Dayo Benson
12 July 2008
interview
Minister for Tourism, Culture and National Orientation, Mr. Adetokunbo Kayode, Senior Advocate of Nigeria (SAN), is representing Ondo State in the federal cabinet. Despite being a lawyer, a field totally unrelated to Tourism and Culture sector, the honourable minister has a full grasp of the industry, this he amply demonstrates in this interview. Perhaps, his mission at the ministry and his vision for the tourism cum culture sector has inspired in him an abiding passion to give the job his best.
He says he has succeeded in pulling the ministry away from a pariah status. And as far as he is concerned, the testy situation in Niger-Delta is not a threat to tourism business in the country. He spoke with Sunday Vanguard. Excerpts.
YOU are a lawyer, a Senior Advocate of Nigeria and Minister of Culture and Tourism, what is the relationship and how have you been coping?
I thank you very much because this question has come up quite very regularly and I think we should really be able to lay it to rest by the explanations which I should be able to proffer now. One, I think under the law, especially, now that we are under the rule of law, the minimum qualification required of every minister is to have a school certificate, and to be a member of the party and to be above thirty-five and not be a member of a secret cult and so on and so forth - the qualification for membership of House of Representatives.
There is no qualification or requirement for a minister to have a particular professional degree or professional qualification or whatever. That is one. Two, any person who has the minimum qualification can be posted to any ministry. It is a matter of presidential discretion. Secondly, it is also a matter of other considerations which may be political. So, as far as I'm concerned, any president has the right to appoint a journalist or anyone, and post him to Central Bank, we've had one in the past; or a journalist and post him to Health.
We have some of them in other African countries and they are doing well, and a political scientist and post him to Education. It has happened here in this country before. Or an accountant and post him to Works. You know, this tendency to want to post professionals to specific areas of their qualifications, (was) a limitation originally orchestrated by the military and there are attempts to now carry it over to civilian (administration) and I think we need to have a re-think.
For instance, if you look at it, and I say this with all sense of responsibility, most ministers of education who are teachers, professors or who came from the Education sector always seem to have a lot of problems coping with the ministry.
Not because they are not competent administrators in their own right, because really, a minister is an administrator and a designer and implementer of policies, but because they seem to have certain primordial instinct against them because they already have within the system, people who like them, people who hate them, and they themselves also have their own views about certain groups of people within the profession. You understand? Maybe with exception of the legal profession where there is a constitutional provision that only a lawyer who is more than ten years at the bar can be the attorney-general.
That is a special constitutional provision. Really, you can't have a non-lawyer being a legal adviser. Short of that, I don't see why a teacher cannot be made a minister of health. It's just to administer, to listen to experts, come to decision, and you don't really need to be technically competent in that area as a matter of proficiency or as a matter of professional qualification.
And again, to post a medical doctor, maybe with clear exception of Prof. Ransome Kuti of blessed memory, all other ministers of health always tended to have problems with their people because they belong to the profession.
But having said that, it is your ability as an administrator, and somebody who has two ears, who listen to both sides of the argument and now apply common sense and that basic intelligence, which God gave all of us, to now come to a reasonable decision in the best interest of the country. So, that really is what I think a minister requires and this is why making the transition, so to say, was not very difficult. Yes, I have a legal background, yes, I am a Senior Advocate of Nigeria, but what does that really mean, speaking in layman's terms?
It means that, I am somebody who should, when he has a problem, find solution to it because as a lawyer, you sit down in your chambers, in a day you may have cases and all of them from different sections of life. One may be criminal, one may be about testamentary disposition, that is, making of will, one may be about contract, one may be about chieftaincy.
And when these problems come, you take the brief, then you go and read it up. You study it and be able to give reasonable advice.
When I got to the ministry and I found that the leadership of the National Orientation Agency has had a Clean Nigerian Project they have been doing, I was very elated and I encouraged them very actively and I am looking forward to continue to work with them.
And later when I got together with the D-G of NOA and we talked about the possibility of seeing how we can do waste to wealth programmes. That is, while encouraging people to clean their environment, whatever is the product of that work, they can then get some economic advantage from it. Of course, clean environment, good and healthy environment and maybe less crime, I think somebody has linked dirty environment with crime.
That is, where an environment is clean, there is less crime, where it is dirty, crime seems to be more prevalent. You can take it that there is some correlation. Thirdly, you can't expect tourists in dirty environment but you may expect tourists in a clean environment if other things are also in place.
Fourthly, you know a clean mind is a healthy mind and I think with cleaner environment , we become better persons. And so, you can see that what I have discussed have cut across Environmental sector, Health sector and Tourism sector and so on, and that is the work of orientation.
We try to change our attitude to what we do and can cut across all fields. We are helping the Ministry of Environment, we are helping the Ministry of Health, we are helping the Ministry of Tourism and so on and so forth. Again, as I said, it is just applying the little intelligence God gave us to the issue that we have to do. So, I don't see any problem at all in being a lawyer and being in that ministry.
Actually, I think it enables us to add value because we can appreciate the main issues there as lawyers. I also apply that basic logical sense that God has been kind enough to give us and also be able to take decision that will be fair across the board, to our people and also serve the best interest of our nation.
Certainly, from what you have said, you were able to blend easily in the ministry, but I am sure there are some challenges that confronted you when you assumed leadership of that ministry. What would you say these challenges were and how were you able to surmount them?
There were two broad challenges. The first is really developmental, that is policy changes. How do we move on? First of all, how do we take the Tourism and Culture sector and remove it from a pariah status, which is what it was from a second class status?
I've been to the ministry and that is the truth, people consider the ministry as a second class ministry. And when we got to the ministry, we found out that not much was going on even though the ministers that were before us had tried their best to lift the spirit of the ministry, they did not completely succeed in doing that.
We thought, now we have a challenge to lift the spirit of the ministry, bring it up, tear away this toga of pariah or second class and bring them to the level of every ministry, whether it is Works or Health, Education or whatever. So, the first discussion I had with management, I told them, 'I am not a second class minister, neither is the minister of state.
She is a medical doctor, I am a SAN, you, from what I'm seeing here, you are not second class civil servants. So, today, we tear away from the ministry pariah status, that second class status. We are first class, we are among the best and will show this country by our activities that we are among the best'. So, that is the development challenge.
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