*‘What we have achieved speaks for us’
* ‘Jonathan should tell Nigerians what he has done so far’

For a man who spent 25 years as a teacher and 13 years as a school  principal, “do you know how many assemblies I have had to address in those years? So, I cannot be scared of having a debate unlike some people.” Those were the words of Ibrahim Shekarau, Kano State Governor, who is aspiring to become the nation’s president in next month’s elections.
“As a president who has served for four years – you cannot separate President Yar’Adua’s tenure from that of President Goodluck Jonathan – what I expect him to tell Nigerians is what he has been able to do to justify getting their votes for election.  What has President Jonathan or his party done for Nigerians in 12 years? Or let’s leave Obasanjo’s eight years, what has President Jonathan achieved in four years? Or, let’s even leave Yar’Adua’s three years, let Jonathan tell Nigerians what he has achieved in one year,” Shekarau said. “I, Shekarau, can tell people what I have done in Kano and what I will do for Nigerians,” he declared.
In terms of achievements in Kano State, Shekarau boasts of employing no fewer than 20,000 teachers since he became governor is 2003. Of particular interest is the second biggest water treatment plant that he has built in Kano State with a capacity of 145 million gallons of water per day – second only to another one in South Africa.  It is the cost of building that plant that is more interesting.  For a little less that N6 billion, the water treatment plant was built.  Shekarau’s administration berated some Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, state governments which had attempted to build treatment plants with far less capacity at more than three times the cost of what “we have built in Kano State.”
Shekarau  insists he is the candidate to beat.
On the possibility of a run-off and the options that would be open to him, the ANPP presidential candidate said:
“A run-off is between the people in the first and second position; so the question is for all the other political parties.  If party ‘A’ and ‘B’ will do run-off, it’s up to the remaining parties to support either of the two. It will be a time of alliances and understanding and cooperation and in this you cannot predict until the circumstance of run-off emerges.
“And, let me tell you, do not be surprised that if there will be a run-off with PDP, some parties that are today abusing  PDP will line up behind PDP and support it.  Don’t be surprised that the people who are today calling themselves progressives, when the run-off time comes, you won’t find them being progressives.”
You will find his thoughts interesting and frank.
Excerpts:

By Jide Ajani, Editor, Northern Operations

Contesting for the office of the President and Commander-in-Chief of Nigeria is increasingly becoming a very huge venture with huge financial implications.  What would be your view about the place of money in politics, especially at the presidential election level,  against your own background?

If, as a non-wealthy person in 2003, I could contest the governorship election in Kano State, to the point that I dislodged the sitting governor of a ruling party at the centre of government, then you should understand that the issue is not and should never be about how much money.

These talks about money and campaigns and elections in Nigeria are, unfortunately, being overblown and it is because of the way most of the campaigners and contestants conduct themselves.  I agree, you need money for logistics and some other things, but it is not in the way people make them appear.  You need to move around, yes, but not the type of figure some people are throwing about.

In 2003, I moved around and my associates and well-wishers were producing posters, donating money for fuel, volunteering their own personal things for us for the campaigns.  In 2003, about 90 per cent of resources I used were put down by people on their own to support us.

Again, I will tell you, somebody looked at my face and that if I do not boast of anything close to about N100 million – at least, that was his own conservative assessment – I would be crazy to want to contest the governorship of Kano State.  At that time I could not boast of N100,000 not to talk of N100 million and I say this and God is my witness – I could not boast of N100,000 at that time.  But I won the election. I beat the incumbent governor with a gap of hundreds of thousands of votes.

Some people screamed rigging or underhanded tactics.

Don’t tell me about rigging because I couldn’t have rigged as I did not have the machinery to rig. The security agencies were not mine. INEC was not mine.  Virtually everything was stacked against us except the voters who were on our side and who were determined and ensured that we won that election.

You must be lucky.

Yes, and, if you go into the history of the service that I have rendered, there are many people who feel that they owed me a favour.  You can imagine me being a school principal for 13 years in five different premier institutions in the place.  In 2003, all the posters that I used were printed  by my former students who felt that I had served them and that this was the pay-back time.

This is happening again now.  There was a time that I kept dozens of  passport-sized photographs because people would just come into our house and request for photographs that they wanted to print posters for us.  We’ll just see the posters on the streets and the same thing is happening now.

Look, when I was out on rally in 2007, as a sitting governor in Kano, the people were the ones throwing money at me unlike what you have in some other instances where the reverse is the case when the office seeker is the one giving people money; in my own case, people were the ones throwing money at me to support my campaign because they know me.

There was a young man who had no money to give, he was so excited and he removed his shirt and threw it at me.

In 2003, I was so poor such that I could not tour all the 44 local government areas in Kano State and yet I was able to win the governorship election in Kano.  The people brought the message home.  A lot of these are going on.  The way we are thinking of this money issue is somehow. Money is applicable and desirable. When I was contesting in 2003, some people will come and say ‘the sitting governor has reserved N2bn, N3bn to prosecute the election and you are sitting here in a rented house…’ I think now, it is in the same spirit and we are doing the little that we are able to do.

ANPP presidential candidate, Ibrahim Shekarau

But, as a sitting governor, would you not be accused of using state resources?
We are so transparent in the state that the records are there for the opposition to go and check.  If I didn’t do it before, I do not see any reason why I should do it now.  When the money comes in is the voting day proper because as a political party, when we send our people to voting centres as agents to monitor what is going on, to stay there for almost 24 hours, monitoring votes as they are counted, as a party we would allocate something for that purpose as allowances for agents.  Such funds would have to be made available. There are basic things that we need money for but not the overblown figures people talk about.

Those who claimed to be northern elders did not call some other politicians from the North while they were pursuing their agenda.  What does that say about their role?

Those who call themselves  northern elders, up till today, none of them has approached me as I speak to you.  No group of people has come out to say ‘yes, we have constituted ourselves into a body of elders and we represent the North’ and they  approached me, none.  The ones who even paraded themselves as such are limited to the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP. That was their show and not representative of the North as a whole. If they were representing the North as they claimed, why didn’t they invite some of us who were not in PDP.  I think we are misusing the phrase.  There is no such thing as a group for us in the North.  They didn’t invite us from the beginning to the end of their process, it was a PDP affair.  That is mere wishful-thinking for those who were trying to do it.  People can wish for there to be a consensus candidate from the North, but the question to ask is: what are people doing to achieve that.

There is a growing concern that party supporters are becoming more violent in their conduct.

We thank God that our party, ANPP, is not associated with that, nowhere.  Of all our campaigns and, as we go round, we have not been reported as damaging anybody’s billboards because we have been sensitising our people, educating our people and letting them understand that that is not the way to go.

The slogan of our party is justice.  Go to Kano today, you’ll find banners and billboards of PDP standing but the people know that Kano State is a total ANPP state, the billboards mean nothing; so, why pull them down?
If we had wanted to be as arrogant as some of them are, all we need is to give a statement and those billboards and posters will be off the streets of Kano but we do not need that because we have thousands more support and that is why we have been winning elections and we have told them that nobody should touch the flags and banners of other parties; this is a matter of discipline that we have instilled in our people, but which is lacking in the other parties.

It is unfortunate and it is giving us a bad name as a nation. If I want to defeat Goodluck (President Jonathan), destroying his party office or billboards would not help me defeat him; so, why do it?  These thugs that are doing it are doing it because they have the impression from their leaders; if a party leader would be castigating other people and personalities, then their wards are indirectly being told to do the same.  I challenge other people’s programmes.

What is that thing inside of you that tells you that you have a winning chance because if you scale the parties in an order, you know where ANPP stands should you agree to be honest to yourself?
You see, I am in this race to win.  I am not in the contest on trial and I mean it and I am coming from the point of very serious strength. Let me refer you back to the same questions that were asked when I was seeking the governorship of Kano State.

Look at the statistics: In 2003, of the 44 local government areas in Kano, ANPP had only five of the seats.  That is a very bad position. Of the 40 state assembly seats in the state, ANPP had only six seats. Before the election, ANPP had lost three house of assembly seats and lost two of the local government seats to PDP.

In the National Assembly, Kano had 24 House of Representatives seats and ANPP had only one; there was no ANPP senator – they were all PDP.  The sitting governor was a member of PDP.

So, I didn’t blame anybody who thought I was crazy.  In fact,  the PDP governor then described me as a frustrated teacher who didn’t know what to do and that that was why I was in the contest.

But me, I had my integrity to sell and people knew that.  We went round with the little we had and we had the confidence and despite of this statistics, I knew what I was going in for and I was prepared for it; I was convinced that God is always on the side of truth – this may sound abstract because some people will quickly say, ‘well, God is always there’.

But if you mean business with it, people who knew what we had done for them and they were spreading the gospel.

But, that was just in Kano State. This is Nigeria, a bigger picture. If you talk of the nation, some people who may not know would say ‘well, you have done well in Kano State but that is Kano State.’

I’ve just told you the little we have done.  I have been a trade unionist and the Principals’ Conference is the largest professional association with the highest number of university graduates in Nigeria, minus NUT.  I’d been to every state of Nigeria when I was national president of that body and I’d known all the places but most people do not know all of these.

But the other candidates…
The other candidates, what have they done?  What do they have that they can point at? I would not want to go into details but the four of us – Myself, Muhammadu Buhari, President Jonathan and Nuhu Ribadu – apart from the advantage one of them who had the opportunity of a year and a half service as head of state, what else?  How many of them have really governed for more than two or three years and have delivered to the people?  They are not even on the scale to be measured.  Those of them who’d served as head of state; and another who managed what can be described as a glorified police station and those who became vice-president or president by chance  We really do not have concrete time to assess them, but I have been there for eight years.

It’s not about ranking the parties.

A week before the elections of 2003, an editorial was written that gave me no chance at all.  Two days ago, somebody wrote an analysis again on  the debate and commented on Jonathan, Buhari and Ribadu and asked,  Ibrahim who, putting a question mark?  This was somebody who may have just sat in his bedroom to write this.  He didn’t care to know that 20 years ago, I led the 6,000 principals in Nigeria; he forgot that I defeated a sitting governor from nowhere.  That is not a feat for the person to note.  He forgot that I had a second term that never happened in Kano.  The World Bank is there on record that Kano State has invested more than any other state in Nigeria in education.  No state in this country in the last eight years has done what we have done in Kano State.  We wait.

In the event of a run-off, the opposition parties would have to make up their minds on what steps to take in their quest to dislodge  PDP. What options would you as an individual want to explore in the event of that possibility?

A run-off is between the people in the first and second positions, so the question is for all the other political parties.  If party ‘A’ and ‘B’ will do run-off, it is up to the remaining parties to support either of the two.  It will be a time of alliances and understanding and cooperation and this you cannot predict until the circumstance of run-off emerges.

And, let me tell you, do not be surprised that if there will be a run-off with PDP, some parties that are today abusing PDP will line up behind the PDP and support it. Don’t be surprised that the people who are today calling themselves progressives when the run-off time comes you won’t find them being progressives.

This is a matter that would be on the table when the time comes.

In Kano at the moment, there are fears in some quarters that you,  as the strong man of ANPP, are going round the country seeking votes for your election and that Kano  may be lost by ANPP, just as Sokoto State was lost to PDP when Attahiru Bafarawa sought the presidency in 2007 and his party, the Democratic Peoples Party, DPP, lost in Sokoto State.

Nothing has reduced the chances of ANPP in Kano State.
Our governorship candidate is doing his thing and I am doing my thing.  Don’t forget that the people know what they want and they know what is good for them.
We are both satisfied all is going well and we are sufficiently satisfied that we are going to succeed and I have no fears at all.

Some parties have come out to say that they have adopted President Jonathan and I think a few days ago some other parties, too, came out to say that they have adopted you: what do you make of these adoptions?
People are entitled to adopt whoever they want to adopt.
Some 20 political parties were also in Kano State some few weeks ago and they have also adopted me. All of these are going on and we’ll continue talking to them.  I think about 19 or 20 are seeking the presidency.
In any case, we want more parties to adopt us but we are not bothered that others are going elsewhere.  We are also reaching out.