I’m qualified to be Nigeria’s president - Governor Rabiu Musa Kwankwaso of Kano State in this interview speaks on burning political issues in the country ntry including the Adamawa and Nasarawa States impeachment ent debacle. He also opened up on his pres
How do you view 2015 considering the current hiccups in the polity?
Well, I don’t know, we are praying for the best; we are working to have free and fair election. We want to see one united country. But the way they are working now I think everybody is worried locally and internationally because they want to take it by force. These people are desperate, they want to continue by all means and that is the whole idea of divide and rule, they want to rule for ever I think he wants to be a life president, because we have seen incidences.
Look at our 486 young men and women who have been detained, almost 500, they are not taken to court they are just releasing them in piecemeal. According to some stories, it was done under the directive of Mr. President. Now it is a very serious issue they don’t understand the size of the problem. Because the consequences of that - probably that is what they want, now if we close our roads leading to the south within an hour you will get more than 500 people from the south and by the time we do that it will become a crisis. By the time I ask my people to come back from where they are in the south you know the consequences of that. All these things put together is what is giving people concern about 2015. Now people are been detained, we just heard 486, we don’t know whether they are more we don’t know what they have done, we are here in the north everybody is concerned about the insecurity. My own father was attacked in the mosque people piled on him in the mosque, three people were killed on top of him and 13 were injured because of the insecurity.
All these insecurity is mainly here and we hope it will not cross over we want it to end here. We are fighting it here and by the grace of God, with the help of army and police we are working with we are happy that we are relatively having peace.
And some of these decisions that people are taking because of their selfishness is dividing the country and continue to create problems unless they understand and I hope they have the capacity to understand this situation will run us into more crises, we are Nigerians this country belongs to all of us. We have to promote issues that unite us and not the ones that are dividing us.
You don’t divide people, that is why we have political parties, I see my friends from the south as my brothers and sisters in the same party if there is election today I am ready to go there and do whatever I can do to support them and vice-versa but when you start to talk south, north, oil, no oil give me money they are abusing themselves.
Nigerians deserve to have good leaders that will promote issues that bind us together.
What is happening here in Kano is what Nigerians need. Projects everywhere, I have over 2000 students studying abroad in 14 countries, free education everybody can take his students to any school. I have over 200 students in Katsina State in a private university, some in Edo, 200 in Crescent, 25 in ABTI Yola, here in Kano I have two universities everybody is happy, everybody is engaged. We have 24 institutions almost on a daily basis they are graduating people some three, five, six months and even one year, people are happy.
How do you see the Adamawa and Nasarawa State saga?
I don’t want to go into the detail of what the governor has done right or what he has done wrong, and the members, but what I want to say is Baba Maimangoro is not the worst governor in this country, he is not. Look at Nasarawa State the same thing is happening. It is only APC governors that are being punished, if you are in PDP whatever you do is okay. They will even be bringing money from Abuja in the name of ecology, dash or whatever. Whatever you are doing is not a problem, it is only APC governors they want to destabilize.
Look at what they paid here in Kano to sponsor young men to foment crisis. They gave them drugs saying they are fighting, they came to the streets of Kano and started burning our roads, destroying our streets and traffic lights, billboards from government house to the emir’s palace. They paid them, why?
Many people don’t understand the meaning of ‘Kata-Kata’, any foolish man can start ‘Kata-Kata’. You don’t know where it will end; people who are beneficiaries of this democracy are the one that are getting much to start the crises. That is why we are advising them that this will not help this country that divide and rule, it doesn’t help the leader.
The convocation of the National Conference was seen in some quota as an attempt to further cripple the north and advance the president’s ambition, what is your take on this?
That is what I am saying, I agree with you 100 percent, I said that the day he mentioned it and the worst is I think is all about his 3rd term, the extension of his tenure. You have seen recently that he took a bill to the National Assembly asking the legislators to approve six years single term for him.
The implication is that he wanted it himself, he did two years after Yar’Adua died, he is now doing 4 years making it six years. Then he wanted additional one term of six years he wants to stay for 12 years at least, for now. That thing is not working. Now we are hearing they are smuggling new constitution into the confab. Now he wants new constitution on the ground to start another eight years by 2015. And what people are saying here is eight years plus six years; but do you want us to continue like this, this level of corruption, insecurity in this country? We have seen that the only corrupt people in this country are in APC anybody who is not in APC no matter what you steal even the unbelievable money of Abacha, no problem they are dropping all the charges, just because he is now with PDP.
Now if you are talking about distribution of wealth, additional 5 to 13 percent at the end of the day who is losing, because it is the same treasury, if you are talking of transferring point A to point B some must be winners and some must be losers and from what we are seeing everybody knows who is the loser.
The implication of that in my opinion is that those who are poor with this level of insecurity will now be made to be poorer so it means more insecurity and insecurity does not help anybody in this country, it does not help our neighbours, it does not help our friends all over the world. Why because everybody must have lost something because many of those who are coming from the South for big market here because of crisis they could not sell anything.
I have not seen any problem with the constitution, but I have seen many things wrong with the operators... so I know very well that confab is just a waste of time and resources it was allocated N7bn and in the budget only N2bn was allocated to the North East for special program to alleviate poverty.
You were against the establishment of state police,