Mallam Nasir Ahmad el-Rufai is the governorship candidate of the All Progressive Congress (APC) in Kaduna State. The former FCT minister, in this interview with MIDAT JOSEPH bares his mind on why he intends to be the occupant of Sir Kashim Ibrahim House come May 29 this year
Why are you in the Guber race?
The condition of the state is getting worse by the day and no one who means well for the future generation should fold his or her hands and watch. Nigeria had administrations in the 1950s and 60s that had made it possible for me to have sound public education, but the same is no longer obtainable in present day Nigeria. The tragedy had occurred in every sector of the nation’s life and it is time people who have the love of the country at heart to sit up and do something about it. We are not in this journey just for the purpose of having power. We are not in this journey to settle scores, nor to insult others. We are in this race in order to bring back equity, justice and fairness into the process of governance. It took me 13 months to consider contesting for the post of governor. 10 years ago I was not a politician. But circumstances has forced us to become politicians.
The situation in the country and in Kaduna State require that people who had experienced the better times that past administrations provided come to the rescue. The important role of the government is providing quality education. If someone like me whose father died while I was young had not had an education, I might have gone into religious extremism, or some other vices. All of us are sons and daughters of ordinary people. We are where we are because of education, but we have lost that.
What has your party got to offer that is different from the ruling party?
The APC is a party with a manifesto to better the lives of Nigerians. We intend to bring about the required change through our programmes that would ensure peace and harmonious living among the people of Kaduna State, give free education to every child, revive infrastructure and industry to get people employed, assist farmers to practice agriculture to the best of their abilities, as well as introduce programmes for skill enhancement for people who might be good with their hands but are not so favourably disposed to formal education. This is what we want to do and it’s not going to be an easy task.
This is because the state has been brought to its knees as a result of impunity, corruption, and ineptitude. The current administration in the state had collected huge amount of money with nothing to show for it. The government has collected 600 billion naira in the last eight years. It has also borrowed 100 billion naira. We have challenged the present government to show a project of 10 billion naira. Not even the Government House is worth 10 billion naira, and we know it was constructed at three times the amount it should cost.
Insecurity has been a challenge in Kaduna State, are you worried by this and how do you intend to tackle it?
That is why we are saying that we will do everything to bring peace back to our people. We will leave no stone unturned until we bring anyone that kills another person in Kaduna State to justice. No one living in Kaduna State will be above the law under our watch. The second promise is that no child will be left without education. We will ensure that our teachers are well paid. We will also ensure that teachers are paid salaries that are higher than other professions.
These are the minimum we promise. Above all, we promise that we will treat everyone equally. We will not treat people based on where they come from or on the basis of religion or ethnicity. We will not get drawn into that because God knows why every human being is here. I have gone round and I have said it several times since I announced my intention to run for office that the whole state is one big village which is hungry for development; our goal is to develop the whole of Kaduna State without leaving behind one section of it. If others before us have focused on one section in Kaduna, we are going to change that. We want to see that each and everyone is making progress in this state. We want to see that when people wake up in the morning they see progress.
