receive me if I had any problem with him. To the best of my knowledge, Asiwaju has always been very gracious towards me. I’ve known him since my days in exile. We’ve worked together; we’ve been in the trenches together. We shared difficult times; he was with me all the way in Ekiti in my struggle. There’s no basis for people to even come to such a conclusion. But then, in politics, anything happens. People concoct all sorts of stories.

There’s no doubt that the succession battle in Ekiti is not going to be a tea party. Why are major APC stakeholders in the opposite direction? One of the allegations against you is that the moment you were able to pocket one or two of the leaders in the state, including the Minister of Trade, Niyi Adebayo, others did not matter again in the equation. Is this true?

I don’t have any reason to pocket any leader. These are people I believe are passionate about our party, who are committed to our success and with whom we robustly discuss the future of the party in Ekiti. There’s no basis for anyone to even suggest that anyone is being pocketed. I don’t see how you can pocket Minister Adebayo or any of the other leaders. It’s unfortunate for anyone to say that. However, it does not detract from your central concern about which direction I am looking. In a democracy, if I tell you I’m looking in any particular direction, they’ll say I’m imposing.

I am not in the business of imposition. Let a thousand flowers blossom. I ran against 24 people. At the end of the day, I emerged from a transparent primary, and I went around even though I came out victorious, appealing to all the people, who ran against me to build a united front, to work together in the overall interest of the people and our party in 2018. For me, what is important is that the All Progressives Congress retains the Ekiti gubernatorial seat so that we can also begin to enjoy the benefits of continuity, which is something we’ve seen in a state like Lagos.

The fact that APC (in various previous manifestations as a political party) has been in office since 1999 has had a cumulative progressive impact on governance in Lagos. There are still gaps. There will always be gaps. But you’re building on; you’re not removing from. During the four years I was away in Ekiti, every single project that I had embarked on that was not completed, I met those projects in a far worse state when I came back. Even the ones completed that were fully functional like Ikogosi were left to rot away.

I wouldn’t have imagined that a successor from my party would have done that even if he didn’t like it, and that’s why one of the things I did when I came back was to put a bill through the House of Assembly, which has now become the transition law in Ekiti – the only one of its kind in Nigeria – that no succeeding administration can abandon a project that had been embarked on with the resources of the state.

It’s now a law in Ekiti. I think it’s only appropriate for me to expect that whatever I can do to retain the seat, I will do. I don’t know who the (next) governor would be and who the candidate of our party would be. But I can tell you that I know people who will not be.

As NGF’s chairman, how have you been able to manage the tendencies in the two major parties, as well as the fringe APGA and how do you also moderate their demands without offending the expectations of your own party and the government at the centre?
Don’t forget that for the first time in the governors’ forum, I was not a product of votes. There was no contention. I was a product of consensus. Every single governor said, ‘Fayemi will be our chairman’. PDP, APGA, APC. So the crisis we have had in the past, for example, in my first term, when some governors wanted to remove my friend in the popular 16/19, and I was (Rotimi) Amaechi’s campaign manager. That was an interesting era in the country.

And that, then, had a serious impact on the governance of the country and politics. That was the beginning of what happened that led to the emergence of APC. But by some coincidence of interests and commitment to decency on the part of the governors, they agreed that I’d be chair and Aminu Tambuwal would be my deputy, and we try as much as possible to be frank in our conversations in our meetings and to keep a united front when we’re out discussing the decisions we’ve taken.

We also engage as friends beyond the forum. You see me inaugurating projects in Rivers, Jigawa, Borno, etc. If there are problems in Kebbi or Kwara, I’m there. For me, it’s about a coalition of the willing. We all subscribe to certain core values. We also all believe that governors have had a raw deal, and we need a new branding for governors that will put us in better light in the media and that would not come out of attacking one another.

I cringe every time I see governors attacking one another publicly. I had to appeal to my brothers from Bauchi and Benue, when we saw that altercation between Senator Bala Mohammed and Governor Samuel Ortom, and also two weeks ago, when my brother from Kaduna and Ondo governor had their own exchange. I always appeal to all sides when this happens. So when you talked about VAT, I couldn’t have because VAT is a polarising subject matter, and the position they’ve put me in is one in which I cannot be seen to be pandering to one side or the other.

You’re not the Southern Governors’ Forum chairman, but the forum has come to the conclusion that the Presidency must come from the South. Their northern counterparts met and took a different stance. What’s your take on this?
How does one put this? I think we’re belabouring the issue. I can understand that our country is going through a phase and this requires balancing in all its ramifications, and I think most serious-minded politicians understand the need to manage our diversities and differences in a manner that is sensitive to all the variegated tendencies in the country. But when people talk about should; ‘should’ is advisory; ‘must’ is a directive. And in a democracy, you have to negotiate; you have to engage. You have to reach a middle ground with all players because the truth of the matter is, there’s no part of this country that cannot produce a good president.

Regarding the 2023 Presidency, your name has often cropped up. As one of the poster boys of APC and eminently qualified: you have been a governor, a minister, and again a governor and the chairman of the governors’ forum. You’ve managed to intervene in national issues at critical moments, douse tension in the country and all that. This must have provided a good stepping stone for a higher office. What’s your plan for 2023?

My priority is the stability and security of Nigeria. I honestly do not think who will be the next president of Nigeria is not an important issue. I think it is something to focus the mind of the citizens on, especially as the one governing transitions out of office, and 17 months to the end of this administration is a reasonable time to start discussing that. Unfortunately, we have a greater challenge that requires concerted efforts on the part of every serious-minded player. How do we stem the tide of insecurity? This is what is on the lips of everybody – every Nigerian that I know. Before we even get to that take-off point for politicking in 2023, I believe we have a lot of work to do to return Nigeria to the place of sanity and stability. And to help Mr. President in our own respective capacities as governors of subnationals to reduce tension in the land.

And this tension is also being exacerbated by some of the debates and discussions going on about restructuring, marginalisation, secessionist agitations, etc. We need to really get Nigeria back on track, because we all know that this is not where we all want Nigeria to be. If we don’t do that, we may not even have elections. For me, regardless of whether I run for president or not, I exist in a marketplace of ideas.

I just spoke to you about the fact that we don’t need tokenistic initiatives. We need a real major Marshall Plan to reorganise Nigeria, and it will be in the region of $50 to $100 billion that we should be looking for. Private finance can contribute, multilateral donors can contribute; and we ourselves can promote policies within, on issues like subsidy and co. that would enable those, who want to contribute to the economy to come in. That’s not something tenuous. At the same time, you don’t have to be a presidential candidate to have ideas.

Straight to the point: no ifs, no buts, do you think you have what it takes to be president of Nigeria?
Well, leadership is not a title, and leadership is not an office. Leadership for me, is influence, and if you’ve occupied certain positions of authority, it will give you insights into the complexities and challenges of a country. So without a doubt, I will like to think I have the requisite qualifications to be the president of Nigeria. However, having qualifications is different from running for office. So many people are qualified to be President.
Some members of your party, including Salihu Lukam, have started to react to the alleged alliance of the southern governors irrespective of party affiliations, over the presidency. They think it is counterproductive and inimical to the unity of the APC. You don’t agree, do you?

Honestly, when countries get into dire straits, they go beyond party lines. For example, Britain, during World War II, formed the coalition government of Winston Churchill and Clement Attlee. Even most recently in Germany, Chancellor Angela Merkel’s CDU entered into a Grand Coalition with the main opposition, SDP. At some point in the life of every nation, politicians must look beyond point-scoring over one another and focus on the survival of the country. I know I am treading on dangerous territory and this may not be a very attractive option, but this is an issue that must be given serious consideration. Leadership in troubled times requires the best of minds from all sides. Partisan, non-partisan, technocrats, apolitical people, you get to a point you put in your best resources. And it may well get to the point, I believe.

PDP was in government for 16 years, and by the time our president leaves office, we would have been in government for eight years. There are lessons that both sides have learnt. There are things we criticised PDP for, and that we still believe that we’re right in criticising them for. But getting into government, we also see that these are challenges that are sometimes beyond party especially, in this post-ideological age; issues that are actually ingrained in a systemic manner in our country.
Politicians get blamed a lot in Nigeria, but those who know this country will know that the place to look really is in the inner recesses of the system – the service, the bureaucracy.

We’re almost at a point of asking ourselves, and people are asking; some may not know the difference between our two parties, and that’s not to say that we don’t have fundamental differences. However, things have reached a point in which the vision has become blurred somewhat. The need for unity ought to become a common cause for all of us. Yes, we have secessionist agitations, but they’re fringe people. Most serious-minded Nigerians still believe that the best vehicle for transformation in this country is a united Nigeria. If that is the case, even the extremists among us when they see a serious coalition of interests directed at a progressive vision in pursuit of peace, in pursuit of development, I’m not so sure we won’t get to the point of considering some form of coalition.

As I said, for love of country and patriotic yearnings, we need to look in the mirror and take a cue by moving away from this confrontational, adversarial politics such as recently happened in Germany. These are people with clear ideological orientations that are totally different. And I may be treading dangerous grounds here, and maybe that’s why you say some people accused some of us or maybe it’s what I’m discovering as chairman of the governors’ forum, reasoning with all sides and seeing the challenges that everybody is confronting beyond party.

Maybe that’s what is informing my position. But I think we’re almost getting to a point where rigid adherence to party platforms will simply not do. We need to develop a rigorous intellectual response to the challenges of the moment. It may very well be that we strengthen our parties along ideological lines and proffer solutions, so that Nigerians can say, ‘okay, we now see the difference, and this is the one we prefer out of the two’. Or, we find some way to begin to build bridges in the interest of the nation.
Why have governors refused to allow the local governments to grow, function and evolve? And we presume you’re guilty as well – all the 36 governors actually. Why is it so difficult to allow the local governments to function as constitutionally stated?

Let’s start with the basic principle of federalism. Federalism is a two-tier system between two federating units. In this case, federal and subnational. Nigeria uniquely introduced what is seemingly a third tier, which is really non-existent. This third tier in that constitution, section 162, goes via the second. So if you go and sit down with the fathers of local government creation, Prof. Akin Mabogunje being one of them, they may not be as enthusiastic about this so-called local government autonomy mantra, and I have no reason to disagree with Prof that the best is to scrap local governments as currently constituted and let each state determine what to do within its own jurisdiction. Enough of this local government autonomy pretence.

As currently constituted, they are not effective. They are not efficient, and it’s not because governors crippled them. I don’t have anything – and you can check it out – I have never touched one naira of local governments’ money. I don’t even know how they share their money. Please don’t take my word for it. Investigate what I’m telling you. True, their money comes through us in the state but we are simply a conduit. Ekiti State is a conduit for them. They have their meetings. All the sixteen local government chairmen in the state attend the meetings. And after their first-line charge had been deducted which is the payment of their primary school teachers, primary health care workers, the traditional rulers, which is automatic, whatever is left, I do not know how they distribute it.

But the impression that people get out there and I know many governors who don’t touch their local governments’ money. But because of the structure of our state, they’re already burdened. They cannot do much because the resources available to them go to the payment of salaries to all sorts of people. Yes, we can debate whether they need as many workers as they have, but that’s the situation in many of the local governments. So there’s nothing left for capital projects in most local governments and that’s often where states intervene to get them to do some things for the people. And that’s why people become disillusioned, and then states take over their responsibilities, including even helping some to settle their salary obligations. But we live in this bubble – this pretence that there’s something called local government autonomy. It’s a contradiction in terms.

What will you say about judicial autonomy that governors are reluctant to grant judiciary?
Judicial autonomy is something that is constitutionally guaranteed. Governors are not opposed to judicial autonomy. What became an issue was the mode of pursuing judicial autonomy through Executive Order 10. That’s what we challenged – that you cannot use an executive order on a matter that’s clearly delineated in the constitution. Remove the executive order, let us discuss modalities of implementation.

And you will see that just days ago, our case challenging it came up in the Supreme Court. We leave it to them whatever they’re going to decide, but part of that challenge is in that constitution, which some consider defective, but that constitution says that the National Judicial Council is responsible for all recurrent and capital expenditure of all the courts that are named in the constitution: the Supreme Court, Court of Appeal, Federal High Court, State High Court, as well as National Industrial Court, Sharia Court of Appeal.

If that were to be the case, we then put up an argument: between 1999 and 2021, you owed us billions for all the facilities, all the properties, all the courts that we have built that are constitutionally your responsibility. But because Nigerians, some don’t just want to hear anything about governors, they say all manner of things without even checking the substance of the discussion. We have no problem. It’s about implementing judicial autonomy.

And we said to them that once we start implementing judicial autonomy along the lines that the constitution has defined, ‘think twice about it, oh, Mr. CJ, because you’ll not have the opportunity to send requests to governors again at every opportunity, ‘Mr. Governor, our judges want to go to London’, we’ll send you to NJC. The latitude that they have now, depending on your relationship with your governor and the CJ, you won’t have it because it’s now fixed. You have your budget passed by the state assembly. We have our budget as the executive passed; the legislature also has their budget passed. So everyone runs their own budget.

You’re one of the closest persons to the president. What kind of leader is he?
A much-misunderstood leader. I don’t know about being one of the closest persons to him. I don’t know how you arrived at that conclusion. But the president is a process person, and by virtue of my position as chairman of the governors, he gives me the latitude to discuss issues with him and to convey the positions of governors. I say much misunderstood, because he also partly created that reason for the misunderstanding. The sense I get of the president is somebody who is really passionate about Nigeria and very committed to doing the right thing.

He’s very sensitive; anything that has to do with courts, for example, the president will just tell you until the court decides don’t bring me into this. And he gives you an assignment, he leaves you; he gives you the latitude also, and I think maybe that’s not good enough. I’ve had cause to say this to Mr. President once or twice. I was his minister for three years. Before then, I worked closely with him during the campaigns and as director of policy.

So in the three years that I was the minister of mines and steel, the president never called me once or sent a note to me that ‘here’s Mr so-and-so, give him this XYZ’. Not once. Two, beyond the mandate that he gave me that he wanted some things fixed and wanted solid minerals to become as major as agriculture, he never micromanaged anything. I ran the Ministry the way I wanted, in accordance with the road map passed by FEC and reported to him on my work any time I deemed it fit for the three years. He allowed you the latitude to be responsible but you are also free to be irresponsible. He simply allows you to stew in your own juice.

We may argue back and forth about this, but the bottom line is that he allows you to prove yourself. I think his overriding motive of perspective is that man is the architect of his own fortune and misfortune. If you’re given an opportunity, that’s your golden chance to prove that you’re a serious person and you can deliver the goods in the area that you’ve been given responsibility. If you also mess it up, it will also be a stain on your record.

There’s a story that’s not public knowledge but which is being shared amongst a few privileged people. The story claims that you convinced President Muhammadu Buhari on the need to change the service chiefs, even after he had ignored the same counsel from others. How did you pull that off, and what made you think he would listen to you in the first place?

I can’t comment on a ‘story’. What I can say is that he grants some of us access to come and discuss whatever concerns we have, and he listens. The fact that he listens does not necessarily mean he would adopt hook, line, and sinker everything you say to him. But he also approximates whatever you say with the position that he probably holds. One thing that I know, the President is very wary of are people who propose things for personal gratifications.

He is very suspicious of people who give advice on the back of hidden personal benefits that would come to them, and he’s wary of just taking advice without a second opinion. That’s the sense I get of him. So I don’t know, it is possible that on the back of my colleagues’ directives, I conveyed their position on the service chiefs. But I’m sure there are other people who conveyed similar viewpoints to him. The decision was his at the end of the day, because he has access to information that none of us has access to. So if he ultimately came down on the side of the exit for his service chiefs, I don’t think it should be attributed to the advice of one individual or another. He’s the president; the buck stops at his desk.

What’s the stance of the governors’ forum regarding open grazing since some in the North are against it outright? Some others suggest ranching, while governors in the South have enacted laws banning open grazing?

Again, I think people are misreading this. I said it’s misreading, because people ignore the fact that the Nigerian Governors’ Forum had taken a position on open grazing. I am not talking southern or northern. Thirty-six of us have taken a position that one, open grazing is outdated. That’s the position of the Nigerian Governors’ Forum. Two, that we need to start pursuing modern livestock management programmes. However, there must be a transition between when we put in place laws and when the law becomes implementable so that we give those affected time to adjust to alternative programmes like ranches, grazing areas.

Four, that the federal government must support the private sector, public sector players that want to be active in the modern livestock practices. The way we also give Anchor Borrowers’ money to rice farmers, to cassava farmers, cocoa farmers, and oil palm farmers, we should give livestock herders support. These are the four clearly defined positions by the Nigerian Governors’ Forum. And we marry both the position you heard from the southern governors with the position you heard from the northern governors.
Lastly, what’s your governance philosophy?
My governance philosophy is evidenced-based social justice but a leader must lead by example.