Governor Gabriel Suswam of Benue State recently spoke to journalists following the Supreme Court judgment that again affirmed his victory in the 2011 gubernatorial elections.  Excerpts:

BY PETER DURU, MAKURDI
The Supreme Court recently dismissed the suit filed against you by the gubernatorial candidate of the defunct Action Congress of Nigeria (ACN), Prof. Steve Ugbah. How did you receive the judgement?
I knew all along that they were only wasting their time and that was why the Supreme Court was not happy and decided to award cost and that is the highest cost that the Supreme Court has ever awarded. That shows the level of anger because that was an abuse of court process.

Gov Suswan

A decision had been taken and both the electoral law and the constitution are very clear as to the sacrosanct 180 days. Yet, people will still go back and ask the same people who passed that judgment to review it themselves. This should serve as a deterrent for people to stop abusing court processes. What I can say is that the entire people of Benue State are vindicated. There has been so much noise.

This is the first time in the history of the state that a governor who has won election clearly, will be in court for three years and it is a bad precedence actually, for the state. If I didn’t want to do anything in the state, I would have used that as an excuse to say that I’m still in court. It’s not good for the state and they have been put to shame and I believe that next time, no other party or person will do that to any subsequent person that will come in as governor.

Exercise in futility
This is a victory to the entire people of Benue State and the deceit of the leadership of the APC will stop. They have been deceiving their followers saying they will soon move into Government House. That will stop and people will concentrate. For me, I was not distracted because I knew it was an exercise in futility.

Are you extending an Olive Branch to the opposition considering the level at which they pursed the case against you?
No, we are decamping all of them. I’m not extending anything. We are ready to receive those who have suffered deceit for a long time and they are in their numbers. We have very prominent former APC sons of Benue who, as men who have served this country and out of anger, they left and saw the deceit that it was better they come back to their own family.

And a whole lot of this younger generation who initially had their own misgivings.
Thousands of them are decamping in all the local governments of our state. APC is a party where only one person will sit in his room and write the names of party congress and you know the outcome of that. In PDP, even as a Governor, I recognize that there are leaders in each community and when we are conducting any party activity, those leaders are the ones I will rely on.

I won’t sit down in Government House here because I’m Governor and write names of congress people. But that is what is happening in their party.  It is not just in the state here but both at the national level because the party is owned by one person. So, the people at their branches here also feel they own the party. So, how do people operate in a party like that? So, we are not extending any olive branch to them but we are decamping them. My arms are wide open to receive anyone of them back to PDP.

You have less than one year to go, how do you intend to complete some of your on-going projects in the state; and also resolve the nagging issue of minimum wage for striking primary school teachers?
I’m going to prioritize some of the projects and as for the teachers’ strike, I hope to end it this month. I have taken some measures which I believe will address that because we cannot keep our children out of school for six months. I don’t sleep because I went through the same process like most of us here. Majority of us went through public primary school and so, why should we kill these public schools? What I’m doing is asking everyone of us to sacrifice.

When I came in, some staff who were on grade level seven who were taking N19,000 are now collecting N61,000. I’m the one who increased those salaries in that manner and I’m asking that let us take N6000 out of that amount to enable our children return to school.

The permanent secretaries, when I came were collecting N73, 000 and now are now taking over N400, 000 and all I ask is that they give us N25, 000 out of that money. I don’t think that is too much. There is no other place we can get that money because allocation has gone down by 40% and it is across the entire nation not just Benue.

That is not peculiar to Benue because in Ekiti State, Governor Fayemi only started paying the 27.5% which we started paying three years ago. And there has been no strike in that place. Why is our situation peculiar? All our teachers here needed to do was to stay in class and negotiate but they have been on strike for six months now.

It doesn’t make sense and I have no other place of raising this money except that I and leadership of Benue sacrifice. That is the only way. The other alternative which I have given and which I’m going to do if this does not work is to downsize the workforce by 40%. So, we have two options, either I downsize or people sacrifice N6000, N25,000 given the outrageous salary increase that I gave them.

It is over one month since the Chibok school girls were abducted. What is your reaction to this?
Dealing with terrorism is a very difficult thing. You will agree with me that even the developed nations like America, Israel, Britain and others who have suffered terrorism, it took them years to come out of it. Even in the UK where the IRA was a thorn in the flesh of their government, that took more than 20 years for it to finally subside.

When Al-Qaeda bombed the World Trade Center in New York, it took them a long time to track down those people. You see, it is a new phenomenon that nobody anticipated and when it comes, you must absorb the shock and then find an appropriate way of addressing it.

The Israelis, when they suffered terrorism, when the situation of Black September happened during the games in Germany, it took them a long while to be able to track down those black September terrorists. So, I’ve not slept as I imagine my own blood child of 14 or 15 years in the hands of those animals. So, no parent or any reasonable person will sleep.

Let us sit together irrespective of our party affiliation and address this problem. It is something that affects everybody both Christians, Muslims and even pagans. So my own considered opinion is that let us all join hands together with government and with the help and assistance now being offered by the international community, I believe that this problem will be put to rest once and for all.