There Is No Militant Group In Borno - Gov Sheriff

Governor Modu SheriffBorno State Governor, Ali Modu Sheriff, has been described as a political mathematician owing to his style and formula for winning elections. In this interview with JAMES BWALA, he spoke on why he preferred the name SAS, among other sundry issues. Excerpt:

Recently, the National Drug Law and Enforcement Agency (NDLEA) arrested a political thug in the state said to be a supporter of the opposition party. Before now, your opponents have accused you of running a private militia that is affecting the security of the state. How do you comment on this?
Well, I will say it is unfortunate that somebody who aspires to be a governor does not even understand the running of a government. There is no responsible governor in Nigeria that would look for insecurity in his state. I have even never heard in my entire life that any governor (either in Nigeria or outside Nigeria) goes about looking for militia men. I am the chief security officer of the state. The police and other security agencies work under me, and I am the one to provide security for every citizen. So, I could not understand how on earth I could be looking for a militia. To do what? This is just a fabrication of politicians who lost election. You have lost election, you have to have a reason to tell your people why you are losing election. Unfortunately this is the one reason that they could think of, that I, as chief security officer of a state, I will be looking for militia men, to do what? I have never seen such anywhere, except the one I saw written on the pages of newspapers by my enemies. It is most unfortunate. I expected that anybody who wants to aspire for leadership – even for a local government should know the running of government and should know that whenever there is insecurity the head is responsible for that.

Therefore, I should be the one looking for security for my citizens whether they are Borno State indigenes or not. But it is unfortunate, honestly, at a stage I wanted to even call my opponent to talk to him and ask him where these militiamen were, because I have never heard it in the history of Borno State. He was the only person that ever said there were militiamen. I don’t know if he had the intention of doing something like that; but to my knowledge, I have never heard anything like that. The law enforcement agents the military, police, SSS would have been the first to report unless all these agencies are also recruited by the Governor. I believe these agencies have their headquarters in Abuja. The police have the Inspector-General at Abuja; the SSS have the Director-General, and the military has the Chief of Army Staff in Abuja. They are all under one commander and they all report to the President. I believe they are the people who would have reported anything like that, not a politician.

We have gone round the state. While some states are complaining that progress has been substantially inhibited due to huge debt profile met on ground, you’ve been able to get some thing done. It seems you didn’t have this problem in Borno.
I believe my own debt profile was even the worst, because first, I inherited N12 million in the whole of Borno State account – N12 million, both in the state and the local government account. Not only that; when I took over in May 29, 2003, there was this salary palaver. The water treatment plant was locked because none of the machine was functioning. As a matter of fact, what I inherited was not even enough to buy the diesel to start the engine. Not only that; I had a debt of over seven billion naira, and that is a debt that has been signed with Ministry of Finance and will be deducted from the source. So, I inherited debt from the past administration whereby whatever allocation I receive at source they deduct two hundred million naira every month. And for the first two years of my administration, this money was deducted. There was another huge debt to local contractors; so, really, my debt profile was worse than that in any other state that I know of in the federation.

Let me tell you that whatever you have seen on ground was erected after those debts had been settled. For your information, I have not borrowed one naira from any bank since my inception as a governor. By the end of your second term, what do you hope to leave behind for people to see?
I want to see that there is a pattern of development in the state. I want to make the youths completely self-dependent. I would want every local government to get equal fees. Today, we have projects in all the 27 local governments. We have road projects in major local governments. I want to make sure that I change the transportation system in Borno State. I want to make sure that since travel by aeroplane has become expensive, we improve on transportation system for the state, whereby the common man can afford to go to any part of Nigeria from Maiduguri with the transport owned by their state government. I want to build the transport system as well as the agricultural sector of the state. You know, we just imported over 300 tractors for the state, which are already in the state. We want to go and encourage all the rural farmers to go into mechanised farming, so that nobody in the state will be depending on government to get a poverty alleviation materials or to get a subvention.

I want a situation whereby civil servants would have farms which they can farm at their own private time, so that the rate of food that can be grown from the state is enough to feed the whole of urban Nigeria. That is my target and that is what I want to do. Right now, apart from the motorcycles for the rural areas, we have bought tricycles with which they can now take their products from the villages to the market in the urban centres. They don’t need to depend on commercial vehicles. They can use the tricycles to carry their goods to the markets and bring them back. I want to also make available to all parts of the state at the end something that can be generated from the state, that would be enough to sustain the state government even if we wake up one day and there is no more petroleum money coming to the state. The state government will be self-sufficient to keep its citizens going with the money internally generated.

Could you tell us some of your experiences before the election and how you managed your opponents who challenged your achievements on the pages of the newspapers?
My opponents always said that we did not achieve anything in the state or they were coming to Government House – just accusing us of all sorts of things. I want you to know that they know that in Borno State today, they have no way to win even a unit. Therefore, whatever they have to write, what they are doing is to convince their head office to give them money that they can spend for themselves – not for the purpose of winning any election. For us, people keep on talking about rigging election. You only rig an election when you don’t have followership. In Borno State at present, the ANPP has an overwhelming support. I don’t know where you can come and rig the election unless the person that wants to rig the election does not want his life. You can’t go to a village where there are one thousand ANPP supporers, probably you have one agent of PDP, and you say that you want to write and to sign that PDP won election. It is all a figment of the imagination, because really they know they will not win any election. Where are they now?

You were in Maiduguri at that time. When did you see a PDP man campaigning in any local government? You live in Borno State, have you ever seen a PDP man campaigning in any local government, even if you did not follow us? You have been watching the television in the last two months. I have slept in every local government of the state. I have seen the people. Ask them if I have derailed; whether I have made only empty promises. But some people are sitting in Abuja moving from one newspaper house to another, abusing Governor Ali Sheriff. The newspaper people will only help you to write what you have said; but they have also the right to go and check. By the time they go and check and you tell them lies, you would only have succeeded once. There cannot be a second time because they are professionals. They will not listen to you.

One newspaper once said that Ali Sheriff had not constructed one road. The newspaper that wrote that story was based in Lagos and they had no idea of the truth. Perhaps the correspondent did not send them the facts. Therefore, what we did was to bring the owners of the newspaper down and we took them round. By the time we took them round, they saw more than 20 roads. Tell me, tomorrow when such people come to their newspaper, they will not listen to you. I believe they would say look what you have told us is not correct; this is what we have seen. Please tell us a different story. That is why I said they can only succeed in lying only once. We are a government; we don’t want our friends outside who have respect for us to feel that their friend is failing them. We want to clear the air. If you lie against our government, we make sure that we tell the world that you are lying and we are not going to tell them by word of mouth as you did. We will carry photographs to them. We will invite them to see things for themselves. Photographs can also be fabricated, so the best way is to bring them to see. That is our method of approach.

ANPP as a political party will always believe in the rule of law and whatever we do will be within the constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria. I believe strongly that in 2011, it will not be possible to rig an election because all Nigerians are interested in putting in place their own chosen president. About two years ago something happened in Borno State, that disrupted the peace of the state – I mean the February 18 issue, where several churches were burnt. What have you done to heal the land? It was one of the most unfortunate things that ever happened in this state; but I want to tell you that it was politicians who wanted to give a bad name to the state. From time immemorial, in Borno State, both Christians and Muslims had been living peacefully. It is on record in the history of this state that any adherent could come and practise their religious beliefs without any hindrances. It was hoodlums and criminals who wanted to make sure that they destroyed Borno State. They want to get power through the back door by using innocent children to torment people, causing trouble. But we have put up a very high powered committee which had addressed all the issues and also talked to all the religious leaders – Christians and Muslims.

Most of the religious leaders understand now that somebody wanted to use them for political reasons to start destroying their churches trying to suggest that the government of Borno State or that the people of Borno State didn’t want Christians. But I think you will only succeed in destroying yourself and whichever party that you believe you are working for. When this thing happened, a friend of mine who was a pastor came from Lagos. He was with me sitting inside my house watching television when the Director of SSS came to me and reported that there was a problem, but a very minor problem that happened. But then the politician used this to ignite trouble when they burnt churches, burnt commercial houses.

What they were targeting at that time was for the crisis to continue so that a state of emergency could be declared in Borno. That was what they were looking for, but God intervened and the trouble was put to rest permanently. However, there was nothing like government’s involvement, because even in my campaign, whichever local government I go, I address both leaders of the two religions and I talk to them that not just now but since time immemorial, what we used to see when we were young was that during Christmas, our children would go out not minding which religion they belonged to. As far as children are concerned, it is time for festivity. When there is Christmas, they celebrated together.

It is unfortunate, but I want to assure you that the whole thing has been put to rest and we are working hard to make sure that the affected churches get adequate compensation. You were formally called ‘SAS’ when you were a senator; we were told you now prefer to be called ‘GAS’... You know the name ‘SAS’ came from the title ‘senator’ – which I had liked to be. I always liked to be a senator, and the acronym SAS was from my name Senator Ali Sheriff. The name SAS will remain for life but if you say GAS, after I finish my tenure as governor, it would no longer be appropriate. Everybody calls me SAS. Any village I go, it is the same. I was travelling to Chibok, one family with his children, the children told their father that daddy ga SAS (meaning ‘here is SAS’).

I stopped and I called the boy, and asked him, and he said Kai ba SAS bane? (meaning, Are You not SAS?). So it became a compound name everywhere. What makes me very happy is that children love me and I love children; so that is why I decided to keep the name.

You have said this over and over again that you would like to be a senator. Aren’t you interested in the presidency?

No, not at all.