Governor Abdulfatah Ahmed of Kwara State recently fielded questions on a variety of issues during ‘The Governor Explains,’ a live monthly interactive session. BIOLA AZEEZ presents excerpts from the session.

The Commissioner of Police in Kwara State, Mr Chinwike Asadu, was shot dead in Enugu recently. What do you think can be done to overcome challenges of security?
Insecurity is one of the major problems that Nigeria is faced with today. Unfortunately, we take security for granted. That is why you see the perpetration of crime at very high levels. It is a very sad situation. We need to recognise the fact that security is a collective responsibility and not the responsibility of just security agencies. For those of us who have the opportunity of watching how crime is managed in developed countries, it could be seen that the citizens have very critical roles to play in helping the security agencies who are not magicians. They require information and it is information that they get that they are able to work with to help us solve most of the security challenges. But I am happy that the Federal Government has decided to take the bull by the horns by ensuring that we have a very strong security system.

We cannot, however, overcome these challenges overnight. It will take time, but it is important that we pool resources at the federal, state and local government levels. Also, we need to ensure that we play our own roles by supporting security agencies with information. Where crime has been perpetrated, we should be seen to be helping the police to unravel the situation. We will begin to see a lot more efficient police force and other security agencies. The death of the commissioner of police is very sad. It is a reflection of not only inefficient police force, but also the insensitivity of Nigerians. These crimes are not done in isolation; there are usually people around. When we begin to support security agencies with information, results will come. Government, too, must deploy resources to ensure that security agencies are able to play their roles in curbing crime.

Some weeks back, you invited the traditional rulers of Offa and Erin-Ile to a peace meeting. Without prejudice to the judicial commission of enquiry, do you see peace coming soon?
Obviously, that is part of the responsibilities we are there for. We must ensure that we allow peace to reign, not in the short term or medium term only, but also in the long term; because we cannot afford to allow ourselves to be dragged into communal problems that would serve as drawback for our economic growth. In life, we must learn to give and take. You can never get everything exactly the way you want. In any nation-building process, you must learn to give and take. Where there are challenges, we must understand the fact that violence has never been a solution. Rather, dialogue has always been the solution. That is what we have been advocating to not only Offa and Erin-Ile, but all communities that are prone to this kind of problem.

I am happy that by the time we invited the leaders of the two communities, they understood this and they vowed to continue to embrace peace.

The community leaders vowed to adhere to the terms of peace to guarantee security of life and property, because they know that even as traditional rulers, without peace in their domains, they cannot effectively discharge their responsibilities.

 Hopefully, the judicial commission that we set up will address all issues in Offa/Erin-Ile crisis. We want to give it a permanent solution. We also encourage them to recognise the fact that Offa cannot move away from Erin-Ile, just like Erin-Ile cannot move away from Offa. The only thing that can guarantee safety of life and property is peaceful co-existence and an economic platform that would engage all the youth from not only Offa and Erin-Ile, but the complete axis – Ijagbo, Igosun, Ipe, Ojoku, etc. Everybody will come together as an economic platform so that the youth can be engaged and be seen to be doing something fruitful as against being involved in communal clashes, which leave a bitter taste in their mouths and coming generations.

It was reported that the international rating agency, Fitch, has withdrawn its rating of Kwara State. Could you clarify the situation?
Fitch is a rating agency and there are lots of rating agencies, both local and international. Rating agencies do not go to people. You are the one who decides that you want to be rated because you feel that you have done well. You decide to be rated for a purpose. As of the time Kwara State decided to be rated, no state in Nigeria had been rated. For you to go out and be rated, you must have showcased yourself in certain areas of efficiency – financial management or your accounting system. So, when you have been able to benchmark yourself against certain best practices, you want to be seen to be doing well. It was on this premise that we as a state decided to invite an international rating agency, despite the existence of a plethora of local rating agencies. It was a major feat for Kwara State because even Nigeria as a country only invited them in 2002. Of course, we have commercial banks that have been inviting them for rating to demonstrate their capabilities to relate with their foreign counterparts and be seen to be benchmarking against best practices.

On the strength of that, we wanted to explore the possibility of not only accessing the capital market, but also showcase ourselves to the world as benchmarking against best practices. Hence, we invited Fitch to rate us. We sought to use the rating to further set standards for borrowing in Nigeria, but we found out that it was a little bit Herculean as not every state was available for rating. Making it a criteria would have stalled capacity of some states who have not worked up to what we have seen to be able to access credit. Be that as it may, Kwara became the first state in the country to subject to an international rating agency. We all saw the good results of the rating at that time.

However, rating is done transitionally. In other words, you do it for a particular transaction. If you want to continue to be rated, you continue to pay for it and you continue to submit data which will be analysed. We did it up till last year. We now feel that since we don’t have any major thing we require the rating results for now, we can step it down this year. In future, when we require rating for a purpose, we will invite them again to rate us. So, our withdrawal from Fitch has nothing to do with the state of our economy.

There are insinuations that Harmony Holdings is another way of channelling public assets into private hands. How do you react to this?
I don’t know how people understand ownership of business by private hands because everything under Harmony Holdings is largely government-owned. The only areas that are in private hands are areas where the state has a minority shareholding such as in Kwara Furniture, where we are partnering with a South African company to set up a furniture factory. Another example is Kwara Transport Services Corporation. It runs on its own.

There were times the company accessed loans it could not even pay from its normal course of activities. Today, Kwara Transport is running profitably.

Harmony Holdings is designed to bring efficiency into government-owned businesses. By the end of the first quarter of this year, the result of the financial activities of each of these strategic business units encapsulated in the Harmony Holdings Company will be published. You will then see why we have taken over these companies with Harmony Holdings. They have moved from inefficiency to efficiency and the money we are able to get from them will naturally be reflected as an inflow into our internally generated revenue, which will be captured in our budgeting and made public. It is not a secret. That is one leg of it. The other leg is, for you to be able to convert government business to private business, you must do what is called private shareholding arrangements.

In other words, we must issue IPOs – Initial Public Offers. You must register that you want to go public, issue out shares that would be bought by individuals or a core investor. We are not doing any of these things. What we are doing is that we are trying to introduce efficiency into the management system by separating the board from management and allow management to do its job, create efficiency, generate revenue, and make revenue available to the state government for capital projects.

Why was it necessary to set up a Public Private Partnership (PPP) office when already, there is Harmony Holdings?
Harmony Holdings is a company that will put together all the small companies that state government has interest in, either as a minority or majority shareholder such as Kwara Hotels, Kwara Transport, Kwara Properties and others that the state has invested in but has not been making money from, and bring them to profitable levels. So, we decided to put all of them together on a platform and build a strong management that will drive them to profitability. The whole essence of setting up Harmony Holdings is to be able to earn money, to add to the internally generate revenue that will support growth and development. However, you will recognise the fact that development these days is not carried out by government alone.

Government needs to partner with investors. These investors would not just enter the state and begin to work. They must see what we have on table which requires access to information, rather than walking from one ministry to another to find out what information they can get before they can take informed positions on investments. We, therefore, decided to package all the information into one office which we call the Public Private Partnership office.

In this office, they would get all the information they require to take informed decision on the desired level of investment. The PPP office will package the relationship between the state government and the private sector and hand it over to Harmony Holdings. So, the PPP office is a packaging office, Harmony Holdings is the management office.

Recently the Nigeria Meteorological Agency (NIMET) listed the state among those that are likely to experience heavy rainfall this year. What is the government doing to prevent a reoccurrence of last year’s flooding in some parts of the state?
The flooding we experienced last year was at a high level and it came with its lessons. Part of the lessons was that our people were too close to river banks and they were not conscious of the challenges that usually come with heavy rains and most importantly, the discharge of water from the dam. Last year, we went round to our people with the support of the Federal Government on advocacy level on the need to relocate to safer zones; and most importantly, that they should recognise the fact that this thing would possibly come on a yearly basis, especially with the current global climate situation.

On the strength of that, we are re-emphasising our advocacy that our people should move away from areas that are prone to flooding. You will also recollect that part of the funds that came from the Federal Government and the state, in addition to making relief materials available, were used for infrastructure, especially roads, to enable them move from the current locations to safer environments. So, as a government, we are conducting our advocacy on a very serious level at the media level, but most importantly, through the traditional rulers, to ensure that our people take the current threat of flooding as a result of early rains seriously.

Your administration is setting up mega schools whereas it’s obvious that the schools on ground need attention. Why is this so?
Schools, as it were, cannot be approached from a singular platform. Yes, we have inherited a lot of problems from past administrations in the last 20 to 30 years. Our schools have been allowed to experience major infrastructural decay. So, in our desire to support them, we have to look for different strategies on how to meet these challenges. The first one is that we are in the process of making infrastructure available at various schools across the state. But, then, we cannot deploy all the resources we have in all the schools because we don’t have such resources. The essence of forming mega schools is to take advantage of the fact that every school cannot get, for instance, the desired level of laboratory, ICT and other training facilities. So, when we create mega schools, they will not only create room for more people, they will also serve clusters of schools so that we don’t necessarily have to deploy resources. They can also share from that platform. It is just a way of managing our resources to ensure that everybody gets a piece of the action.

What is your administration doing on integration with the South-West and other regions? 
It is something we have always looked forward to. Unfortunately, sometimes, we find it difficult to separate politics from activities that are not political. What you have said ordinarily is a thing that should have been happening between sister states that are close by. However, because there has been too much partisan colouration to everything that is done, you hardly find platform for cooperation. But with this kind of suggestion, we will begin to see how to separate partisan colouration from the need to move the society forward. Our economic integration is open to anybody who wants to cooperate with us, especially where we have similar advantages. We will cooperate with anybody that signifies interest to cooperate with us as a state.

 
The expansion of Sango Road (in Ilorin) is commendable. Should there not be an alternative route that would lead to Apata Yakuba-Oke-Oyi axis? Ilorin is growing into a mega city...
I agree with you perfectly well. There are a thousand and one things that are desirable for Ilorin and other parts of the state. If we had all the resources we want, this state will be something else. It will be a mega city beyond our imagination. Unfortunately, we are constrained by resources. Because we had allowed infrastructure to decay over the past 20 to 30 years, we are faced with the challenge of rehabilitating old roads. If the concern of every administration that comes in is to face new roads, then half of the problems would have been solved. But by the time every administration comes, you have a plethora of roads that have been abandoned. It is Herculean to get the resources to get them to the desirable levels. I will give you an example: look at Kaiama-Kishi Road - a federal road. To fix that road will cost us a minimum N8 billion. That is about three months’ federal allocation.