Senator Shehu Sani is representing Kaduna State in the National Assembly on the platform of the governing All Progressives Congress (APC). He speaks with MUHAMMAD SABIU on the direction of the administration of Governor Nasir el-Rufai, among other issues. Excerpts:
YOU have lately been a critic of your party, APC. Are you not afraid that you may be sanctioned by the party leadership?
I come from a political movement. Nigeria’s history didn’t begin from 1999. Facebook and Twitter began in 2003, but Nigeria’s political history started a long time. If we had not spoken against Generals Ibrahim Babangida, Sani Abacha, and others there wouldn’t have been any democracy. This democracy which people criticise, is as a result of the people’s struggle. Now, I can’t imagine myself beingunable to speak, even when I have a gun to my head. The democracy which we now enjoy was brought about by the sweat of our struggle. I will speak to anybody even if such a person is the founder of my political party. I am not afraid of anybody or whatever consequences there may be. And about fear of my life, we have had that so much. If we were able to mobilise against tanks and guns, I think there is no reason for anybody to say I cannot speak my mind.Most of the people in positions today are beneficiaries of the sacrifices made by heroic Nigerians. People who fought like the Dele Giwas, BagaudaKaItos and others who stood firm for the realisation of democracy. We liberated Nigeria from military rule during the struggle and we cannot have any fear now. So whoever is today speaking freely or posting messages on Facebook and Twitter is a beneficiary of that struggle in which many have lost their lives. So, I can tell you that part of the reasons why I am speaking has to do with genetics of my political history. I am not the normal stereotypedpolitician. I have spent all my life in political movement. I have spent all my life standing up against dictatorship, and even in Kaduna State, I spoke vehemently against Makarfi when he was the governor ofthe state for eight years and we have engaged in media wars with his aides and commissioner of information. I spoke viciously againstNamadi Sambo, when he was the governor of Kaduna. We exchanged words with his media directors and commissioner for information. I spoke vehemently against Patrick Yakowa, when he was the governor and too, we exchanged words with his own media people. I chided Mukhtar RamalanYero. So, if we had not criticised Makarfi, Sambo, Yakowa and Yero there could not have been an el-Rufai. What I am telling you is that with all due respect, el-Rufai has not lived in Kaduna since 1999 and I have been in the state since 1999. We fought those who were there before him but now we are not fighting him. We are simply telling him the truth. The way things are, perhaps because he has been out of Kaduna for a long time, he doesn’t know what it takes to run a government. Running a state is not like running a Twitter or Facebook account. When presiding over human beings, you do not think of Gross Domestic Product (GDP). You think ofthree square meals, school fees and the house rent for the masses. The different between the governor and me is that he came from the right wing and I come from the left.
Most of our young ones today may not understand what political left and right means. For academic purpose, the political right belongs to the old-time conservative class. In that class we have people who espouse the capitalist ideologies of privatisation, of removal of subsidy, of commercialisation, and so on. From the political left, we have people who are grounded in the ideologies of the masses, human development, the uplift of humanity from poverty and also the need for state control and also the need to protect and defend the dignity of man. You don’t find progressives on the right side of the political divide, progressivesare on the left side of the political divide. But our party, the APC, is not founded on ideology. People came from different political parties to form the APC and what brought us together was the urge to evict the Jonathan government. After the victory, the characters are now manifesting. You come from the Congress for Progressive Change, you have CPC’s tendencies. The one from the Action Congress of Nigeria (ACN) has his own and likewise the one from All Nigeria Peoples Party (ANPP). And now, we are seating down with the realities of marriage after the honeymoon of victory and anti-Jonathan agitation.
What exactly is the problem between you and Governor el-Rufai?
I want him to succeed as a governor and give credit to our party. But we differ in two ways. The first is what he did to me personally and that was after we won elections. He gave every elected office holder in Kaduna a slot in the positions in the state. But when it came to my turn, he gave the slot to the person I defeated in the primaries and if you are a politician, will el-Rufai keep quiet if President Muhammadu Buhari asks his opponent, Isah Ashiru to present candidates as ministerial nominees and all the positions in the federal parastatals? Will he be happy? He will never be happy. What he cannot tolerate he cannot ask me to tolerate. It’s not possible, no matter how much you like him, you have to air your views. Secondly, the way he is running the affairs of the state is not just fair. Like I told you for a long time, he has been out of the state and hedoesn’t understand the feelings of Kaduna. His relationship with Kaduna is mostly on the social media. He only knows much about New Nyanya, Nyanya, Maraba, Pape, Zone 1, Zone 2 and Zone 3, Lugbe, Kuje, Area 1, Area2, Area 3. So he knows more of Abuja than he knows Kaduna, Ungwan Rimi, Ungwan Yelwa, Ungwan Shanu, Sabo, Tundun Wada, Rigachukwu, Kawo, Rigasa, Hiyin Banki. He doesn’t know more of these places. People say why have I not met him? I have not been able to see him after inauguration. Ask any party executive at the local government or state whether they have his number to call him or if they can reach him. Pick some party officials and tell them to take you to him; whether they will have access to him. So, he is not accessible not just to me but to people who ares upposed to have access to him. Many people, who led the party, are nowhere to be found in the place of governance. Alhaji Hakeem Baba Ahmed was the first interim chairman of the party in the state. There were five people that contested the governorship with him- Isah Ashiru, Sa’ed, Lukman and the other one. Infact, all those who contested are nowhere to be found. Nobody has invited them. So, in my case, so far he is supporting my adversaries, which he cannot tolerate and he cannot ask me to tolerate. So,I am telling you that there are two issues, the personal and the local political issue and there is the ideological issue. I want him to succeed but he has enacted some policies and those policies fail to work. He banned beggars but he didn’t provide an alternative place for them to go and unfortunately those beggars are back now. Go to his house now in Ungwan Rimi you will see beggars there. They even have a line where they lie down now very close to his house. Secondly, he has also banned hawking. But unfortunately from your place, the Nigeria Union of Journalists secretariat, you will see so many hawkers on the street. Has that worked out? Now he embarked on a demolition exercise in Zaria zone and wanted to extend it in my zone but see the serious number of litany of litigations and court injunctions making it impossible for him to succeed in that aspect. So, like I said, it may not be his fault because he has been out of Kaduna State for a long time. You can demolish anybody’s house in Abuja and get away with it because most of them don’t want public to know their houses. But not in Kaduna. You want to demolish a house I inherited from my father or my grandfather, it is not going towork. Now if you want to demolish in the name of recovering governmentl and, give the people alternative places to go. Every day people queue up in front of our houses begging for assistance. When you are dealing with people who are pressed to that extent,there are certain things you need to do. el-Rufai wants to remove beggars on our streets and plant flowers;el-Rufai wants to remove destitute from Kaduna and build amusement parks;el-Rufai wants to remove beggars and build Shoprite shopping malls; el-Rufai wants to hide our beggars and build a five-star hotel, now where will they go? I am not encouraging begging but these beggars need to be on the street and knock on our tinted BMWs and tell us that we are still here so that we will know that there is a problem. We don’t need to send them to Rigassa or out of town; they should be where they are. So, all I am telling him that he should provide alternatives. I want to see shopping malls and hotels. But if you are coming to Kaduna, they want to give a false impression that we have been turned into Amsterdam or Paris or London. So, if you come to this town and you enter from Goni-Gora and you don’t see beggars or destitute if you come to me, I will take you towhere they are being kept. I will show you where the lepers are kept, where the blind and beggars are, where we hid them. So, that is where we differ I believe in uplifting the poor and not hiding them.
Your asset declaration recently came as a surprise to many. Why did you declare your asset?
The public declaration of assets by President Muhammadu Buhari and his deputy, Professor Yemi Osinbajo was a challenge to all men of conscience. What they did, literally was to remove the tinted glass from the moral vehicle of power. By that public declaration, they put all public officials in the dock. As far as I am concerned, the war against corruption should begin by leaders setting a personal example. Over the last 16 years, politicians have developed a ritual. After winning elections they make claims of hundreds of houses and billions of naira. That is simply an anticipatory looting. What we need to understand is that Nigerians deserve to know how rich are their leaders or otherwise. It is not enough to declare your assets to the Code of Conduct Bureau; there is need to speak to the public and present the assets to the public. People would want to flaunt their CVs showing where they attended primary school and secondary schools, and how much they have served the country and how many first class they have got, from their first, second and third degrees. But why are people scared of disclosing the number of houses and the amount of money they have in their accounts? Whoever refuses to publicly declare his assets is not fit to speak on issues of public accountability, credibility or on corruption. Since 1999 we have seen people when they win elections, they will tell you that they have been billionaires in their mothers’ womb. Or they were accomplished business men. The public declaration by the President and his Vice has set a moral standard for public office holders. The next step for the government to take is to protect the Code of Conduct Bureau, to protect the staff and the institution, because by the public declaration of assets by the President and the Vice, there could make some of public office holders to go and change or alter the documents they had presented before the Code of Conduct Bureau simply to wave off moral burden. Public declaration does not in no way make you a saint but avails the public the knowledge of a degree of sin. It also avers the public knowledge on your degree of uprightness. The public will be able to know what you have. It is not enough for public office holders to claim to want to sanitise the society without themselves coming open and clean before the public. We should wash our undies in the public for people to see how neat we are or how dirty we are. We live in a country whereby hundreds of billions of dollars have been diverted by public officials.
We also live in a country where government is the major business; a country where the economy has so long been bearish. We need to press our public office holders to disclose what they possess publicly. If this generation of leaders refuses to disclose what they possess but leave behind these mountains of debts, then we have no moral right to ask our children to pray on our graves. There is every possibility that this generation of leaders will have weed growing on their graves because the people they will leave behind will be too occupied trying to clear the mountains of debts left behind and will have no time to weed their graves.
I made this public declaration for a number of reasons. One is to accept the moral standard set by President Buhari and Osinbajo. And secondly to choose to be faulted rather than carry the burden of suspicion and categorisation of my person among those who have tones of skeletons to hide in their cupboard. The the last one is that our leaders have a habit of securing loans which they call soft loans and these are meant to be paid in the next 30 to 45 years. When you see soft loan, they are loans that will be paid by our children and grandchildren in the hard way. What has happened in the last 16 years is that many public office holders looted the funds from our oil wells and have enrich themselves and their families and impoverished our people and destroyed the present and the future of our young people. So, it is necessary that our people be informed on the level which people have corruptly enriched themselves while in public office. Anybody who refuses to declare his wealth has certainly got something to hide. Like I said, there is need to also protect what people have declared; if care is not taken, there will be an attempt to change or alter or even fill in new forms and backdate it for the purpose of making a falsified public declaration. So, I did it a day after Buhari public declared his own. Some people are not doing it because what they will say to the public will tally with what they have filled in the form and you cannot say anything different from what is there.
