Your Excellency, on your second return to Kano State, how did you meet it?
Let me start by thanking the good people of Kano State for re-electing us in 2011. As you all know, I was the governor of the state up till 2003. That means my return to the government house in 2011 was after eight years.
Now, there is a difference in Kano State between 1999 and 2003 when I was the governor and in 2011 when I came back. We met so many challenges when I came back in 2011. One of these challenges was the attitude of the people wherein everybody was expecting a handout from both the state and local governments. That created a negative impression on us. In fact, our values had deteriorated.
We started to look at the treasury that had a credit balance of N4 billion, when we finished our reconciliation, we discovered Kano State had a debt of over N77 billion. Immediately we discovered that we drew a line and decided to move forward. In short by year end, through prudent management of our resources, we should have saved about N20 billion for the state and over N20 billion for the local governments.
With regards to our programmes and projects especially those that relate to our young men and women, we decided to expand the state’s primary schools by building more schools and offices that meet the requirements for standard primary school system and so far we have built 1,800 classrooms, 900 offices and similar number of toilets.
We should put all the furniture in all those classrooms and offices by year end.
We were able to purchase all the needed books, chalks for the schools and all teaching materials that will be needed for the next two years. We have equally done a lot for the primary pupils especially as regard to feeding.
We have a feeding programme through which we feed all the primary school pupils five times a week together with giving them two sets of uniforms to encourage them to go to school because we don’t want to have children on the street begging anymore.
In addition, we have a law on ground now which bans all sorts of begging on the streets of Kano State and my belief is that if successfully implemented, it will be good for Kano State and the entire nation as a whole.
We have about 2.3 million pupils in our government primary schools, the figure will be higher by the time we add those in private primary schools. The population of pupils in our primary schools is more than the population of some states in the country. We are doing all these so that all our children get the opportunity to attend primary school.
We are also expanding the secondary education and that was why we built 44 secondary schools, 44 Islamic study academies, one each in all the local governments in addition to the existing ones. For that reason, all those who passed common entrance in the last academic session have a place to go now.
We are working very hard so that tomorrow can be far better than today for these children. We have equally established 23 institutes which are meant to build capacity; especially the university, which is there so that our children can gain admission once they successfully complete their secondary school education.
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We are encouraging other universities by building hostels for them. For instance, we built hostels for Ahmadu Bello University; Usman Dan Fodio University; Bayero University and University of Maiduguri. As a sign of reciprocity, these institutions are admitting as many Kano indigenes as possible.
Furthermore, we have sent some of our indigenes abroad for their master’s and doctorate degrees. We have sent 501 to 11 countries across the world. Presently, we have completed the selection of 502 that will go by the next academic session starting September/October 2013. Every year, we will send at least 500 indigenes overseas to do master’s and doctorate degree programmes. That is encouraging Kano State undergraduates to get at least second class upper which is good for us.
In the area of piloting, we have sent over 100 people who are presently in Jordan; we have 100 in India, 100 in Qatar and so on. The game plan is to encourage them from primary to be academically brilliant so that they can meet the requirements to go to the universities and other tertiary institutions. While we are doing that we also assist in placing them in the industries and other private companies.
The bottom line is that we are encouraging people to change their attitude because everyone believes that the next thing after graduation is to secure a white collar job with a government ministry or agency or in banks. If you can get it, that is okay by me.
That is the reason we have set up different capacity building institutes so that after acquiring these skills they can go out and create jobs, in other words, they will become employers of labour. Thousands of them in the last two years have attended the institutes and graduated. The state government assists them with capital, some free, while others are subsidised.
Recently, we selected about 250 graduates of Kano State indigenes and we trained them at the Driver’s Institute of Kano, and each was given a brand new Toyota Corolla. Those vehicles were given to them at 35 percent discount. We are changing the landscape of Kano because what we have now is far better than what we had in 2011.
What are the key business opportunities in Kano State for which the state has comparative advantage over other states in the country?
We have very fertile land, the state can boast of 23 major dams in the country of which the largest dam in the whole country is in Kano. All these can be employed to enhance agricultural productivity. We have quite a number of solid minerals.
In fact, we have a very big market, not only for northern Nigeria, but for the entire nation as well as the West African sub-region. I believe we have a lot of opportunities even though due to economic conditions in the country, we lost a number of industries. The situation in Kano is not as bad as people are made to believe.
The leather industry in Kano used to be the largest in the entire country, what is your administration doing to revive and promote the sector?
We still have the biggest leather companies in the country despite all the challenges that we have in this country. We are assisting them by providing the needed infrastructure so they can continue to do well. We have tannery companies that have about N30 billion as turnover annually and we are quite happy because they are employing a lot of our people.
You talked about the financial situation of your state when you returned, how did you get the reengineering done? What economy will you like to leave by 2015?
I will like to leave a stronger, bigger and more vibrant economy. The major concern now is continuity. Our party has a lot of competent people who believe in what we are doing. That is why we are not afraid of continuity.
The people of this country are talking about your Excellency being elected as the next president of this country; what are the major challenges and how prepared are you to solve these problems?
That is not my problem; in fact, that is not the issue now. Let’s wait and see the outcome of the different political moves being made now before we can talk about that.
