We Want Zero Grazing For Cows And Herdsmen In Adamawa - Gov Nyako

NyakoFormer Governor Murtala Nyako of Adamawa State spoke in an exclusive interview with Wale Akintunde in Yola (before he was removed as governor) on some burning issues concerning his government. Excerpts:

THE people have given your Excellency their mandate. What exactly was on your mind that day (May 29, 2007) at the Ribadu Square while taking the oath office as the governor of Adamawa State. What was on my mind that day was the heavy responsibility. Adamawa had been in a very low state. The place looked like a post-conflict state.
Every institution was completely down. Structures were dilapidated and a lot of social engineering was required in the educational system. Health system, road rehabilitation and construction were among the challenges before us. It was, no doubt, a heavy responsibility.

How has the journey been so far?
So far so good. I think we are doing well. The people say we are doing well. Comments of people on the local radio and television attest to this. But there are still a lot of challenges ahead of us. I think we have not done enough yet.

Let us look at the Works and Housing Ministry. What informed your vision to construct roads and embark on provision of jobs?
This is a state where road construction is not considered as a welfare issue; it is an economic matter. People were suffering economically because the roads were so bad. What we had to do was really to improve on the road networks substantially, so that they can become motorable to allow people do their business.

There have been complaints by commercial vehicle drivers on the effects of the bad roads on their vehicles. Even commercial motorcyclists have complained of serious health hazards and mechanical problems encountered because of the bad road network in the state. It was very difficult for them to make money, because the money they made doing their jobs was not enough to repair the damage to their vehicles/motorcycles. So, I am happy that we are making a lot of progress in the direction.

Let us look at health care delivery. What has been done so far, and what else should the people still expect?
Health care delivery is very important. Can you imagine a pregnant mother going to the hospital, and at the point of delivery somebody asked her to bring money before she could be attended to? Can you imagine a situation where somebody fell victim to armed robbers – maybe even in a state of coma – and somebody is insisting that he must pay some money before he could be attended to?

We have even extended free health care delivery to people bitten by snakes. Asking somebody to pay money before being given vaccines to treat snake bite is totally unnecessary. Of course, the attitude of our health care personnel has to improve; but it is also absolutely true that our health care delivery system is improving.

The education sector has received a lot of attention from your administration. How much have you committed to it?
We have spent enormous amount of money on education because this is the number one challenge for Adamawa people. Right now, the performance of our students in the senior secondary school examinations shows that the standard of education in the state is very low.

Of all the pupils who sat for an examination (either the SSCE or NECO), only four per cent passed with the right credits. We want to change all these. This year, we have acquired textbooks for virtually all the subjects in the secondary school. We have also acquired modules for conducting experiments in the science laboratories. We have also improved the lots of teachers and we are rehabilitating the secondary schools. More importantly, we want to bring in more secondary schools into the state this year in order to make sure that young people are prepared for life through sound education right from the primary and the secondary school levels.

Just recently, the Nomadic Pasteurization Settlement programme was launched in the state. What are your plans for the Nomadic and Pastoralists, knowing full well their contribution to the socio-economic status of Adamawa State in particular and Nigeria in general?
You are absolutely right. We want to change the attitude of people. When they see a cow now, they don't see the economic instrument; what they see is a Fulani man rearing the cow. But the cow is an economic instrument. It supplies protein. We also need the milk from it. Without milk, it is very difficult for a child to have normal growth. Milk is a very important ingredient in the development of human being, just like protein, minerals, calcium and lactose. There are lots of nutrients in milk which our children must have.

When we see a cow, we want our people to see milk. We want our people to see beef and not the herdsman. That is the attitude. You cannot get the best milk or best beef out of the cow by allowing the cow to roam about the countryside with the herdsman.

We want to settle the cow first. We want zero grazing for all our cows. By having zero grazing for the cows, we are equally making it zero grazing too for the herdsman. So, it's not the herdsman that we want to settle down. We want to settle the cow in order to give us more milk and equally more quantity of beef. And by so doing, the herdsman will settle down also.

Water is life. How did you achieve the feat you achieved in the provision of potable water through the activities of the Water Resources Ministry?
There is a no magic about it. The fact of the matter is that the Water Ministry was not given enough money to even buy diesel. They were not given adequate money to repair their equipment.

So, what we did was to give them more money to repair their pumps, buy additional ones if necessary. We also sink boreholes – especially if they are commercial boreholes. Some of them we have sunk by the side of the river. We are able to get one hundred cubic metres of water per hour. We have enormous water resources in the state, yet we could not have water and we couldn’t get it to drink. We are changing all these.

Let us take a look at the Ministry of Agriculture. How has the ministry fared and how much have you spent on it.
The Agriculture Ministry is doing excellently well. We are creating a farming skill acquisition centre in every local government area. You go to one area and you learn about the commodities we have such as the grains – rice, beans, soymilk, maize, millet.
You also have various types of pasture developed, as well as various types of cow – like the dairy cow, beef cow.

We have agriculture or poultry farming. If you want to go into fruits production, the fruits are all there – mango, guava, oranges, pawpaw etc. For example, if I give you a mango seedling and I don’t teach you how to use the seedling to get mango, you will not get mango out of it.

So, we are producing the mango trees in Nigeria and we are teaching people how to look after them, so that they can make money out of mango trees. We are also into vegetables. We teach people the technology to, at least, make 50 tons of tomatoes from an area equivalent to one acre, instead of the five tons they are making now. In short, at the demonstration centre, we are giving the technology to produce about 500 per cent of what we are producing today.

Let us look at the Special Duties Ministry and the challenges faced by the ministry in the face of the various disasters that befall the state. What plans have you made in the area of disaster prevention and /or management (although no prays for it)?
The man there is doing a very good job as per allocation in the budget.
We are also stocking our grain reserves so that when we have disasters, we can deal with it better.

We don’t want all this adhoc Saturday morning sanitation when people engage themselves in something that looks like a joke. Sanitation is an everyday affair. We want to come out with a management system where our traditional leaders and community leaders are involved in making sure that the environment is clean. We are doing something about the environment. We want all the gutters to be cleared and make sure that there is no dirt left in them. We want all these polyethylene bags not only in the towns but also in the country to be properly removed.

Your administration has also been commended in the area of rural development. What are your expectations this year from the local governments.
We expect more from each local government. The major problem of development is actually getting into the grassroots. The local government has a lot to do to improve the attitude of ordinary citizens in his location towards Nigeria and towards his community. The environmental sanitation exercise, for example, should be seen as a very serious local government affair. This is what we are doing and the local government is responding and we are pushing them to respond. We send resource persons to them to advise them.