"Yes, I believe in Buhari, I still do and I will never stop believing in him. But I no longer believe in the circle around him and the quality of decisions and actions coming out of that leadership."
The Governor of Kaduna State, Nasir El-Rufai, in this exclusive interview with PREMIUM TIMES, talks about recent critical issues in the polity as Nigeria heads to the general elections and the role of President Buhari in the issues.
Mr El-Rufai says he no longer believes in the quality of decisions coming out of the presidency as he talks about the currency redesign crisis, the upcoming polls, Bola Tinubu, Southern Kaduna and his plans after office.
Excerpts
PT: Are you seeing a pattern emerging, which is consistent with disruptions in late transitions? Because you have spoken of non-executive/ unelected bureaucrats who are trying to topple a civilian-to-civilian transition. Is that really the point you are making?
Mr El-Rufai: Yes, it is the point I am making to some extent. I will not even call them bureaucrats; I will call them totally non-state actors. If they had a title in the hierarchy of government, you can understand and hold them accountable. But these are people that prefer to be under the radar but constantly plotting to preserve power on their own terms, and there is nothing wrong with that. But when the attitude is - unless we get our way, Nigeria should take a highway - we have to draw a line and stand up for the only country whose passport we hold, and that is really the problem.
There were patterns of conduct that did not make sense to any rational person and in spite of efforts at representing and enquiring and asking questions and trying to bring evidence of human suffering, evidence of anger and incitement of the electorate, evidence of likelihood of high voter apathy and no action is taken to correct the course, one is compelled to start exploring conspiracy theories.
It turned out that some of the wildest stories of conspiracy to derail the transition at best for APC to lose, preferably for the whole system to result in no election, leading to an interim arrangement, began to rear their heads. And of course at that point some of us had to speak up and I felt, particularly, the responsibility to speak up for a couple of reasons.
First, I would say, among the governors in Nigeria today, I would say I am perhaps one of the closest to President Buhari in terms of not only personal relationship, open shows of affection, but also years of collaborating in the political space right from the days of our opposition.
Secondly, many of us believed in Buhari greatly and we went out of our way to not only market him but to convince everybody that he was the best thing for Nigeria at that point in time. And we hav no regrets for that because whatever may have been the failings of this administration, it is still a much better alternative than the direction President Jonathan was taking us and I think that on the whole, the administration has done very well in many areas amidst major challenges.
But still, those of us that stood up and got counted as Buharists also have a duty to ensure that his legacy is preserved, that he leaves office with his dignity intact and retires. And there are people around him that in our view did not give a damn about that, because for them losing their power and privileges was everything and nothing else mattered. Buhari's legacy did not matter, Nigeria did not matter if they did not get their way and we had to stand up and we are in a position to do so as elected governors and representatives of the people of our states.
PT: Towards the end of your comments was the fact that you believed in Buhari. You used "believed" in the past tense, and I am going to ask, have you stopped believing in Buhari?
Mr El-Rufai: No, I still believe in him personally. But leadership is not about one individual. The choices that a leader makes, the thing that he constitutes, becomes part and parcel of what you can say is his leadership.
I have had the privilege of working closely with three presidents now and I know how important these inner circles around the president or a governor or any leader for that matter, how important it is to make the right choices of those that are around you all the time. Because those that are around you all the time have a disproportionate influence on your decisions and actions for the simple reason that they are there. This is true in every palace, in every kingdom from the beginning of time.
Yes, I believe in Buhari, I still do and I will never stop believing in him. But I no longer believe in the circle around him and the quality of decisions and actions coming out of that leadership.
PT: Do you want to go one step further and characterise these elements in a very distinct outline that people can understand?
Mr El-Rufai: I have given a few examples in previous interviews I have had, I will just mention one or two again.
Let us take the fuel subsidy regime. The fuel subsidy regime was on its way to costing us about two trillion naira in 2021 and the moment we saw that, we raised an alarm. I lead a team of governors that interact with the NNPC, we raised an alarm, we met with the president, he said "I have problems with removing the subsidy because it will affect the poor."
We provided data and statistics to show that the disproportionate beneficiaries of this subsidy are the rich. For instance, many people do not know, but 60 per cent of Nigeria's gasoline consumption is attributed to four states of the federation and these four states are the most affluent and the richest sub nationals; Lagos, Rivers, FCT Abuja in another state, these four account for about 60 per cent.
So essentially, this is where the richest Nigerians live and they are the beneficiaries of this subsidy. What affects the common man is the transportation of goods across the country, which mostly use diesel which is not subsidised. So petrol subsidy benefits the rich much more than the poor and past studies have shown that anytime you increase the price of gasoline, there is a slight hike in transport prices and even consumer good. But these prices go back within three months when the forces of demand and supply and reduced demand compel the traders to go back and adjust the prices. Because they see that it is not making sense and the contribution of transportation costs, the PMS in the prices these products we sell, is so minimal that it is not worth.
So we convinced the president, at that time we were approaching two trillion. We convinced the president, he agreed that this had to go and so on. So by the time the petroleum industry bill was passed into law, it is in the law. Actually what we are doing, allowing subsidy, is in violation of that law and the president agreed. Then he changed his mind.
He did not change his mind because of new facts, he did not change his mind because of new information, it was again the influence of people that we have now found were disproportionate beneficiaries of the subsidy regime. Now this year, we are talking of spending possibly six trillion on subsidies, two to three times the annual budget of this country for education, for federal highways, for health, for everything that is important and that matters.
It simply does not make any sense to continue, but it is still there, which is against the law. it is against the provisions of PIA. It is shortchanging states and local governments and bringing many states close to distress. And this is not a decision that the states have taken, we have not agreed that our resources should be used to fund subsidy costs but it is being done regardless and this is painful. But we just do not understand why you have that kind of decisions and actions coming out of the Villa.
The second one is the more recent decision about currency redesign, which is really currency recolouring, in my view, because the currency was not redesigned in any way; it is just the same note just that the colour is just different
The logic behind the currency redesign which was sold to the president is that you know there are many Nigerians, politicians, governors, ministers that have stashes of billions of naira cash in their homes and there is a need for them to bring it out.
Two or three people had this idea and knowing that the president in his first outing did something like that, sold a dummy to him, essentially saying, let us change the colour of the currency; let us do it in a very short time then we will catch them. Either they bring out the money and be subject to EFCC investigation to explain how they got the money or they lose it completely.
Some even went as far as giving the president illogical economic arguments that encourage inflation: 'it will make the exchange rate come down', which anybody that has done Economics 101, knows is not true.
Since it was done, we have seen the dollar move to 700, even 900 at a point. And now what the policy has amounted to is actually currency confiscation. Essentially, what the government has done through the Central Bank is to confiscate the wealth of Nigerians, whether legitimate or illegitimate. Confiscate, put in the bank and then not give them back their money. Because how can the Central Bank claim that they have withdrawn 2.7 trillion naira from circulation, yet they have printed currency only up to N300 billion. That means for every nine naira they withdrew, the only printed one naira. How are they going to give back their money?
They have no right to do that under the CBN Act, under the Bill of Exchange Act. It is totally illegal. If you take one naira from a person, you should give them one naira. You cannot force people to open bank accounts, you are violating their rights. If they want to open a bank account, it should be as a result of advocacy and convincing them of the benefits of opening a bank account. You cannot take people's money and refuse to pay them back what they have deposited or be paying them fractions, it is a violation of the law.
The second aspect of it is to say the legal tender must end at a particular time. It is only the president that can determine when currency ceases to be legal tender and the law requires him to give a reasonable time. Now, is a few weeks or a few months a reasonable time? We do not think so.
This is why from day one, when the policy was announced, we were taken by surprise but we said it is a good policy, ideally we should have a cashless society. It plugs leakages, corruption and so on, we support it. But we do not believe it can be done within a short time. At that time, we did not even know that the mint had no capacity to print more than one trillion naira in a year. If they work flat out for one year, they can only print the equivalent of one trillion if they are printing high denomination notes like N1000 or N500.
We did not know that. But we just knew that the time was too tight for this to happen. Because we are on the ground, we know how many bank branches are in our states. We know local governments in our states that have no bank branches at all and some of these local governments are the size of some states in Nigeria. In Borno State for instance, the governor reported that only two out of 27 local governments have bank branches.
Borno State is huge, it is six times the size of the five states of the South-east, and you want everyone in that state to come to Maiduguri to change their money? The risks are they will be transporting cash across time, distances, risks and so on and so forth. So it did not just make sense.
We needed more time, we needed clearer logistic arrangements. For instance, if the Central Bank had come with a plan for local governments where there are no branches, our bullion vans would go to the markets, community leaders' houses and people would queue up and bring their old notes to exchange them with new notes. We would have been happy to support them as state governors. But they did not even talk to us and they could not because they knew they did not have the currency to give back to people.
So it was very clear that the policy was cloaked with the intention of reducing money laundering but the actual agenda was to take people's money, refuse to give them, bring trade and commerce and exchange to a halt and make it impossible for the elections to take place or ignite protests so that the entire democratic structure will collapse or you know lead to an end SARS-like uprising that will invite maybe the military to take over.
When we first heard of some of these scenarios in September 2022, we laughed that this cannot happen in Nigeria. But it is very clear that that was the intention.
So it is not about catching the corrupt people, it is really about impoverishing the people in the lower middle class and the middle class because you certainly make them cashless so that they cannot buy food. They say transfer. Is the telecoms infrastructure able to take three to four times the level of transactions?
Only nine per cent of Nigerians, according to the IMF, use digital platforms for more monetary transactions. This is why the telecoms infrastructure can handle it. But when you say everyone in Nigeria should use it, you should anticipate an 11-fold increase in the transactions. Have you sat with the telecoms operators and the NCC and the Minister of Digital Economy to confirm that we have the infrastructure to do that? No. Why not? We do not care. We want the system to collapse.
When we go to the president, we present these facts, and these facts are not controverted because you do not have any contrary facts.
Some of the members of the Nigerian Governors Forum were governors of the Central Bank, like Chukwuma Soludo, he knows the capacity of the mint, he knows how the CBN works, and he says and he drafted, it was under his watch that the CBN Act of today was drafted and passed. I was a member of cabinet when we did that.
We know the intention. We know why we had those provisions. And they are not being complied with, they are not being observed. They are observed in the breach and you have to conclude that there is something going on. The first time we met the president as APC governors and presented the facts, he was surprised and said, "I will look into this, we still have one week. I'll look into these and resolve this."
And we were all optimistic. By the time we went back, our representatives went back, everything had changed without any change in facts or controverting any of the evidence that we have put forward. So it is very clear that there is a hidden agenda. How evil or how dark that agenda is, only God knows. We can only speculate and put that side by side some of the rumours we heard months ago.
So this is quite disturbing for us and we just have to remain vigilant. I think every Nigerian should remain vigilant. And we hope that this ends well, and what I mean by end well is we have elections. That there is no violence before, during and after the election because that is what they want. People should not do street protests and Nigerians should know that even in 100 years if they bring out the old notes and go to the Central Bank, the Central Bank of Nigeria is duty bound to redeem your notes. That is what the Exchange Act and the Central Bank Act says: the issue of the currency is a promise by the sovereign that anytime you produce it, I will redeem. Now, once it is declared, no longer legal tender, you can't buy with it, you can't go to the market and use it. You can't even take it to a commercial bank and get value, but if you take it to a Central Bank it must give you value.
So what I told the citizens of Kaduna State is "don't worry, keep your old notes and keep using them. If this deadline expires, and they insist on it, we as Kaduna State government will collect your notes from your villages and we will collect the value of your old notes. We will transport those notes to the Central Bank in Kaduna, because there is only one branch in every state, and we will insist on redeeming those notes at face value as required by law and will ensure that you get them back. So don't panic, don't discount your old notes. Don't be selling your old notes for 80 per cent of the new note, keep transacting." I made that very clear and I am going to address the people in both English and Hausa and tell them keep your notes, you will not lose.
It could be a matter of time. It is something that I think as the government of the state, we will work with the local governments, we will work with counsellors, traditional rulers to ensure that nobody loses his hard earned wealth from this policy.
PT: You have talked about people within the president's circle. Who are these people because we can't keep talking about people in abstracts?
Mr El-Rufai: Most Nigerians know who they are. To me, naming and shaming is not as important as defeating them. We can all unite as Nigerians and defeat them by ensuring that one, you do not have any violent protests from now until the elections and after elections, because that's what they want, that's what they are engineering.
Second, we ensure that whatever cooperation we need to give, we give to INEC, the security agencies to ensure that we have elections as scheduled.
Third, whoever wins the elections, the political class should have the courage to concede so that we move on, as we had in 2015 and also in 2019.
Fourth, we have a smooth transition. We have 108 days to go. Let's do that, get out of the way and hand over to another administration. Any policy corrections, any course corrections will be implemented by that administration. But let us not allow these people to create an impossible situation so that we protest, so that we have ENDSARS 2, so that the elections are postponed and the interim national government that they want, in which they will continue to exercise power from behind the scenes, will result. That's my opinion.
I have no problem naming them, I am not afraid of anybody. But for me, naming them is giving them traction. They are nothing, they are not capable of winning elections. They lack any electoral or political legitimacy. They can only hide behind the likes of President Buhari to achieve their objectives. But on their own, they cannot come and do any of these, so there is no need to focus on them. What we need to focus on is defeating them and defeating them means having elections and having support for whoever wins. And praying always for the Almighty God to choose for Nigeria who is best to take us out of the situation that we are in. For me, that is more important.
PT: The video that reported you as speaking to the citizens of Kaduna has generated narratives such as, that spectrum of acts of treason, that you come a little too close.
Mr El-Rufai: There is nothing treasonable about that. All we are saying is that a policy that violates the law, that violates the rights of Nigerians, is illegitimate. And everything I have said in every scenario is in compliance with existing laws. The Bill of Exchange Act, which has been in our books from colonial times, the Central Bank Act, all make these points that I have made.
Now, is it for a sub-national governor to make that commitment? No, when the system is working. But it is not. And the people of Kaduna State elected me to protect their lives and their property. Their money is part of their property and I have to inform them that they will not lose their money because of this policy. Because the law says even after 100 years, they can bring out those old notes and go to the Central Bank, and they will be redeemed.
But can an individual travel from one part of Kaduna State to the Central Bank just to change N5,000? Is it economic? No. This is where the state comes in; the state comes in to intervene where something is too costly for the individual. It is like providing schools, education and health; this is a social service that we, the government of Kaduna State, undertake and promise to provide. And this is why, when I was making the commitment, I went with the governorship candidate of Kaduna State because this is not a process that can be done in one year, it can take four years. But I said, "this is our candidate, this is the person that is likely to win the elections and I am coming with him, so that jointly, we make this commitment.
I will honour it for the next 100 days that I have in office. But he is here also to tell you that he will honour it when he becomes governor by the grace of God." And remember our governorship candidate is also the chairman of the Senate Committee on Banking and Currency and he knows these laws like the back of his hand. I know that what I am saying is completely in compliance with the law and I am a state governor, I have full immunity from anything, even if people claim that what I say is treasonable, they cannot do anything to me until after May 29. And by then another governor would have taken over and would have saved the people of Kaduna State, and then I will be ready to be tried if that is treason. If saving people's wealth, saving their money is treason, I am ready for that.
PT: There is a sense in which there is a question of leadership in all the comments you have made. In your words, some elements in the presidency influencing the decisions even after you have had consultation with him. One gets the impression though that the president is unable to take decisive steps on how to effectively match vision with execution. Is that the case?
El-Rufai: Look, I do not like passing judgement. And let me correct your question, because it is not what I said. I said we go, we agree on something and nothing happens. Sometimes it is not the opposite happening. Nothing happens, the agreed decision is not implemented. Most of the time, that is the issue, it is not the exact opposite happening.
Secondly, you know, I have never been president. I have only been a governor, and I have been a cabinet minister. I have had the privilege of working with several presidents, so I have a fair understanding about the intrigues and politics of the palace.
I do not want to attribute it to indecision, because I do not have all the information that the president has. Maybe he has information that compelled him to change his mind. But I am a state governor and I have advisers, I have commissioners, when we take a decision jointly with the council, I stand by it. It is part of the collective responsibility of cabinet governors.
If I have to change that decision, courtesy demands that I have to bring it back to the same people, give them reasons, new information on why we have to change our decision or why I am overriding them. because as governor, I can override my commissioners. Commissioners are just advisories just as ministers are advisories to the president.
Ultimately, the call is yours as governor or president. But when I have to change a decision that we have taken, even when it is informal, it is just courtesy. But we do not get that, we just see the decision that has been agreed on not implemented or something. I do not want to judge and characterise it as indecision or anything like that, because I have not been out there in the Villa. I can only give my experience as governor and as Minister of FCT, but that is quite limited experience in government.
I don't like passing judgement unless I have all the facts and the context and I do not in this case. I do not know why it is happening. I mean, look, I have worked very closely with President Buhari in our opposition days, and I know him very well and what is happening is not what I thought I knew about him. That is what I can say. But you know, I do not have all the information that he has so I cannot judge or give you any definitive response.
PT: There is a claim out there that the president is lukewarm in his embrace of the candidate.
Mr El-Rufai: There are no mixed signals. You know there are some things that I can say about President Buhari that I am sure, there are some that I can say maybe, there are some that I can say are impossible. I know how many years of effort he and some of us put in to get this handshake with the ACN, because we started as CPC-ACN before the other parties joined.
President Buhari considers the APC like a child he conceived and held in pregnancy for 18 months and gave birth to. He will never, I am ready to stake my neck and my life, President Buhari will never work against the APC, he will never work against the candidate of the APC, even if the candidate is the devil himself. He is a party man through and through; he is an establishment person, so anybody that says the president does not support Asiwaju is completely wrong, that I can be sure of.
What is happening is that there are people around the president that had their presidential candidates, they had two candidates that they preferred to succeed Buhari, Godwin Emefiele from the South and Ahmed Lawan from the north and they got neither. Immediately after the primaries, they started this outreach to people in the PDP and even meeting the presidential candidate and telling him that "we support you" and some of them are close enough to the president for people to conclude that they are speaking on behalf of the president. And that is the modus operandi of the elements, dropping the president's name and saying that the president said. But I am quite certain that the president will never work against his party, will never work against his party's candidate.
Of course, others may go and say something this, which is why when it began to make the rounds, the president is going to every campaign stop and his message is consistent; "Asiwaju is the best, Asiwaju is my Khalifa, he is my successor, we are here to campaign for him and he will win."
He used strong words, which are very unlike him, but to make that point and to shame these people that have been going round pretending or dropping words to the effect that the president has any issue. The president is fully behind us, I can drop more details but they are not needed, you have to wait for my book.
PT: With the mood of the nation against the party, which in turn is a headwind against the fortunes of the candidate, what are the chances of the APC in the presidential polls? Are you as optimistic or nervous as you should be?
Mr El-Rufai: My nature is, when you are facing an election, you must be continuously nervous, you must be paranoid until you are declared the winner. Having said that, let me say that the last poll we did in January, we are 10 points ahead of other political parties.
PT: In spite of the rush of polls suggesting negative outcomes?
Mr El-Rufai: I have always said that polls can be understood only within the context of the sample and the methodology. You can skew your sample to get what you want; you can skew the methodology to give you what you want. This is what all these polls are doing, they all start with the answer that Peter Obi must win and then they skew the sample. I will give you an example; Bloomberg did a poll, what was the poll? Telephone. They did not talk to actual human beings face to face; they phoned people using INEC's voters register. But guess what, only 31 per cent of 95 million have their phone numbers, so you have already started with a restricted sample.
Number two, out of that 31 per cent, you are talking to only those with smartphones, so you have already stratified your sample to a particular demographic and economic class, so you get the answers that you want.
The ANAP poll, slightly better but again telephone. All the other polls, we have looked at them, they are not realistic.
In my state for instance, my brother Charles Soludo became the governor of Anambra State with 300,000 votes; in the last election, in just Zaria local government, I got 150,000 votes. So one local government gave me half the votes that Governor Soludo got to be governor, so the states are not equal.
If you say Peter Obi is winning Anambra, Zaria local government and Kaduna North alone can wipe out his votes because of the sheer size of the votes that are there.
There are many ways by tweaking on sampling, tweaking on methodology, you can lie with statistics. I understand these things and I can take each of these polls and deconstruct them for you and show that they started with an answer and worked towards the questions. But the poll that we did has a larger sample and we are 10 points ahead.
Our only concern is 25 per cent in at least 30 states. The constitution requirement is 24 states plus the FCT but we are targeting 30 and from the last poll we did, we are not at 30 but we are working round the clock.
For us, the purpose of polls is not to celebrate but to point out to us where we are weak so we can take proactive steps to cover the weakness and that is what we have been doing.
We are expecting another poll result by next week (this week) with a much larger sample size (40,000), that will tell us exactly where we are. But I am optimistic that we will win this election, that Asiwaju will be the next president of Nigeria by the grace of God and all these noise will be settled on that election day.
Luckily for everyone, the BVAS works very well. The ability to chase everyone out with a gun and write the results you want is gone and quite frankly for us the challenge is for the election to take place and how to reduce voter apathy. In light of the current frustration of having no cash in your pocket, how do you even get people to go to vote if by then they have no food?
But the ruling by the Supreme Court has given us hope and by next week, they will hear the substantive issue and I know they will give their ruling as soon as possible so that uncertainty will be removed and people will have some cash to transport themselves to the polling unit, buy some water on the day of the election. Our concern now is voter turnout.
PT: Are you okay with the health of your candidate?
Mr El-Rufai: I am not his doctor and I have not seen any medical report. But I am 63 and I know this for sure, anybody above the age of 60 probably has one health issue or another. The luckiest among those above 60 are people like me that have no sugar problem, no high blood pressure. I give people high blood pressure; I do not get it. But I have a cholesterol problem.
Every person above 60 has a health problem and I do not like passing judgement on the health of a person because experience has shown me that it can be a curse on you. I still remember the funeral committee on Nnamdi Azikiwe when he was rumoured to be dead. Okafor and Mbadiwe constituted themselves into a funeral committee and it was found that he was not dead. Both men died before him.
I urge caution in people passing judgement about health, particularly those above 60, because you never know who will go first.
President Buhari was quite ill in 2017 but look at him now, he looks healthier than some 50 year olds. When you are not a medical doctor and you do not have the medical history and try to pass judgement on the health of a person by just looking at them, you might be getting it wrong.
Does Asiwaju have health challenges? Yes, he was in the hospital and had knee replacement, I know that for sure. But does that mean he cannot shoulder the responsibilities of the office, I do not think so.
We have gone campaigning with him back to back from one state to another. I do not do two days of campaigning, when I do one day, I manage to wake up.
What I am saying is that I do not know Asiwaju very well. We were not very close, we only started working together closely after he won the primaries, because as far as I am concerned, he is the candidate of my party and I will work for him, I will give everything to make sure he is elected.
For me, public service is God, country, party in that order. He was in Kaduna where he spoke for one and half hours; how can you say that someone who could stand for that time has something?
My sense is that he is old, he is 70. He may have health challenges, everyone above 60 does. But his mental faculties are intact, when he does not have enough sleep like everyone else, he may make one or two mistakes but he is quite sharp, he is street smart, he gets things easily. I think he will be a decent president. But I do not want to comment on his health at all because I am not in a position to determine what ailment he has. But can he do the job? Yes, I think he can. And how do I know this? Because I have worked with three presidents and I am qualified to pass that judgement.
PT: Now students can go home for the elections, is that good news?
Mr El-Rufai: The federal government has decided to close all federal universities, of course state universities are not bound. I read that NUC has asked all universities to close down, NUC has no such power because state universities and private universities are under a different regime. But I think it is in everybody's interest for the schools to close. As soon as we get back to Kaduna, I am going to consult the commissioner for education and the heads of our tertiary institutions and if they have no strong objections, we will also ask them to close so that students go and also have the opportunity to vote.
Another issue is that many of the students registered where they are studying, closing the university may not be the best solution. Perhaps, when you close they can still stay back in school to vote. If you have that flexibility, students will vote because they have one of the largest in the elections and it is very important for them to be given equal opportunity to vote and we welcome that.
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PT: Has your government resigned to fate in Southern Kaduna?
Mr El-Rufai: You see, one of the biggest pieces of misinformation in the Nigerian media is about Southern Kaduna. First, even the way you framed your question suggests that it is only in Southern Kaduna that you have banditry and kidnapping. No. In fact, Southern Kaduna ranked number two in that, it is Central Kaduna that has the highest cases of banditry and kidnapping. But they do not make the news because it is essentially Muslims killing Muslims. And even if we issue a statement, the media will not pick it. But in Southern Kaduna, there are cases of Muslims killing Christians or Christians killing Muslims and that is sexy for the media. That is why you are asking the wrong question.
We started something that has put a light to that because we started publishing security briefing every three months on incidences on kidnapping, murder from local governments to local governments and that was when people realised that Southern Kaduna was perhaps at one time the safest senatorial districts in Kaduna State. Because, most of the kidnappings and cattle rustling and banditry were taking place in the North and Central senatorial districts. It only moved to Southern Kaduna recently. The problem in Southern Kaduna is ethnic and religious bigotry and it has existed for 40 years. And we have tried to manage it, I think we have been the most successful government in managing it in the sense that, in the last eight years, there has not been a single ethno-religious crisis in Kaduna State that has enveloped the entire state.
If you check the records, you will see that in 1987, 1992, 1999, 2000, 2001, there were ethno-religious crises that covered the entire state and it started from Southern Kaduna. When the killings start and corpses of Muslims or Hausas start to arrive for burial, there is always a retaliation. Since we came into office, there has never been a time when we have had communal clashes that extended beyond one or two local governments. We have always contained it and for the first time, we have started arresting and prosecuting people. Before, nobody ever got prosecuted. The one that got prosecuted like Zamani Lekot in 1992 who led an uprising that led to the death of about 3,000 people, was sentenced to hang and Babangida gave him pardon.
And that has been going on, it is a 42-year problem. The first crisis started in Kasuwan Magani in 1981. But we have been the most successful in managing it and we are publishing a book very soon on the history of these ethno-religious crises in Kaduna State which draws on the history, investigatory commissions, white paper reports, and we will name names of those involved that never faced prosecution, they are still walking free.
That is one of the problems. But when we came in, we increased the security footprint in Southern Kaduna, we created a military base there for the first time in history. Remember that Southern Kaduna people have been very strong in the military but the senior people made sure there was no military base so that when the killings start, the nearest military formation is too far away to do anything. But we brought one there and since then, silence. We got two mobile police squadrons, bought barracks, and the state government bought the barracks to improve security. So now if there is any clash, within an hour or two the security agencies are there. That is why there have been silence. But they still try to represent the banditry in ethno-religious terms, which is completely wrong because banditry is an economic venture, they kidnap anyone they think they can get money from. But the way it is reported is wrong.
Southern Kaduna is safer now, quieter and more developed than ever because we are the first government that has invested in infrastructure in Southern Kaduna. We have created Kafanchan as a metropolitan authority and appointed an administrator. If you go there and you have not been there in a few years, you will not recognise the city because of the road network.
We have invested a lot. They do not vote for us because they vote along religious lines and they think APC is a Muslim party. But once the elections are over, it is our duty to make sure that every part of the state is developed and Southern Kaduna is unique in its endowment, minerals, agriculture. Ginger, 85 per cent of ginger in Nigeria comes from three local governments in Kaduna. There is a ginger processing plant that has been moribund, we have privatised it and the ginger value chain there is being revived.
We have done a lot but there is an older generation of Southern Kaduna people who think in a particular way. But by the grace of God, biology will take care of them. The younger generation thinks completely differently. And even as a party, we are making progress in Southern Kaduna. We had free and fair local government elections where we won in local governments that have been PDP strongholds because they can see that we do not discriminate in projects, investment, employment opportunities and so on.
For me, the Southern Kaduna problem can only be solved when people who do not understand stop commenting on it. Because many people do not understand it but we do. I have lived there, I have gone to school with Southern Kaduna people and we know what the issues are and I think we managed it the best way we can and I think the next governor will go even further. But when we publish our book on the history of ethno-religious crises in Kaduna State, I urge you to read it, I urge everyone to read because then you can understand what the issues are and make informed commentary on the matter. That is the only way to be helpful.
PT: This is your last term, what is next for you?
Mr El-Rufai: You know I was a minister 20 years ago. I was privileged to be the minister of FCT and Director-General of BPE before that and I will be 63 a week from now and, quite frankly, I think that Nigeria has a pool of talented young people that can do whatever job may be offered to me. And I have a pool of these young people; many that I have worked with and many that I have mentored over the years and I have told Asiwaju several times that there is hardly any assignment that you will offer me that I cannot get a better younger person. Of course, he does not agree with that but it is a moot point because the election is not yet won.
My preference by the grace of God is to hand over, take a break and complete my PhD. I have been pursuing a PhD in Governance and Public Policy at a university in the Netherlands. In fact, I am supposed to be in the university as this is research week but could not make it due to the current situation in the country. I got security that I had to be in Kaduna, in case of a protest.
I hope I will spend the next year after office to tidy up my PhD because I have already started field work, so I am in the very last stages. Then I will write a book on my experiences governing Kaduna and then I will decide what next. I have very young children as you can see and they have not enjoyed the benefit of my time in the last eight to 10 years. I would like to remedy that.
Of course, I would like our party to succeed and I will be around and available to support Bola Tinubu to be a very successful and effective president in any way that I can, but preferably as an outside counsellor who can tell him what others cannot tell him. I tried to do that with President Buhari because I was not at the federal level, I am at the state level and I went to see him whenever I felt something was going off tangent. I would like to continue to play that role. You know, the scarcest commodity available to a leader is the truth, someone that would come to you and say "this is what is going on, you would not know but look into this, look at these options."
There are very few people that are able to do this and I am blessed to be one of those that can say my mind to anyone at any time. And I think that is one of the biggest values I can add. I also know people and I have a national network of very smart people across all generations, so whatever we are looking for in terms of talent, I will be able to contribute and Asiwaju is a master of hunting for talents, so I am optimistic that things are going to turn around for the better. These are my plans. But you know, man proposes and God disposes.
