We’ll tackle Borno’s security challenges – Kashim Shettima

Alhaji Kashim Shettima, governorship candidate of the ANPP in Borno State was Commissioner in Ministries of Finance; Local Governments and Chieftaincy Affairs; Education; Agriculture and later Health under Governor Ali Modu Sheriff. In this interview in Abuja, Shettima reveals his agenda for Borno people if elected amongst others. Excerpts:

You are the governorship candidate of the ANPP, what is your agenda for Borno people?

I will be inheriting solid infrastructure which is basic for any meaningful development. My main focus will be on comprehensive human capacity development. We intend to tackle the issue of unemployment basically through a grassroots socio-economic empowerment programme. The centrepiece of the programme will be agriculture and all other development initiatives will revolve round it.  Insha-Allah, we are going to empower 500,000 farm families over a period of 8 years.  The programme will be anchored on 3 tripods.  We are going to enhance the capacities of the Vocational and Trade Training Centres spread across the state and build new ones.  This will provide us with the avenue to train our agro-based technicians such as mechanics, tractor drivers etc. Secondly, farming skills acquisition centres will be established in every LGA, where modern farming skills, specific to the agronomic circumstances of every locality will be taught.  We ultimately aim at increase in yield; the government will buy into the 3R concept of the new management of the CBDA and bring about a quantum leap in the fortunes of our society.

To be honest, a Borno man has no business with poverty.  The total area of jurisdiction of the Chad basin covers 136,000 Sq km, which is about 15% of the land area of the country, a chunk of it in Borno State.  The South Chad Irrigation Project, for instance, covers an area of 67,000 ha, out of which, less than 10,000 ha is currently utilized.  The Baga Polder Project has the capacity for 20,000 ha and is equally grossly underutilized.  The Gora Minor Irrigation Project is also suffering the same fate.  We are going to complete the Biu Dam Project, which is also capable of providing irrigation facilities for at least 5000 farm families.

Borno is faced with security challenges, what will you do as governor?

Yes, we have security challenges in Borno like we have in Jos, Bauchi, the Niger Delta and even the FCT, but we identify that there are threats and believe me firm measures are being taken and I know that insha Allah before May 29, 2011 when there will be transition, the threats will be overcome.

How will you do that?

You see, security strategies are not for public consumption per se, because it will be like making offenders to prepare and develop ways of beating the security strategies.

Are you satisfied with the measures being taken by Sheriff?

You see, sometimes you and I may not be adequately informed like the governors and President because they have security briefs so they are well informed. Their decisions are most times determined by the exclusive information about issues that are made available to them by security agencies, sometimes, the agencies make the recommendations they adopt. So because we do not know what they know, it may be out of point to conclude on their decisions. By and large, I will strengthen security measures, usually security requires prevention and intervention. Before recent years many ugly situations may have been prevented but no one may know except those handling the issues, so we will deploy multi-dimensional steps insha Allah with due recourse to intelligence gathering.

You talked about certain measures in terms of policy implementation, what will be the starting point?

First of all, we will utilise an action plan, we have had committees set up by our boss, Governor Sheriff made up of competent persons in the state which came up with working documents for all sectors of the state, most of their recommendations have either been implemented or improved upon where necessary and implemented. Now, every action plan or working document is subject to review because every action plan has peculiar factors related to it bothering on time, resources, infrastructural need, environmental factors; priorities which change from time to time. So we would rely on good action plan which may require us having sectoral retreats- that is convening retreats for all the ministries and agencies with relevant stakeholders. If for instance, we are to have retreat for the education sector, we will bring together all the key officials of the ministry for education headed by the commissioner, the state UBE officials, state assembly committee members on education, principals, headmasters, parents, teachers and lecturers, students representatives, education-related NGOs, heads of the Colleges of Education and education-related departments in universities and polytechnics which produce teachers, education related contractors etc.

We will work based on a specific target and give out specific responsibilities and time frame. If for instance we say, we want 75 percent of citizens sitting for WAEC in 2013 to obtain minimum of 5 credits in five subjects including Maths and English as pre-requirement for A level admission, we will come up with suggestions looking at all indices as to how we get there. Already, SAS has provided us with solid infrastructure, what do we need to consolidate on that.

But primary education is the bedrock and governments all over the country do not seem to be paying attention to that, what will you do?

Primary education is the constitutional responsibility of local government councils but I see it as the responsibility of the governor to ensure there is solid basic education not only at the secondary level which is the state government’s responsibility by law but also at the primary level because secondary schools rely on the primary schools for sound education for pupils. Some of our strategies will be to enhance the attractiveness of primary education and boost performance reward system. The same should apply to secondary schools. The idea is to identify and reward brilliant pupils so as to deepen academic competition. At the tertiary levels, we will be dealing with adults, so the emphases will be on using psychological means to raise their readiness to learn and supervising their tutors, taking them to task, rewarding them and sanctioning defaulters.

Borno is in need of industries, what will be your strategy to handle this?

Insha-Allah, we intend to divide the state into development corridors based on natural endowments such as agriculture and mineral deposits and also take into cognisance demographic specifics such as women, youths etc and convert our comparative advantages into competitiveness.  Within each corridor, we are going to identify growth poles and work on them. We want to encourage entrepreneurial development because entrepreneurship is part of the Nigerian psyche.

However, energy is a sine qua non for any industrial take-off and we have a three-pronged approach to the issue.  Maiduguri, the economic hub of the North-East now gets 5 megawatts of electricity, out of which 2 megawatts   goes to the dedicated Niger line.  3 megawatts is grossly inadequate to meet our domestic and industrial needs.  We intend to partner with CBDA towards reviving their 30 megawatts power plant at New Marte or with sister states in the North-East towards the completion of the 38 megawatts Dadin Kowa hydro-electric project.  We can equally utilize the coal deposits at Gombe and set up a power plant.

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