Governor Kayode Fayemi of Ekiti State and candidate of the All Progressives Congress speaks with the General Editor, ADEMOLA ADEGBAMIGBE and GBENRO ADESINA on his achievements, the forthcoming election in the state and other issues. With the campaigns going on by all the parties, how far will you say you have gone in swaying the people to your side or retaining their fidelity, as the case may be? [caption id="attachment_1975" align="alignright" width="300"] Dr Kayode Fayemi[/caption]First and foremost, I think Ekiti people are very determined. You can sell yourself and put all manner of manipulations out there. Ekiti people know how to separate the wheat from the chaff. Luckily for us, among the governorship candidates recognised by the Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC, two have occupied this position. So, you can put them on the weighing scale and reach objective conclusion about how far they have made life more abundant for the people; how far they have transformed the state. Interestingly, when you calculate, the first was in the office for three and half years before he was impeached. I have been in the office for three and half years. So, you can measure in a very tangible, precise, measurable manner how differently we have run the state. In my own case, it is not about winning people over. I have just completed the first phase of my campaign which took me to 132 autonomous communities with their own royal fathers. And every single community that I visited, it was a show of gratitude. Our people don’t hide their feelings. Ekiti people, no matter whose ox is gored, will tell it the way they see it. In every community, they are always excited to see me. Yes, the governor is coming; if it is a governor that has not done something for them in the community, what is he coming to campaign with? By the time I get to any community, the first five minutes, almost routinely, will be for: Thank you for our roads, thank you for our schools, thank you for our new civic centre that we have been building for the last 30 years, thank you for the social security for our elderly, many of whom would have died if they didn’t get this N5,000. So, the first phase of the visit consistently was always about gratitude. They would then add on the part of the gratitude that, for us, we don’t even know why you are here because there is no point campaigning here. But now, you have come, it is ok. We appreciate your visit but let us talk about the next term. This is what we would like to gain from government by the time this process is over. That was our experience in virtually every single community. Now we are in the second phase of our activities, which is focused on special interest groups. I just finished meeting with local government workers; I had one before then, with teachers at the stadium; I am meeting pensioners on Wednesday; I am meeting artisans; I am meeting students; I am meeting the university community; I am meeting the Igbo, Hausa, the non-indigenous community. They all have particular interests. As I am doing that, my wife is running an independent campaign in the markets, in the farmsteads, with women groups across the state; the DG of the campaign is running his own independent campaign all over the streets, door to door, because we have a product to sell and we can point to what we have done in three and half years which can’t be controverted, not even by the opposition. That is the story we have to tell. You are seeking second term for what you called ‘consolidation’. Could you please expatiate? For all the gratitude that has been demonstrated by our people, all that we have been able to achieve, fundamentally, is stability. The reason I say that with all sense of modesty is simply for us to be able to cast our minds back. Where were we when I entered the race of governorship in this state 2006? If you recall, it was a period of one day, one trouble, a period of assassinations, period when people could not sleep with their two eyes closed, period of criminality and brigandage in Ekiti. Ekiti was known during that period for all the wrong reasons, not for the values that it is used to be associated with in the past. After I won the election, we spent a significant amount of that period in court. Instability continued. And between 2003, when Niyi Adebayo left office and 2010, when I became governor, there were six governors in seven years. I don’t know what could better describe the instability than that. So, if we have achieved anything in the last three and half years, we have achieved stability that has given us the opportunity for predictability of the investing environment. And what we have done essentially is to restore all of those things that have been significantly lacking: security, safety, new infrastructure development, new educational platform, new platform for health care, new opportunities for empowerment and job creation. It simply means that we have established the basis for growth. We have not achieved the full poverty eradication that is our primary vision. When I was running, the mantra was that I wanted to make poverty history in our state. We have done certain things to put Ekiti on that path. Our social democratic ideological framework privileges the weak and the vulnerable in society. That is why we pay social security benefit for the elderly; that is why we have free health care for children, that is why we have free education, that is why we have health insurance, that is why we have empowerment for graduates, volunteer corps, and peace corps, because we know that everyone cannot be for himself. The society that is run on the agenda of ‘everyone for himself’ is a society that is aimed for destruction. We consistently say that we have a duty to pull up the weak and the vulnerable. But have we achieved full turn around eradication of poverty? Obviously not. Having achieved stability, having provided the legislative, the legal, the political framework for that stability to turn to growth and deep development, we now need to build on that solid foundation. So, when I talk about consolidation, it is about building on the gain that we have made; because continuity is important so that reversal is prevented. When you look at the trend, states that have relatively done well in our country today that you can point to as sites of progress are states that have also experienced continuity. Take Lagos, 16 years of unbroken social democratic agenda; if you take Cross River, the same. I can point to a number of states that fall into that category. But you can also point to states that have seen reversal. We all knew what a state like Anambra used to be before they broke that circle. Wearing my political scientist hat now, any democracy that has not gone through waves, we have what we call a theory of democratic consolidation, there is a wave theory, the first wave, the second wave, the third wave. A democracy that has not had the opportunity of either alternation of power or continuity of government, run the risk of reversal. And we are saying that Ekiti has made progress but we are not there yet and we will be delusional if we think that all problems have been solved because they have not been solved. Even in terms of infrastructure, in terms of job creation, some of what we are doing now have not produced what we know will be the improved productive capacity of our economy. When we lay fibre optic cable round, many people do not understand the import of what we are doing, that broadband access and the impact it would have on the knowledge economy that we are creating [for jobs, for infrastructure development, for economic opportunities, for access to the good things of life. These are not things that will immediately jump at you as tangible evidence of progress but in another four years, when we would have had an airport here, when we would have had our knowledge zone fully operative, when we would have had independent power project fully on steam, when we would have had all our agro-allied processing factories fully operational, when we would have had the second phase of Ikogosi – the golf course, the additional hotel facilities – then people can begin to envision what we originally had in mind. It is not entirely clear now. And there are those who would pooh pooh the idea: is it road we want to eat, is it pavilion, is it civic centre, is it Ikogosi? The governor is just an elite representing elites like himself, he is not connecting to the real needs of the people. That is tragic. I am not going to apologise for the benefit of being the product of good Ekiti education. I have never considered Ekiti to be a place for the dregs of the Nigeria society. We should be the drivers of change in this country precisely because of the level of our education. And if we can’t do things that become replicable by other states, then why do they call us fountain of knowledge? Why should we be second class in Nigeria? The very best thing in this society should be found first in Ekiti, not anywhere else, because it is a standard saying that knowledge will forever govern ignorance not the other way round. But if knowledgeable people leave governance to charlatans and brigands, ignorance will forever govern knowledge and we will see the result before our very eyes. That is the difference we brought to governance. That we don’t have to apologise for good things but that the good things must go round because we must create opportunities and access to everybody in the society so that they can be lifted up to achieve the very best that society can help them to achieve. Am I an elite? Yes. Absolutely, no doubt. I am a member of the elite class but the elite in my view is not synonymous with a tiny minority where inexplicable wealth lies and abject poverty thrives. No. My own definition of elitism means those in society that are equipped to lift society out of its rough patch. It is only in that sense that the term elitism has meaning to me; it is not in the pejorative sense that some tend to use it. If I am elite because I don’t go on streets to eat ‘boli’, and I don’t associate with ‘owo meji fun baba’, yes, I am. But that does not stop me from speaking with okada riders and saying, Let us talk about your future, how can I make life better for you? How can you get health insurance with this work you are doing? How do we ensure your safety and security? How do we ensure that the money you make from this business is not frittered? For me that is what leadership demands. It is not to keep you perpetually down, distributing crumbs out of the commonwealth to them by way of N200 which will not sustain them over the long term. I don’t come from that school of politics and I have no apology to say that. I am a product of this community and if I could turn out this way, then you don’t have to be an okada rider, you can also be me. How sustainable is the ‘Computer per Child’ project in the state? The vision that informed what we did was access to information technology education. Obviously, we have piloted it, we have tested the whole range of approaches, and we have seen gaps. Nothing ventured, nothing gained. We are reviewing it because we discovered that both the teachers and the students will seem to prefer computer laboratory to individually held computers. We may well go in this direction as we try to factor in many of the criticisms that have come from parents who are worried that their wards use this computer for illicit activities. But then, do you blame the curious 15-year-old who wants to access all manner of sites? It may be illegal or illicit to the parents but curiosity is also education. We need to be able to figure out how best to ensure that if possible, certain sites are made inaccessible because of their x-rated contents while, at the same time, ensuring that these kids focus on their education. The materials loaded on the laptop computer conform to the curriculum approved for their examination and there are enough teachers to impact knowledge of information technology in the recipients of these laptops. There are lessons we have learnt with this approach. But the opposition is saying that in terms of rating, education was better in their time than now. How do you react to this, especially, the West African School Certificate Examination? One of the books I read in my undergraduate level is called How to Lie with Statistics. You can manipulate certain things whichever way you want. To the best of my knowledge, WAEC has not come out with any state rating in the West African School Certificate Examination. We have seen tremendous improvement in the result of the examination that took place under our watch, which will be primarily the 2012/2013 WAEC examination. We were not the ones who registered the students of 2011. Don’t also forget that in the previous years, if you are to take the year 2004 to 2010, Ekiti was replete with what was known as miracle centres, which we went out of our way to wage war against. Miracle centres were centres used to pass examination illegally because it is not the person whose name you have on the certificate who actually sat for the examination. We had so many of them round the state at a time and you can imagine the result you will get from these miracle centres and some mixed schools that perpetuate illegality. We stopped all that from 2010. We introduced a compulsory examination in SS2. If you don’t pass that compulsory examination, we don’t present you for WAEC. In place of miracle centres, we set up remedial colleges, one per local government for those that are yet to succeed in their WAEC or NECO exam. We do this because we don’t think we should shut all your opportunities out simply because you have not passed your exam in one sitting. So we provided an opportunity for those who have not succeeded to go and re-register and retake the examination via the remedial college. Now, examinations take place under the strictest of supervision, papers can no longer be smuggled into examination hall, and no opportunity to write exam in miracle centres. So, what you are actually getting now in Ekiti is the actual level of our students. Now, our students know that they have no choice than to study hard without depending on miracle centres or some kind of underhand measure, which was endorsed by some of the government in office at the time. And in areas where there are gaps, we are now paying particular attention - mathematics, English Language, sciences and that is why we pay allowances to teachers who teach core subjects. That is also why we pay teachers who are in the rural areas because part of the problem is that we don’t have qualified teachers ready to go to teach in the rural areas. Everybody wants to be in Ado-Ekiti, Ikere or capital of local government headquarters. In addition, we also have special scheme for additional lessons for our students. These are the things that have been responsible for the improvement that we witness. It is not perfect. We are not where we want Ekiti State to be. I always use my school, Christ School, Ado-Ekiti, as an example. When I became governor, my school had nine per cent pass rate in 2012. In 2013, 99 per cent of students who sat for WAEC in Christ’s School made five credits including English and Mathematics. If that is not an improvement, I wonder what it is. This also happened in several schools. But we can’t rest on our oars. When I was in Christ’s School, my set, 50 of us, made division one and it wasn’t really the best set. I know previous sets that did much better. We need to go back to that era when we were the leaders not the followers. Ekiti people know the value of education and they know that it is the best antidote to poverty. Could you speak on other areas that you have recorded achievements, with emphasis on agriculture and job creation? First, we were very clear about what we wanted to achieve in office. On roads, for example, we were very clear that we are going to connect all Ekiti roads and make them motorable. Again, human beings have short memory. Many people can’t remember what Ekiti roads used to be like in 2010 October when I became governor. There are communities in Ekiti having not more than 10 kilometres that will take three hours to get to. When we came, we have done what any objective assessor would almost have imagined as far as road construction is concerned. Go around Ado-Ekiti today, people marveled at what has happened in Ado-Ekiti in three and half years. All the roads that were not accessible, they have all been fixed. The local economy has changed because this is the city that used to sleep 7pm. Now when you leave here and going back to your hotel, count the number of people you see on the street selling recharge cards, the numbers of okadas that are still plying the roads, the numbers of joints that are still open due to what? Good roads and streetlights. We are not just talking about infrastructure, we are talking economic generator. That much we have achieved as far as infrastructure concerning road are concerned. Health care, just like education, we started with a clear assessment of what we wanted to do. We said we were going to focus on prevention and primary health care. That has been the basic front of our work. Although, we have not neglected the tertiary section just like we focus on tertiary section in education. In healthcare, we make sure that access was the number one thing particularly among the vulnerable segment of our population: the elderly, children, pregnant women and the physically challenged. But in addition to this category of people that benefit from our free health programme, we then added what we called the quarterly health mission that goes round and it is not tied to any age bracket. If you can find yourself in any of the free health mission centres, you will be treated for whatever ailment. In almost four years in office, we have over 500,000 beneficiaries of the free health mission. For sustainability, we tie it to a community health insurance scheme that will make it sustainable over a long time. In addition to this, we have also what we call medical fund for people dealing with ailments that are complicated, that require maybe a kidney transplant or dialysis or a major surgery sometimes abroad and the indigent that can’t afford to benefit from such treatment, government sponsor them and take care of such bill. We are becoming a modern society and there are life threatening diseases that have started crippling into our environment: hypertension, high blood pressure, diabetics, cancer and in this regard, we found ourselves in a situation where we felt we needed to turn our adversity to an opportunity for our people. When I lost my deputy to cancer, we decided that, one of the legacies that we can bequeath to her for the work that she did as my partner in the struggle to rebuild Ekiti was to dedicate a place to her that will help us in early detection of female-related cancers – cervical cancer, breast cancer and all the rest. We built a diagnostic and awareness centre which we named after her. It is functioning now. Many women now go to use Mrs. Olayinka Diagnostic Centre located within the teaching hospital. And once we are able to detect that there is early stage of cancer, we can then take the necessary steps to help avert this leading to death, which was the loss we suffered in Mrs. Olayinka’s case. We have other initiatives that we have put in place: an ambulance service now very professionally run, new accident and emergency centres at the teaching hospital, new surgery ward and a whole range of things which make healthcare situation in Ekiti one of the best. So, it is no accident that we now have the high life expectancy in the country, it is no accident that we have one of the lowest maternal and child mortality rate in the country, it is not accident that we have the lowest HIV prevalence in the country. All these are associated with our quality approach to healthcare. If you go to agriculture which is the main thrust of our government, we wanted to take advantage of an area that is very dear to our people. We are an agrarian society. This was what our forebears did throughout their lives. But because we went to school we are now saddled with an ageing population on the farm that has not been replaced by the children who have earned degrees and moved out into the city. So we needed a mechanism to entice such young people back to agriculture. And we know we are not going to get them back on the hoe and cutlass type of farming that we needed to move to the next level of agric business that will really attract them. This is what informed the initiative popularly known as Youth in Commercial Agriculture Development, Y-CAD. And Y-CAD has been a generator of employment significantly now and we know that by the time, by God grace, we come back and we start our free meal in primary school initiative, you will see a synergy between what our father produced, what the market women or the food vendor cook and what the children in school eat. And a new economy and expanded economy is going to grow around the work that has already been done by Y-CAD. In addition to that, is the work that will help us achieve the full value change in not just planting but also processing and marketing. Now we have Ekiti rice courtesy of Y-CAD and other farmers, we have the highest yield in cassava production in the entire country now, our cocoa is growing again and there are lots of our young farmers working on aqua culture, of poultry all over the place in the state. These are signs of progress as far as agric is concerned and we are still going to be building on it for the future. Of course everybody talks about Ikogosi and what we have been able to achieve with our hob strategy in Ikogosi. So, all of these can’t be fully developed until we link it to the wider chart. That is why we have come up with tourism master plan which doesn’t just focus on Ikogosi but helps to develop all our sites of tourism in the state. In addition to linking it to other investments, I talked earlier about the coming of an airport because we know that this is going to ultimately have an impact on the tourism industry, we also know that it will have impact on education industry, our knowledge zone and we know it have an impact on the agric process because things can then just leave from here to a market outside of Nigeria but it is not just Lagos or Abuja, Lagos is a big target for us and within our regional framework, that is something that we are seriously looking at. But it will also necessitate rail network here. It is not just about an airport. In our regional initiative, we are already talking about our partners in the other states to extend the rail network from Osogbo to here and then out of here to other potential destinations. When you look at this long term economic strategy, you can see where the state is heading. We have used the better part of this four years to have master plan for energy, water, tourism, urban town planning and not all of them have been fully implemented, we just started but the implementation will be rapid because it is tied to the growing hob in tourism, in agriculture, infrastructure, education, healthcare but they are all integrated. But it also recognizes our limitation as a small state. We must cooperate with others in other to get the full value of all of what we are doing. The state has recorded too much violence during this electioneering campaign. Is there anything you are doing to curb violence? I think it is unfortunate really. I am appalled. Enough! I am a manager of violence by training. Maybe because of my training, I know that violence doesn’t bear good fruit. When this campaign started on 23 March 2014, I made a state-wide broadcast imploring all candidates to focus on what they want to do to make a difference in the life of people. So, I have consistently insisted that this is the way we should conduct this campaign. Sadly a lot of that fell on deaf ear. But I have also gone ahead to engage not just the security agencies but also critical stakeholders in the state, the clergy, the elders, the politicians themselves. And I have enlisted one of these institutions to get across to the candidates; for example, the council of traditional rulers, to call on all of us to a session, which they did. I was the first to get to the venue, one or two others of the candidates also showed up. Igbimo Omo Ekiti, headed by Prince Julius Adeluyi, former honourable minister and president of Pharmaceutical Society of Nigeria, also embarked on this peace initiative aimed at getting all the candidates sign up a code of ethics. What I see unfortunately, is a situation in which some are hell-bent to cause mayhem and brigandage that would stop this election from holding or if it holds, for it to be inconclusive. I believe Ekiti people have a duty to call all of us to order. As a chief security officer, I have never shied away from bringing together all the players. I was the first to say, let us sign up to a code of conduct. I have insisted that the police and other security agencies should do their jobs also because I think there have been gaps in the conduct of the law enforcement agencies. And this is not to even suggest that they are compromised. I don’t believe the hierarchy, the police commissioner, the director of SSS, the brigade commander compromised but they have elements within their institutions that may be paddling to the whims and caprice of individual politicians and they need to check that so that they will not throw Ekiti into avoidable violence. The violence to me is unacceptable. Why destroy billboards? Today, some even have the temerity to destroy billboards in front of the government house. How does that advance your cause with the people if you resort to unbridled and unacceptable violence? If anything, it diminishes you with the populace and it demonstrates that you don’t have anything to sell. That is why you are resorting to violence. And when you check the track records or the antecedents of all the people perpetrating this violence, it is what they have been known for. As I said, all of us owe a duty to our conscience and to Ekiti people not to allow this electioneering to degenerate into an uncontrolled orgy of violence. I hope others will listen to this. I hope once they don’t do what they ought to do, the maximum and full weight of the law would be brought to bear on anyone find culpable regardless of any position they hold. This must stop. Issues must be the driver of this campaign. Tell Ekiti people what the ruling party has not done that you can do better. Tell it to the people what you have in stock for them. Sadly, this campaign has only been fought on issues by the ruling government. Others are not interested sadly, except they are reacting to or rehashing what is already happening. Like somebody saying he wants to revive the Ire Brick Factory or he wants to pay pensioners, things that have already happened. Those that are benefitting from the social security know the source of social security whether you say you started it 10 years ago. People are not stupid. I hope my co-contestants would respond in a profitable manner because we don’t need violence here. What is your opinion on deployment of soldiers to Ekiti during the election and the request that the western world should assist us on security issue? I am not so sure that people are asking the West to assist Nigeria in the area of security. In Nigeria, in all fairness to the security agencies, they are not incapable of managing the security situation in the country. I believe they are trained, they are professional. There may be all range of things happening that we are not fully conversant with or that we don’t know the steps the security is taking. I am aware that in at least one area, people have solicited assistance. That is in the area of terror because terror and terrorist act are not limited to a country. It is fungible violence and it traverses borders, it transcend boundary and inevitably you will require collaborative efforts from those who have to deal with it and those who have gained expertise in the course of handling this in their own setting. I think it is in that contest that Nigerian leadership has requested assistance from other countries. In principle, I don’t have an objection to that. But it is the duty of any state to protect the citizenry. That is the first responsibility of the government. Coming to the Nigerian constitution, it is the security and welfare of the citizenry that comes first and any government that is not able to do that really should revisit its purpose in office. At any level, we can’t discount that terror is not a single nation issue; it is something that has different components. And in our own case, we need a multi-throng approach, not just law and order, not just force, but also economic approach, political approach and a comprehensive integrated response. We must do something that will reduce our being seen as a laughing stock in the eyes of the world. On your second issue as to whether I endorse or approve the use of soldiers during election. There is no one side approach to election in the area of security management. I have seen situation in which soldiers have been helpful in managing areas that could have become problematic as far as elections in Nigeria are concerned in the past. I will give example of Edo State. Soldiers were particularly helpful in the Edo election. Even though they were not involved in the inner ring protection, they were able to rescue the state from people who were hell-bent on using violence to scuttle the election because they have the capacity more than the police to arrest such untoward situation. If it is in that context that soldiers are being introduced to the election either here in Ekiti or elsewhere, as long as they are scrupulously professional, as long as they do not interfere direct with the ballot, as long as they maintain peace and provide voters with the confidence to go out and perform their civic duty, then why not? But if soldiers are being introduced in order to intimidate legitimate voters from coming out to do their civic duties, then you know I will be opposed to that. If it is to enhance election security and to enhance and promote one person one vote, I am more for it; for as many security agents as possible who are ready to do the duty of guaranteeing a clean, credible, free and fair election. What is your message to INEC to ensure fairness in the forthcoming election? For me, it is a case of once bitten twice shy. I have been a victim of manipulation in election and I know that INEC is trying to redeem its own image as far as this is concerned. Ekiti is like a determinant of what will happen in 2015. INEC is really in a very sensitive position as far as Ekiti election is concerned. I believe it owes itself and all Nigerians an obligation for Ekiti election to be scrupulously clean and to be seen by all as clean. It enhances the credibility of what will happen in 2015 because all eyes are on Ekiti; not for Ekiti sake particularly, but for 2015 election. After Anambra, INEC’s reputation is on tentacles. It will be in the best interest for INEC to ensure that Ekiti does not go wrong. I really, really pray Ekiti does not go wrong; if Ekiti goes wrong, God help Nigeria.