A prominent member of the APC in the state accused Governor El-Rufai of implementing programmes that are anti-masses. Some of the issues he raised were that the governor stopped Ramadan feeding, sharing of essential commodities during festivities; cancelled government sponsorship of Muslims’ and Christians’ pilgrims to holy lands in Mecca and Jerusalem respectively. What is your take on this?

Whoever is saying that is just being mischievous. Let me tell you something. Yes, we were voted in by the masses of this state, precisely the beggars, hawkers, the physically-challenged and the general public but it is not the intention of Nasir El-Rufai to leave them in the situation we met them. These comments are nothing but mischievous. What they are saying is that we should allow the beggars to continue begging till the end of their lives, but if you ask them whether they would want their children to go begging, they will tell you no. I challenge anybody who is saying we should allow these people to continue begging, to tell me whether their own children are begging. If their children do not beg on the streets, why should they ask us to allow the children of Kaduna state to continue to do so? I heard some of them saying that the government has not made any arrangement for these beggars, which is not true. We are making adequate arrangements to cater for these people; we are constantly in touch with them. They have leadership, I mean all those that are concerned, be it the hawkers, beggars and the physically-challenged; we are discussing with their leadership and we are making arrangements for them. About 90 per cent of those affected are the physically challenged people but we discovered that most of them are talented in different crafts. The government is ready to support them so as to improve their lives. The fact that they are citizens of this state makes it the responsibility of the government to support them.

The governor swore to an oath, to be fair and that is why he wants to take them out of the streets and provide them with their important needs, for them to live meaningful lives. The problem is that those making noise cannot know this because their minds are already polluted. The idea of taking them off the streets is for their safety too. If you remember, all the bomb blasts here in Kaduna and even in Abuja, the hawkers and beggars have always been the major victims, we want to avoid that by taking them off the streets. I can authoritatively inform you that one of the physically-challenged persons has been appointed as Special Assistant to the governor. This is also to get them close to the government.

Well, the issue of the Ramadan Fasting is clear, the governor and I are Muslims, but we did nothing wrong. We have reached out to all the Islamic scholars and the Muslim Umma in the state and they are happy with our decisions; and so, we did not just take this decision on our own. We had a town hall meeting, which was organised by my office. In that meeting we sat with all the stakeholders and the governor told them that in every festivity, the government spent over N400m distributing food items to very few people in the state and those people are the wealthy people in the society, going by the records. That was what has been happening in the past administration. But when this administration came, we said if we have N400m we can use it in providing chairs in some of our primary schools, those schools where our children sat on the floors. That money can go a long way in providing these needed facilities for the children. That was why we stopped the Ramadan feeding. When the present government gathered donations from good Samaritans like Aliko Dangote and others we invited women groups from Islamic foundations and told them what we have got Trailers of food items and we charged them with the responsibilities of cooking the food and feeding the Muslims across the 23 local governments of the state. So, we fed those that really needed it and we were able to feed between 20-30,000 people every day throughout the 29 days that the Ramadan lasted. We did not make noise about it because we believe that we gave the people that really needed it. So, those who want us to use government money, I mean those who call themselves social critics, are just being economical with the truth. They are the real enemies of the masses because they don’t want us to achieve anything.

And what about the Hajj seats?

Talking about Hajj operations, we sat down and x-rayed the activities and we discovered that a greater percentage of the pilgrims are being sponsored by the government. We discovered that over N300m was being drained every year in that exercise. We also looked at those who go to Jerusalem and found out the same thing, although the figure is not as much as that of the Hajj. But even at that, only five per cent of Jeruslem Pilgrims pay from their private pockets, the rest were being sponsored by Kaduna State government. When we looked at all these things we concluded that it would be of immense benefit to stop government sponsoring people to both Hajj and Jerusalem because those who benefit are capable of sponsoring themselves. I think people should commend the governor for taking this bold step to save the state.

Our so-called critics are not talking about the money we will use in building roads, putting chairs in our classrooms or equipping our hospitals, no. They are asking why we are not spending money on people. Some of them are even proud to say they are going to buy some camels, cows or whatever and distribute them to the people. That is not the kind of government we wish for Kaduna people. If they have such money why can’t they give scholarships to our children to go to school?

If you think you want to support the people, the noble thing for you do is to at least send five people to school and sponsor them up to university level; because that is the genuine way to empower the poor not to buy camels, rams, cows and share to people and you start making noise that you have supported the people. That is hypocrisy. That concept is deceptive, it is not a solution to their problems; you need to empower the poor by educating them. And when they are educated they have the power to contribute in nation building. Our desire is not to feed them today and they become hungry tomorrow. We intend to build the state and in doing so you must be fair to everybody. That is our focus.

Governor Nasir El-Rufai was also accused by some APC members in the state of running the government all alone without the input of the party stakeholders and that his high-handedness is responsible for the in-fighting and apathy being witnessed in the party presently. What is your view on this?

This is also not true. I say this without fear of contradiction, no governor in the present dispensation has our kind of open-door policy in the entire federation today; I stand to be corrected on this. Coming to our Town Hall Meeting that I mentioned earlier, it came to be because the Governor told me that he wants to operate a totally open door policy and so he charged me as his Political Adviser to make it possible to meet anybody that wants to meet him. I told him that it was not possible for him to meet with all the people that wanted to see him. This is because on daily basis, we receive 20-30 letters of people who are seeking to see the governor. Some of them have genuine things they wanted to discuss others want clarification on certain issues concerning the government policies and programmes. In the end, taking all these into consideration, I sat with the governor and agreed that everybody that would want to see the governor must see him. So, I suggested to him that the only way people can see you was to organize a Town Hall meeting on monthly basis in all the three geo-political zones.

Uba Sani:
“You now have a leader with viable solutions to the challenges of insecurity in Kaduna state. Many of our so-called critics of Governor El-Rufai do not want to comment on insecurity because they would have no concrete criticism to make.”

This innovation has never happened in the history of Kaduna State. It is in these Town Hall meetings that the people openly speak to the governor and ask him whatever questions they have in mind. Those who want to criticize the government’s policies usually have the opportunity to do so and the governor will reply them right away. If you think you have a superior argument, you come and we debate it there. In the Town Hall meetings that we had in the two senatorial zones so far, we have had valuable contributions from people. No governor can organize such a meeting without having a problem at the venue, but people are happy with this government and this has shown in the two Town Hall meetings so far. If anybody comes out to misinform the public that the governor is unpopular, then it means that the person is mischievous. In consideration of the success we have recorded so far, he has asked me to continue to arrange for this Town Hall meeting every month. So if you are not happy with what we are doing, you have a forum to express yourself, we cannot teleguide people on what they want to say. You have the right to make an input just as you equally have the right to criticize what we are doing.

Do not be deceived, I make bold to say that no politician is as popular today as Mallam Nasir El-Rufai and I have my facts. Whoever thinks he can match his popularity should challenge him to a public debate on development issues, and let’s see how it goes; but I can tell you that he will floor the person hands down.