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SHEMA: First of all I want to give thanks to God, who made it possible for me to be the Governor of Katsina State with the firm support of the people and my party, the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP). Being the Governor of Katsina State is quite interesting, educating and indeed challenging. I give my thanks to God for this opportunity offered to me.

How challenging has the job been, most especially having to fill the shoes of President Umaru Musa Yar Adua?

Number one, there is no doubt that to inherit the legacies, actions and the works of Alhaji Umaru Musa Yar Adua, especially the governance of a complex state like Katsina is quite challenging. I first set out for the race for the governorship of the state knowing fully well the enormous responsibilities attached to the office of the governor of a state, especially, a state like Katsina, with about 24,000 square kilometres of land mass, with almost six million people and 34 local government areas, coupled with the huge achievements recorded by the Yar Adua administration. Fortunately my calling as a lawyer, my exposure in politics, my position as Deputy National Chairman of the PDP, exposed me to challenges of serving the people and now being a governor, it becomes a continuation of the challenge. It may be at a higher level because managing huge potentials in human capacity and capital is a big challenge. But I was prepared for it, because I was lucky to have been part of the Yar Adua administration from inception. I served as Attorney General and Commissioner for Justice from 1999 to 2003, before I moved to the party office. Now having come into office on 29th May 2007, it has been quite challenging. I knew of the huge legacies. People kept telling me that there are big shoes to be filled. I thank Allah that I have stepped into these big shoes, but it is for the people to say how well we had done.

The responsibility of the office of governor of a state depends on how one shoulders it. When I went into politics, I came in knowing fully well that politics confers opportunity to service and therefore I see it as an opportunity to serve people, serve humanity and also serve the state. Fundamentally, when I started, I noticed that there were very important government programmes and projects that were started by the Yar Adua administration, and I choose to remain focused on that. I did not chose to go about doing other things simply so that people will say I have done something. No I felt the programmes that were started were very important and will touch the lives of people, and I was determined to get them completed. These are on infrastructure development, on health, agriculture, commerce and Industry, and so on.

So when I came in, I had very fundamental programmes to complete, for example road network construction across the state. Some have been completed, some were at the verge of completion, and others were to be awarded. So in the last one year, we have been able to successfully complete one of the most important projects that are very dear to the people. That is the completion of the Katsina Airport. That airport for the first time in the history of this state was able to airlift about 6,000 pilgrims from Katsina to the King Abdu-aziz airport in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia.

Having done that, we equally looked at the on-going road projects in Katsina, Funtua and other parts of the state. We were determined to complete them and we did complete them. Of equal importance are the road networks being built across the state that interconnect local governments and in some instance, states. We were able to award brand new roads construction contracts between Dutsi and Mani, awarded the asphalting of a very important road in Faskari to parts of Kaduna state. It is about 40 kilometers. We did award some township roads in Katsina. The Katsina phase five plus the Abattoir road and some minor adjustments on some township roads in the metropolis.

So, on infrastructure, you can see that we are determined to continue. On education, we have built more schools. We were able to build 34 new day secondary Schools in conjunction with the local governments, the state government itself was able to construct seven additional secondary schools, bringing the total number of brand new secondary schools constructed in the last one year to 41.

Of course the other area is the building of the Katsina state University. It is a very important project to us and the people of Katsina. When I came into office, it was at about 30-35 percent state of completion, but today as I am talking to you, the school is virtually completed. We are proud to say this is one of the most important projects the state has undertaken. It was started by Alhaji Umaru Musa Yar Adua, and we are proud to be associated with his vision, foresight and determination to uplift the standard of education in the state.

After the university, there are other critical areas of learning such as the issue of teacher quality and assistance to students. We took an initiative that from January 2008, no student of Katsina origin will pay school fees or examination fees from Primary to Secondary School. That means education has been made free by this administration to every school aged child up to secondary level.

We didn’t rest on our oars with the removal of the school fees. I believe that most of the problems of education, especially in this part of Nigeria are related to poverty. A lot of parents do want to send their wards to school but they lack the funds to afford the basic things required to send their child to school. Often times, a child will finish secondary school but at the end of the day, the parents cannot afford the examination fees. We have taken care of that and we are working on the local governments to support education in other areas.

We have done a lot to provide more educational facilities to the schools. We have commissioned Ahmadu Bello University Zaria, to evaluate the entire education standard in the state. They have submitted a report and we are working on it. Basically, we will start with the issue of teachers and teacher quality, because if you have the right calibre of teachers, then you have taken the first step. You can afford not to have a classroom but you cannot afford to have a deficient teacher, So the first thing to-do is to evaluate the quality and status of our teachers and see what we can do to pay them well, so that they can serve the purpose of imparting quality knowledge to our students. We had realised the importance of improving our institutions of higher learning, so that we can push it to the next level. Indeed we have been able to maintain and sustain the Scholarship Trust Fund that was set up by the Yar Adua administration. Its account has over 1billion Naira that was invested by the trustees and the proceeds of this investment are now being used to settle student’s scholarship allowance.

So if you take education as a whole, I think we are making very giant strides. With all sense of modesty, I think we have within the last eleven months paid special attention in improving the standard of education. On top of that, there are still on-going efforts to ensure the quality of the schools are maintained. Right now, among our strategies is to build more schools, because in some rural areas, children still trek long distances of up to 10 kilometres to schools. We are trying to get more number of classrooms, more teachers and more facilities nearer to our people. Our target is to meet the United Nations Standard of students’ teacher ratio in our schools.

Other areas in education are the areas of specials opportunities. We have got admission slots for our students into institutions outside the country. The state government is sponsoring 190 students to study medicine, nursing and Pharmacy abroad. We intend to continue to source for scholarships and partner with other institutions across the world.

During a visit to the United States with President Yar Adua, I had discussion with the US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice on educational opportunities open to Nigeria. Just last week, I had a visitation from officials of Columbia University trying to get into partnership with Katsina State University.

Indeed our tertiary institutions such as the College of Education Dutsinma, Dr Bala Usman College of Legal Studies in Daura, the Polytechnic and others are being improved to meet the challenges of imparting quality knowledge in line with standards set by bodies like the National Board for Technical Education (NBTE).

This government came in with the intention to focus on three fundamental areas. One is education, secondly agriculture and third is Solid minerals development. That does not mean that we are going to abandon other key areas.

What drives you in setting your priorities?

First, our drive and strength is God Almighty, and our intention is to touch the lives of our people. Our priorities were designed on the basis of the needs of the people. Take education and human capital development for example. It is my firm belief that no society can develop without paying special attention to agriculture, and agriculture is the next natural provider of employment. As an agrarian state, we felt it is fundamental to pay attention to agriculture. In the agricultural fields, we are facing very important challenges like every state in Nigeria that has dams; these dams have been sitting there without being fully utilized. We are working very hard to ensure that we utilize these dams. Nigeria must move as a matter of necessity from rain dependant agriculture to irrigation. We have a great country, we have a great people, we have opportunities and we must be able to rise above these challenges and tap the opportunities. Agriculture is one area that Nigeria has unlimited opportunities to tap from.

There is no section of this country that will claim that agriculture is not important to it. It is for that reason that we have programmes on agriculture, livestock, agro-allied industries development, programmes to establish plantations to serve the economic activities of the state.

Of critical importance is to ensure that we produce dry season farmers on a large scale. It is time to make some fundamental changes in our agricultural practices and policies. It is time to tell ourselves the bitter truth. We cannot continue to use the same methods we use since independence, which have consistently failed to lift our agriculture from its subsistence level. So we have to introduce new changes. Let us invite those engaged in commercial farms, to work with our people, organize them into cooperatives, to make sure that there is a collective effort towards large scale farming.

That is not all. Our government is looking into the potentiality of developing market for agricultural produce, because part of the problem is that often times, government will come out and say farmers should go to this area, say beni-seed production, after a year’s harvest you find that the farmers are left with the produce, with virtually nothing to do with it. Next year when you ask them to go to the same field, it becomes difficult for them to listen to you. So hand-in hand with the development of agriculture, market potentials of the produce has to be guaranteed, and the farmer must be assisted to reach out and get to the market.

World over agriculture is subsidized. There is a lot we can do in the area of getting direct benefits to farmers. Take the issue of subsidizing fertilizer to farmers for instance. Most time in this country, the fertilizer government subsidize always ends up in the hands of the middlemen. So the farmer ends up buying the fertilizer in the hands of these middlemen at very exorbitant prices. So efforts must be made to stop this trend by including the farmers in deciding the way to move agriculture to the next level.

In the area of solid minerals, Katsina is blessed with 18 different kinds of solid minerals, and most of these remain untapped. For that reason, I appointed a Special Adviser on solid minerals. We have taken far reaching measures of harnessing these resources. Number one, we identified one of the solid minerals that are hugely abundant in almost all the local governments. That is kaolin. We told ourselves that we have to start with the basics. We know we have deposits of gold, diamond, iron ore, a lot of silica sand, phosphor, asbestos and so on. But the tapping of these resources is not organized as to be beneficial to the people of the state and the country.

So what we did was to use kaolin that is in huge deposit and went into the setting up of cottage industries. The government’s resources development Department asked the local government councils to get 20-25 young men and women as a group, who were trained to use kaolin to produce chalk and paint. We did that, six months into the life of the administration. Today every local government in Katsina state has a cottage industry producing chalk and paint. We gave as a matter of specific directive that all primary and secondary schools in the state must buy their chalks from these young men and women in their local government. The number of primary and secondary schools are enough to use the chalks being produced by these young chaps. The local contractors too were encouraged to buy from them, and they are buying. We have also insisted on quality. It is totally a new thing and I am happy that today in Katsina we are pursuing vigorously the development of cottage industries. Not only kaolin, we are looking into other areas.

We decided to introduce assistance to those engaged in quarry business but have no capacity to buy the quarry machineries to break stones. Our focus is on those individuals using their hands to break rocks into smaller stone chips for the construction industry. We have procured for them rock blasting machines, and this has been very helpful. We have a lot of request for more of those machines.

We are also looking at the area of using clay to produce specially made stoves, to reduce the issue of deforestation and desertification, which is a very serious problem, especially in areas on the border with Niger Republic. It is very important and critical to face these challenges.

We are developing plantations using certain category of trees and shrubs that grow easily, like Jitroppa (Chindazugu in Hausa), which has proved to be of economic value, in producing bio fuel. So we are organizing the solid minerals sector to make it viable and add value to the lives of our people.

What efforts are you making in the area of tourism development?

We are trying to improve existing tourists’ sites. We plan to develop a tourism village. You know we have national land marks like the Gobarau minaret, the famous Katsina College where most of the past and present leaders of Northern Nigeria were educated. We have some historical sites and monuments that need preservation. The hotels in Katsina are not quite many, but we have received request from developers. Don’t forget that the President of Nigeria is from Katsina state and that makes Katsina a destination for visitors. The government is expanding the state owned motel, and we have received expression of interest from organizations like the Protea hotels.

On the transport sector, we are looking at possibility of opening opportunities for private airliners for scheduled and chattered flights from Katsina to Abuja and other parts of the country. Our road network across the state are of course very good.

What is the government doing to encourage investments into the state?

We have opened a web site where we display the potentials of the state. We have distributed pamphlets and have done personal reach outs too on the huge opportunities to be tapped in the solid minerals sector and other areas. We are taking to various groups interested in investing in agriculture, solid minerals and other areas. We have been approached by another group wishing to set up plantation for exotic flowers, because Katsina airport will provide the means to fly these to Europe and other part of the World.

What is the Security situation like in the state especially with the livelihood of foreign investors coming into the state?

Luckily for us, Katsina has a record of being one of the most peaceful states in Nigeria. We have no incidences worthy of disrupting the peace in the state. This is largely due to the culture and attitude of the people of Katsina, they are peace loving people, and accommodating. The population of the capital has increased several folds. There are a lot of indigenous Nigerians (I don’t like to call other Nigerians, non indigenes) who are living in Katsina peacefully. If you go round the town, you will be able to talk to them on this.

Fundamentally in the area of investment, we have through the Ministry of Commerce introduced what we call small trade Fund Scheme, and we invest more than 100 million Naira. This is interest free loan we give to people doing small scale trade and businesses, like the car washers, vulcanizers, welders, vegetable sellers, restaurant owners and so on. There are those who take equipment not cash. For instance we have solar powered barbing kits that the barber can take thus saving them the cost of electricity usage. We also offer the loan to people who are disabled as part of ways to discourage street begging.

In the rural communities one of the first things we did when we came in was to set up Community Development Committee (CDC). This exists in every local government. Its composition include the traditional rulers, Imams, the business community, Youth, women groups and each ward in the local government has representation. Whatever we want to do, we go straight to the CDC. I will give you an example. When we wanted to introduce hi tech welding programme for some youth in Katsina state, we went to the committees and informed them of it. Right now there are about 50 youths undergoing training in hi tech welding. They will be finishing their training in a month from now.

The first job I gave the CDC was to get me direct report on their health needs, agriculture, name it. So, by the time I got my report ready, it is very interesting. I didn’t need a consultant to do it for me. So if I need to provide boreholes, with the punch of a button I can see the community needs as sent in by the CDC and we shall know in which area to go to. We have such a lot of boreholes based on that requirement. We have built schools, hospitals based on that requirement.

When I realized the enormous needs of the communities for healthcare facilities, I introduced the Rural Ambulances Scheme and trained some health personnel. In every local government, there is one ambulance going from ward to ward to treat patients. Wherever they go they have to be certified by a traditional ruler or an Imam. I was pleasantly surprised when I saw the number of patients treated. In some 17 local governments they attended to more than 60,000 patients a month, and this service is free.

We don’t charge dialysis patients in the three dialysis centres we have. We offer free antenatal care, free medical services to accident victims for the first 48 hours and we have been carrying out routine immunization efforts in conjunction other relevant agencies. In a nutshell, we have been able to do a lot through the information we received from these committees.

What are the sources of funding?

The fact of the matter is that you have to do effective management and ensure that whatever you spend public funds on will give you value for money. It is very simple and very easy. If you are going to bring anything, you stick to the regulations on that, and we stick to that. I inherited a very vibrant and supportive civil service, and luckily for us, Katsina state is highly an elitist state. We have a lot of prominent people, prominent sons of Nigeria who had the advantage of having been in so many places. With the legacies set by Yar Adua, I found a good system, a working system and an effective system.

So what level do you hope to take Katsina to?

To the best level. I would want Katsina to compare with any modern state in Nigeria and the World.

What is your boldest stride?

Venturing into some critical areas. Like now I am trying to venture into bio gas as a source of energy. I am going to have the first demonstrating units for the production of energy to rural communities through the utilization of bio gas. We are going to have cooking gas and electricity. We are going to use cow dung to power the system. We want to test it, we want to try it and we want to see what the rest of the world is doing. We want to venture into it; we are not going to wait.

What do you have to say to investors wishing to come to Katsina?

Our doors are open to genuine investors; we give tax breaks and tax holidays. We will sustain an enabling environment and provide necessary infrastructure. They are welcome to come. Our people are hospitable and willing to learn.

Thank you.