Former Minister of the Federal Capital Territory,Malam Nasir El-Rufa'i, who just won the APC governorship primaries in Kaduna State, speaks with Northern Bureau Chief Hassan Ibrahim on how he intends to change Kaduna if he wins THE 2015 election. Excerpts:Now that you got the APC ticket to contest in 2015 for the state governorship seat, what is your next plan of action'My pledge is that we are going to focus on issues. We are going to contest the election on issues. Even as an aspirant, I published a manifesto. I want to have a Kaduna State, where there is no indigene or settler. I want to have a Kaduna state where everyone living there has equal rights as others. In the manifesto, we made commitments on what we are going to do in Kaduna, in spite of the challenges we are going to inherit.You know that Kaduna is the second most indebted state in the country. Unlike Lagos, we do not have the industrial base or the commercial capacity to bear the debt burden that we have. From our estimates, every child born in Kaduna has a debt of N15,000. If you have a child going to be born tomorrow, that child already has a debt burden of N15,000 and there are about eight million people in Kaduna. In spite of that, we are confident that we will find a way to work with the people of Kaduna because there are areas of leakages.We plan to tackle corruption and there is large capacity to expand our Internally Generated Revenue (IGR). Oil prices are falling and we are facing more serious economic situation than anything we have faced since 1984. We will do our best to improve the situation because we are committed to making Kaduna great again and we cannot do it without you. We hope once our campaigns start. We will have some of you as members of our campaign team so that you cover the whole exercise.Your tenure as Minister of the FCT was controversial especially with your land and housing reforms. From your body language, are we likely to have a rehash of the Abuja experience in Kaduna if you become the Governor'I do not know what you mean by controversial but I have always maintained that I am not controversial. Until 1999 when I became the Director-General of BPE, no one ever heard of me. If I had been a controversial person, you would have heard of me. I think my fortune or misfortune in public life stems from tyhe fact that I tend to get the most difficult assignments that every other person is scared of doing.My first real job in BPE was to sell public assets. It was not El-Rufa'i that was controversial, it was the assignment. I am not controversial, but mind my business and when I was adviser to General Abdul salami Abubakar for one year, you never heard of me because an adviser advises quietly. But once I am given a job and I agree to do it, I do it with all my heart.The privatisation of public enterprises started during your days at the BPE, but unfortunately, exercise does not seem to be working years after. What do you think is responsible for this'I do not agree with you that privatisation has not worked. It has worked well in favour of the Nigerian people. You have to understand the state of these companies before they were privatised. The Senate conducted an investigation the privatised companies and found out that two thirds of all the privatised companies, about 67 per cent, were doing very well and one third of the companies were not doing well. 67 per cent anywhere in the world is a good score. Benue Cement was one of the companies we privatised and I sold it to Dangote. There were all sorts of resistance but today, where is Benue' The installed capacity of Benue Cement was 900,000 metric tons of cement. It was producing less than 600-000 as at the time we privatised it because of spare parts problems and other factors. With Dangote in charge now, it is producing two million metric tons of cement. It has expanded and the employment figure has since doubled. You cannot say that privatisation has not worked. Yes, not all the companies may work. One of the companies that I privatised that failed is Electric Metre Company of Nigeria in Zaria. Why did it fail' It failed because the company had only one customer, the defunct NEPA. But, NEPA moved from those kinds of metres to pre-paid metres and they did not tell them because NEPA wanted to import from South Africa and make commissions. If they had given them notice and said that in two years, for example, we would stop using those analogue metres, get facilities to produce pre-paid metres, may be the company would have made the shift. That is why the company died. It died for clear reasons and not because of mismanagement.Coming to Kaduna, yes, industries were established by the Balarabe Musa administration, but those industries were sabotaged by the Federal Government. I remember in one case, the entire equipment for one of the companies was auctioned to an NPN chieftain and they had to pay 10 times the price to get them back. So, they had issues from day one. We have commissioned someone to study some of these companies, the Kachia Ginger Company, the Ikara Tomato Processing Company, Zaria Pharmaceutical Company and one other. We have commissioned a consultant to find out their current status as to whether they are partially privatised or not, so that we find ways of reviving and expanding them. Some of their equipment may even be obsolete.The challenge of industrial development for a state government is that industrial policy is controlled by the Federal Government. Let me give you an example. We got experts to look at the textile industries in Kaduna, to examine their problems and what we could do as a state government. The first problem that our experts identified is electricity. That is the biggest problem for the textile industries. But that is out of our hands as a state government. There is nothing we can do about it unless the Federal Government makes policies that make electricity available and affordable especially for industries. The second problem is the trade policy, which may allow or disallow textile.Again, that is also forthe Federal Government and unless we are able to get the Federal Government to make certain policy adjustment, there is little we can do. But we are looking at all these issues because we believe that it is possible to restore the Kaduna industrial capacity to its initial position, particularly if we have a Federal Government that is willing to work with us. Since we are confident that we are going to have General Muhammadu Buhari as our President, we have a blueprint on some of these things and we assure that Jonathan is returning to Otueke.Do you see any difference in the existing PDP and the one you served under'It is a big mistake to say that the PDP of 2003 is the same as the Jonathanian PDP. They are completely different. The PDP that I was a member of had some rules and processes. Let me give you just one example. As a minister of the FCT, I demolished a house belonging to the chairman of the PDP. Today, no minister of the FCT can touch the house of a member of PDP national executive committee. So, it is a different PDP. The PDP of 1999 is not the same as the PDP of today. And, do not equate members of the 1999 PDP with current members. The PDP of today is a criminal PDP. They have no regard for rules; they say they are People's Democratic Party, but they do not have regard for people and they do not have regard for democracy.If you have any doubts about that, go and check what they did during their last primaries in all the states, whether there was any semblance of election.Please, do not describe PDP as a fixed entity. The party has evolved over time and for the worse. I was minister on the platform of the PDP but I was not a minister because I was in the PDP. I was minister on my merit. I represented no state in Nigeria. The party's minister representing Kaduna was Nenadi Usman because the Governor of Kaduna at that time disowned me and said that I did nothing for the party. He objected to my being minister but Obasanjo told him that whether he liked it or not I was going to be Minister because I had a special assignment for him. Even though I was minister under a PDP government, some of us were different animals. We were brought in not on PDP platform, but because we had certain skills that did not exist in the PDP. I, Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, Obi Ezekwesili, were a handful, who were ministers not representing a state per se. We were called technocrats.As minister of the FCT, I enjoyed two positions in the party. As someone from Kaduna, I was supposed to be a member of the executive committee of the PDP but go and check, I never attended their meetings. I did not see myself as a member of the PDP. I saw politics as a distraction from the work I was asked to do. As minister of the FCT, I was the leader of the PDP in Abuja. So, I enjoyed that dual position, but go and check, the winner the election in 2007. The All Nigeria's Peoples Party (ANPP) won because I called all the leaders of the PDP and told them that anybody that I would ensure rigged the elections, was arrested by Nuhu Ribadu, who unfortunately has gone back to the PDP. I did not care won the elections. All I cared was that the elections should be free and fair. I have never manipulated the results of elections because I would never sleep if I change the results of elections. I have never done it before.The NUJ secretariat, in Abuja, was demolished, will the same fate befall Kaduna NUJ when you become governor'The Nigerian Union Journalists (NUJ) had an illegal national secretariat in Abuja. Let me give you the history and why we did what we did. When the seat of government moved to Abuja in 1991, the NUJ was asked to move but they did not have an office. So, one of the primary schools at Garki was given to the NUJ as a temporary office. It was a primary school which at the time was not populated because they had no pupils.The NUJ was given a site to build a permanent secretariat and government even gave them a grant to build it. Go and ask those who got the grant what they did with it. When I came in as minister, I checked the records and found out that the Minister before me, Abba Gana, had pledged to give a further contribution of N3 million to the NUJ to continue the building of the secretariat. He did not redeem that pledge, but I approved the payment. When we were reviewing the status of our schools we found out that we had a primary school that was over congested because Garki district had become populated and we needed that primary school for our pupils. Now, who is more important, the NUJ or our children' I do not know what you think, but our children are more important than anything.So, I called Smart Adeyemi who was NUJ president at that time. I told him that government gave you land and also gave you money to build it but some people diverted the money. My predecessor promised you N3 million to continue with the building, he did not pay but I have paid. I am giving you six months to get out of that place. He said they could not finish the building in six months. I said, fine but school starts in six months and I want to move children from that congested primary school to the one you are occupying. I told him to go and find an office andthat I would pay the rent for two years.They thought because they were journalists and by writing nobody could do anything. He thought I was joking. And the NUJ also built a hotel in that place. The NUJ headquarters was a brothel at night where we were supposed to have a school. They did not move. We did not revoke the place because one can only revoke what you own. It was never property of NUJ; it was given to NUJ to use temporarily and I chased them out. We demolished the hotel and put our children there. I am proud of what I did and I have no regrets. I became an enemy of Smart Adeyemi but I did my job and those children got a school. I know I did the right thing and I sleep well at night. If the Kaduna NUJ secretariat is a school, the same thing will happen if I become governor. But I do not think it is a school.
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