9th November, 2010
In a recent interview with mediamen, Ekiti Governor, Kayode Fayemi, explained his decision to dissolve the councils and the major programme of his government
What lessons have you drawn from your experiences and struggles?
I think it’s fair to say that in life, you must always know that there can be no gain without pains. That is a central lesson. However, you may want to define that. There are people who talk about my doggedness, my tenacity, my spirit of resistance and all that. All of that may be true but it will be immodest on my part to place all of what happened just on those values. I think the greatest strength that got me going throughout the struggle was the really irrepressible nature of Ekiti people. I was particularly lucky because I had no reason to pay people to go to court; they would go, be there by 6.30a.m. so that they could get inside the court. They would organise their own prayer sessions. So, when people talk about my courage and all that, I say to them ‘Do I really have a choice? Could I have walked away with this kind of support base that the people championed?’
So, for me, the lesson is that if you have the people behind you, you can fight a thousand battles without looking back because you know that they will be there for you in defence of the truth. It is also important to believe that once you are clear about the correctness of your position, as an individual, there will be a lot of thorns, a lot of difficulties. There were days in the course of this struggle that I could not boast N5,000 in my account that I had to depend on my wife to sort out family challenges, which is the problem we all face in everyday life anyway. But the impression is created that when you are in a political struggle of this nature, you must have some loads of cash stashed away somewhere, but it was never like that. People who worked with me know the kind of challenges we faced and how we managed to stay afloat in those difficult times. But the important thing is that you must be truthful to yourself. Those are the lessons that I draw.
Must you dissolve councils?
Why did I dissolve the councils? I came into this office on Monday morning after I was sworn in on Saturday. The first thing I received was a summons from the court brought in by my secretary. The summons was to appear in court in response to an interlocutory injunction to restrain me from dissolving local councils. I never said anywhere I was going to dissolve the councils. It did not appear in any part of my speech. We had a case in court for two years. You would recall that the local government election took place in this state on December 15, 2008 and we are challenging the legality of the body that organised that election, SIEC and that matter, because it has been a state court, it has dragged and dragged without any resolution. We then filed another case but those two cases were not about dissolution, but about the period of notice of the election which was supposed to be 150 days between the time you announce and the time the election takes place and the constitution of that electoral commission. Of course, since that case was filed, we had had judgements in Osun up to the Court of Appeal making it clear that our position was the correct position in law. That case is still subsisting in the Supreme Court now. So, this case came before a judge Friday October 20 and by the time they got to court, somehow, may be somebody advised them, they had realised that they were suing Kayode Fayemi and not the governor of Ekiti State because that was the person they filed the case against. So, they decided they were withdrawing the case and then, the judge struck out the case. You could say that we could have left the situation like that but then we had, and security agencies were keeping us abreast of events at the various local governments about looting of government properties and removal of government vehicles to private residences and I thought it would be irresponsible on our part to pretend that we did not know what was going on. It was clear to us that the agenda was to provoke us. I am not after reprisal but any baby lawyer would tell you that you cannot put something on nothing. The government that organised the election that brought in these chairmen had been declared a non-existent government in this state not just for the 2009 rerun but also the 2007 rerun elections. The Court of Appeal said ‘You did not win these elections and your certificate of return should be withdrawn.’
So, even if we want to pick it from that line, whose councils were these? And we felt we needed to take a decisive action. If the court had said we were wrong, I would not do anything against the rule of law. I came on the back of the rule of law and it stands to reason that I would not do anything that would put the rule of law in jeopardy. So, all the grandstanding about getting the House of Representatives to get the Accountant General and the IG to stop our allocations, we should not be using the hallowed chambers of our Legislature to conduct these kind of kangaroo business. And I am glad that the Senate made it clear that they were not going to be part of this rubbish which of course renders irrelevant what the House of Representatives did because as the Senate said, the subsisting law is that the House of Assembly in the state is the body that is in charge of local government. If the House of Assembly refuses to ratify our action, we will go back to where we were. But if they do, nobody in Abuja can do anything about it.
Does that mean that all the actions of your predecessor like passing of budgets that have been implemented have become a nullity?
In law, and I think I should know, you know what they call the Doctrine of Necessity. It does not necessarily make what it illegal legal, what it does is to allow, in a manner of convention, certain things that are irreversible. Yes, I cannot reverse budgets that have been implemented; but that does not make it right.
Are you not going to cut down on the machinery of government?
If we don’t cut down on the machinery of government, we are not even starting yet especially in a state like Ekiti. One of the most bizarre findings coming out of our ministerial briefings relates to that issue. We have in a small state like this under the last administration, 21 commissioners and 14 special advisers of cabinet rank members. That means basically you had about 35 cabinet rank members with all the apparatus of office and one of the bizarre ways in which they did it is to have ministry of Youth, Social Development and Sports which is the normal way it is done in other places, split into three: Ministry of Youth, Ministry of Social Development and Ministry of Sports. So, you have three ministries in one with three commissioners, permanent secretaries and three special assistants and on and on like that. So, you had a situation where the recurrent expenditure in the state was almost hitting 70/30 ratio and that is why you have in this state dotted all over with the highest number of abandoned projects.
Roads, other infrastructure, even the existing ones are in total shambles. I have not moved into the Governors’ Lodge because the place I am supposed to live, where my illegal predecessor occupied, is leaking.
He wasn’t living there?
He was living there and the same thing happened in our Lodge in Abuja. I couldn’t just understand it whether it is a deliberate strategy for his bedroom to leak because I couldn’t understand it. Simple things that could be fixed! And that cuts across the state. So, we have to do something. We will not have more than the constitutional requirements. We must have a commissioner or a cabinet rank member from one local government and we will run a very lean government. If you don’t have a role in government, we will find you something if you think you have contributed and there are debts to pay in politics. I am not going to sit down before you here and tell you that those who had been on this journey with me in the last three and a half year are not going to make demands. Local government and communities are struggling over positions and Ekiti is small.
So, we will go by zoning. If House of Assembly comes here, commissioner cannot come from there. If commissioner comes from here, Special Assistant cannot come from there. If it is a one town local government, they share it award by ward. Those are the practical details of politics but we will strike a balance between fulfilling those demands of politics and ensuring an effective and efficient structure of governance.
Where will you find the money to fund these programmes that you have promised?
What are we really promising that is rocket science? We are promising free education in the last three years of secondary school because the first 9 years are already free. That is what the UBE scheme is about. So, it is providing text books, money for NECO, WASC, JAMB, tools. We promised computers for students in higher secondary school level. I don’t think in a state where you have 188 senior secondary schools, that is a huge task to achieve and 41,000 senior secondary school pupils. Even if we are to spend N10,000 per term on each secondary school pupil, that is N40 million. That is N120 million per year. How much is that in the budget of a serious state? We don’t have much money but if that is our priority, we’ll provide it.
But as part of my negotiation, we are getting $60 million from the World Bank for education alone. We will probably get more from other development agencies. Again, if you go to health, what are we promising? We are promising free health care for children under 5, for pregnant women, for old people and for the disabled. If we have an effective primary health care system to focus our resources on that –and we have no apology for that because we are not interested in building eye clinics because we know the percentage of our people that are suffering from eye problems don’t come anyway near those that suffer from opportunistic diseases that kill people. So, it is about priority.
Is the $60million from the World Bank a loan or grant?
What the World Bank gives you is that is more or less a grant, one per cent. They were already engaged in the state before but not at that higher level but they are a bit more comfortable to come and support what is going on here.
Do you think the state can sustain three universities?
We have promised a stakeholders’ summit on education towards the end of this month. I have held a session with the three vice chancellors of the state universities asking them to give me their own sense of direction; how they think these things should go and they all came up with interesting insights that I think will be useful for such a multi stakeholders’ summit on education. I can’t tell you this is how we are going to tackle this problem. All I can tell you is that this state doesn’t have enough resources to maintain three universities. How we resolve it will be clearer to us when all the stakeholders come together to examine the situation critically. The resources are just not there to maintain three universities that are within a distance of 15 kilometres-Ikere, Ado, Ifaki.
How do you intend to tackle allegations that your government will have its apron string tied to Asiwaju Tinubu because there are such allegations brewing already?
On the relationship between Asiwaju and myself, this is always going to be a lingering issue. When a politician is seen to be so successful as to support or produce winners, you tend to get a lot of things said which sometimes is pointed arguing whether it is the truth or not. But suffice to say that Tinubu is an undeniable colossus in Nigerian politics today. He is the leader of my party. I am proud of my relationship with him. But those who know me also know that I have a mind of my own and they know that Asiwaju does not generally go for yes-people around him whether you look at his cabinet or the people he associates with him. I don’t think he is one who promotes psychophantic relationship. I will certainly go to him for advice, he has been a governor, I have never been a governor before now. So, he would have advice for me and he will also have insight into issues. He is also very astute politically and has a lot of experience in handling thorny issues. So, I won’t hesitate to go to him just as I won’t hesitate to go to Governor Olomilua, or Governor Adebayo or Gov Ayo Fayose. He sat here before and probably knew one or two things that he did wrong that he will be able to advise me ‘don’t go that road, I did before and I made a terrible mistake.’ I am not a repository of knowledge. I don’t have answers to all the challenges that we face here in Ekiti and will not pretend that I got here on a single-handed journey. I got here with the support of a lot of people and I stand on the shoulders of people who are wiser than I am. But I also know that at the end of the day, if anything goes wrong with this government, nobody is going to shout the name of Tinubu, or Adebayo or Fayose, they will say Fayemi’s government. That is the bottom-line.
Fayose has been saying that there is a deal between you and him especially because of his senatorial ambition, what is the nature of the deal between you?
Politicians say all sorts of things because it is in the nature of politics to enhance your standing. I don’t want to get into deals done and deals that are not done. I have a great deal of respect for Ayo Fayose. He is a former governor of this state and I happen to be in a unique position. I am the only person who has ever been in office who has the support of all former elected governors in this state. No other person has ever sat here with the support of all the previously elected –and I stress the word elected –governors of this state. To that extent, I have to navigate labyrinthine maze. They all come to this office. That makes me a bridge-builder of sort because they all come to this office; they meet here, not necessarily because they like to see each other but because they are all supporting someone who has brought them together. If that is the role God has assigned for me in Ekiti State, that is a critical role.
What philosophy will govern the choice of your cabinet?
It is not going to be a purely technical cabinet because I am not just a technocrat in government; I am a politician because I am involved in the rough and tumble of politics even though I am a technocrat. I know the sort of negotiations that are necessary in order to put a team together but what I can tell you is that in those five areas that I mentioned earlier, you have to just have more than being a politician to occupy those positions. Education, health, infrastructure, agriculture, you must bring something on top of being a politician to be in those positions. The other positions are important too. You must occupy the slot of a local government; you must have a capacity to think outside the box; we have a code of conduct for anyone who is going to serve in this administration which stipulates certain things about your integrity, ethics, what we call a reasonable level of education, an ideological commitment to values of welfarism and social democracy, familiarity with the ICT. We are not going to eliminate people but we feel they are not going to function effectively in this government if they cannot do certain things in certain ways real time on-time. And you must be able to go to the World Bank and defend a proposal. Our people have huge expectations and we must fulfil them. I don’t want to spoon-feed commissioners. I want commissioners that can hit the ground running and go on to deliver. As long as we have agreed on those broad parameters of what we are going to do, you go to your ministry and deliver on those parameters. If we have exco, we will review it but I don’t want to be chasing after someone who is supposed to be at that level hut he is not there. Those who are not able to serve at that level of expectations, there will be other things in the state and in the party that they can do in order to meet their individual contentment and community good.
When will the cabinet be ready?
Soon!
How soon, because the administration has hit the ground running?
We are only three weeks in office. Yes, we are hitting the ground running. There is no mystery about it. Our legislators were away for two weeks in Germany and then we lost somebody who is dear to me and the state and we are still in a mourning mood. So, when the Assembly resumes on Tuesday (today), we will have something for them then. It won’t be long because we also want to wrap up this as soon as possible.
You observed the last election in Ghana. What is your assessment of the capacity of Prof. Jega to conduct a free and fair poll in that direction?
What we saw in Ghana made many of us shed tears because we felt there is no reason why we cannot replicate same or even do better and I am reasonably convinced that in spite of the challenges he has encountered, Attahiru Jega is committed to ensuring a similar process.Nigeria is a much more complex society but I don’t think one can doubt his integrity. What I have always said is that integrity in itself is not always enough to guarantee a credible electoral process. As a victim, Iwu played a critical role in my electoral theft but Iwu never visited Ekiti to do it.There are proxies who did it here. So, Jega can have all the integrity in the world if he does not put systems and processes in place to ensure that these things also ramify down the ladder, down the hierarchy, we are going to end up in the same charade in 2011.
