By Demola  Akinyemi

The immediate past governor of Kwara State, Dr Bukola Saraki, recently visited home, during which he spoke on the nation’s economy and other matters. Excerpts of interview:

How do you think President Goodluck Jonathan could improve on the nation’s economy, considering your antecedent as two-term governor and former chairman, Nigeria Governors Forum?

Bukola Saraki

I think the president has taken the right approach in identifying creation of jobs and youth employment and of course you hear him talk about agriculture. It clearly shows there is a plan which was to create an economy outside government. It will be able to create the private sector and you can see that Kwara in 2003 was a civil service state. How can we create an economy outside that and how do we have policies targeted towards that? It is just that it is not going to happen just like that, we must have policies that are targeted towards job creation and you must ask yourself, what is your strength, because there must be a base. Is your base tilted towards agriculture?, is your base targeted at the mining sector? Is your base on the oil sector? We must look at things like manufacturing, we must look at agriculture, and we must look at services. In doing that, we must have a target. How do we create millions of jobs in a sector, like in agriculture for example, as we did in Kwara? We said we must make agriculture our base.

From the one we had in Kwara, I remember that when Olam came the other time, there was a memo from me that the warehouse was so large and there was nothing here. This made Olam to establish in Kwara the largest cashew processing plant in West Africa with a value of about N10m. Now, in doing that, we created incentives for farmers. It was not that the farmers were not there but some of them will say when I grow this cashew who will buy or whom do I take it to? I mean if there is a supply chain to the factory then there is a ready market. The farmers had to grow more and that is how today we have what we are doing. But now, we have taken over Olam. Olam was in Oyo State before he decided to put his base here and we have places in Offa and other places where cashew is grown. With that, we took unemployment from zero to 2,000. Also look at cassava processing coming out of Shonga. I am confident that a big cassava processing plant will be sited somewhere around Share. That will create other jobs, that is why the statistics came out recently showed that the rate of unemployment in Kwara is about 11.8% compared to national average of 18.8 and making Kwara the 6th or 7th that has the lowest level of unemployment. That did not come by chance but the hard work of the last 8 years. So, at the national level, I believe that, over the next few years, we can provide 2-3 million jobs in the dairy sector.

Is that all you think we can do to attract foreign investors?

I think what we need to do is identifying what is required in each sector and look at what incentives we need to give to investors to encourage them to come and set-up business in those different sectors. We can create jobs and then the youths can be employed. When we started Shonga, we told the Zimbabwean farmers. land is here, we will provide the infrastructure, just come, we pay for the land and you come with your skills. If I had sat down in Kwara and I said, “no, before you come, you must bring N40 million”. nobody is going to come in. It is just that there is opportunity all over the world. Asia is busy doing things and we sit in Nigeria, saying, if you want to come into this sector, we must give incentives that is attractive, the market is already there and to do that we must look at all those policies. President Jonathan needs to be flexible to attract people and, in doing that, he must create an enabling environment that will be conducive. When we started the Zimbabwe farmers project, some people said we had given our land out. But if the farmers did not go to that place, that place will never be developed. There are many places like that in Kwara. The reason rice has not developed is because of policy support importation but rice what we are talking about is skills and the capacity to produce. How could BMW say they are ready to come and set up in Nigeria? They will make their demands and federal government decides to do that; at the end of the day, it creates jobs and that is what drives us in Kwara. Government profitability is how many people will get employed.

There are concerns about conflicting laws. How do you think our laws could be improved upon to ensure that they are investment friendly?

We must have those laws and guiding principles that will ensure that your investment is safe. You are talking about Lagos-Ibadan expressway concessioning, you might not get your money back in 5 years which is more than a term of one government. So definitely you fall into another government; so there is the need for the laws to be very clear so that you know that your investment is safe.

You hear everyday that the power sector will be privatised, but I am skeptical. Why am I skeptical?; you want me to come and invest on generation of 2,000 megawatts which will cost something like N2 billion. Okay, I produce the gas or whatever it is and I sell to PHCN. How do I get paid? Even if you as a Nigerian, you will not put your money in PHCN. We need to be practical in our approach and be result-driven. If that is what will make companies to come to Nigeria and generate the 2,000 megawatts then, let us do it. In fact, whatever needs to be done must be done to allow that to happen.