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Sheikh Ja’afar murder: ‘Allegations against me baseless’

Category: Inside politics Published on Saturday, 01 August 2009 01:00 Written by Jaafar Jaafar & Lawan Danjuma Adamu, Kano Hits: 7427

The Kano State governor recently hosted journalists to a mid-year interactive session. He spoke on Sheikh Ja’afar’s murder, his own party, governors’ defections to PDP, capital projects and others. Excerpts:

Accusing fingers are being pointed in your direction that you have a hand in the murder of the late Sheikh Ja’afar Adam. What is your response to this?

Governor Ibrahim Shekarau: You see, even what we call mysteries are creations. They are being created. Go and check the internet thing that was used, accusing us that we did it. What facts are there? So, if tomorrow I just write and throw it in the internet and say you killed Bola Ige, for example, citing no evidence, no person to hold on to and saying the confessional statement of person XYZ said this, where did he make the statement? To whom did he make the statement?

So, these things are a whole lot of creations. Unfortunately, there are many scenarios being painted about this brutal killing. Those who did it, nobody knows what their motives were. Don’t forget he was killed on a Friday morning, just 24 hours to the election. What was the motive? The internet publication said the Kano State governor, Obasanjo and His Royal Highness connived and killed Ja’afar, because he was likely to make pronouncement which would lead to my losing in the election. Yet, Obasanjo wanted me to lose the election. So, how do you reconcile this? Obasanjo conniving with me to do an act that would make me win? If he knew anything would happen to make me lose, what would he have been supporting? So, it doesn’t tally.

Anybody in Kano knows – and with all due respect to my friend Ja’afar – what political control was there [with Ja’afar] that one would even suspect that his sermon the next day would change the trend of things generally? And fortunately, at the tail end of the writing, they said all these facts were never verified.

The latest one that seems to be created as well is pertaining to the cheque issue – of hundreds of millions this and that. You see, this cheque was not meant to be cashed, it was written to give an impression that it was a government cheque, supposedly issued out to pay those who did the killing. This is the whole thing that is being created around mischievously.

My friend at Freedom Radio that was arrested recently was not really associated with the killing, but somehow, there are some problems. A cheque was being touted around with a fake covering letter as having been written by a permanent secretary in the cabinet office directing the Ministry of Finance to release a hundred million naira. And the cheque attached to it was bearing an unknown name.

If you get hold of the fake letters and the cheque, you will think that they emanated from the government. Up to the time the permanent secretary complained to the police, nobody knew whose cheque it was. It was when the police went to the bank that the bank discovered it is an account belonging to Ado Muhammad, a director in Freedom Radio. So the police asked if it was his cheque and whether or not he wrote it.

They asked him: “Who got the leaf out of your cheque book? If it was stolen, did you report to the bank? Did you report to the police?” The permanent secretary was also asked subsequently. He told the police the gentleman that brought it to him and when the gentleman was asked, he said it was Tukur Mamu of Desert Herald that gave it to him. That is how Tukur Mamu was brought into it. But he kept on publishing that the governor of Kano State orchestrated his arrest and all sorts.

Why wouldn’t the police ask him where he got the cheque from? These are the questions. And when his place was searched, these types of letters saying government did this, government did that were found. That is why he is now mad and insulting us because police have discovered so many of those fraudulent letters in his place. So we don’t mind all the noise, because we know the truth will come out. So you can see they were doing it to blame and accuse us politically, because people can be so ungodly and heartless. But I’m not surprised, because if you are doing your best and your conscience is clear, people will try to tarnish your image.

As far as we are concerned, the government does not investigate criminal acts; it’s the police that investigate and prosecute. Despite this so-called law enforcement agency that is mentioned in the law books or whatever, the police are not directly under us. If today I give instruction and the IG instructed them to do another thing, they will do as the IG directs them to do. This is the truth of the matter. So if the police are handling any investigation, it is not for the government to intervene and say “Look, what you are doing is wrong or right”. And one simple thing is that the police are not angels. So as far as I’m concerned, the issue of Ja’afar had happened. The best I’m doing is praying for Allah in His wisdom to reveal anybody who did it or is associated with it or who knows who did it – as simple as that.

Your party is losing its strength by the day as governors are defecting one after another. What measures are you taking to check the exodus and gain more support?

Shekarau: If I tell you that there is no crisis, no problem in ANPP, I’m only deceiving myself. You see, there are problems. We are growing leaner and leaner. In 1999, we were nine states, then we came down to seven, five and we are now three – Kano, Yobe and Borno states.

It is also a fact that many party men have been complaining of the party not meeting up to their expectations. And this cry has cut across different segments of the party. Because of these clamours, the national caucus of the party set up a nine-member panel to identify the problems and report back. The caucus of the party will be meeting tomorrow (Wednesday last week) to discuss the report of the committee and decide on the next line of action.

As a politician, it pains me to lose even one person, not to talk of losing a whole governor or a whole state. However, it is not a matter of how many have left or how many still remain, the important thing is what we are doing to bring some sanity into the system.

I have high hopes that ANPP will come out of the quagmire and survive. It is really unethical for governors to defect, as far as I’m concerned. Because if you will come and campaign for people to elect you on the platform of a given party, and after coming to office and taking oath on that platform only to abandon the people that elected you. You have never conducted a referendum to know whether those that elected you are willing to go to the new party. That means you are abusing the right of those who voted for you.

Some of them begin to argue that maybe it was because of them that the party was voted, but the recent decision of the Supreme Court says it is the party that is elected, not the candidate. I am of the view that whether the constitution says it or not, morality demands that you leave the office in the new place you are going to.

Unfortunately, the constitution has not helped matters. Where it talked about decamping, it only addressed the legislators; nobody thought that governors or presidents would leave their party while in office. The constitution or electoral law should ban anybody leaving his party after being elected. If you want to leave, leave office first. We are challenging Zamfara and Bauchi states governors in court and we want to see how far we can go. I pray the judiciary will do justice to it and I pray that the decision will put an end to all these craze of wanting to change parties. I feel rather than abandon the people who elected me, I will check out of the political arena completely and go home as an honourable man.

Speculations are rife that you have a presidential ambition. What is the truth about that?

Shekarau: My stand is that after this office, there will be several other offices that I can contest for, but it’s subject to the decision of my party. So whatever the party and the people that support me decide I do, I assure that will be my decision. I know the agitation is going on, but I have not sponsored any.

I have never to this moment called anybody to tell him ‘Look, I’m interested in this post, go and work it out for me’.

And I’m not going to stop anybody from praying and agitating for what he thinks I should become. After governorship, nobody will pray that I become a local government chairman; nobody will pray that I come to the state House of Assembly. I am praying to God to choose anything good for me after leaving this office.

But electioneering involving the presidency needs a lot of resources – one need billions of naira. Would you have the wherewithal to fund the campaign?

Shekarau: Not only in politics, in everything, you need resources to fund the activities. But I want to assure you that many Nigerians are getting it wrong because of the attitude of many key players in politics. To say you have to have billions before you can contest, I was told so when I came in for the governorship in 2003.

There was one of them whom we thought would be our director of campaign because of our association and understanding with him. He told my friends that, ‘Look, are you sure you have hundreds plus millions behind you?’ We said, ‘Well, we hardly can boast of a hundred thousand’. He said, ‘OK, forget it, you are wasting your time. How do you think you will come into politics and ask for the governorship of Kano when you have not put hundreds of millions behind you’? From the day I went into ANPP up to the time I won the election, between my God and I, never have I pumped up to five million naira into anything that belongs to me. Donations came to even buy the form. I was so poor that I could not have five million to buy the form.

I will share this miracle with you. You see, I always have difficulty in saying this. My opponents in ANPP wanted to make sure that I did not get through and they knew I was very poor and I looked as if I was the one that would give them more trouble. So they went and connived with the leadership of the party. When PDP was selling its form at three million, ANPP pronounced its own five million. And I knew that I was the target. They knew there was no way I could get anything like five million naira.

So honestly, having passed through all these, I know money is really to let you move around and so on, but with all due respect to all the rich men in Kano, we could not count on our fingers how many came to our aid.

About your capital projects being talked about extensively, what can you tell us about them?

Shekarau: Many people, including our citizens here, have been asking ‘what are the secrets of funding these projects?’ Even last week, we rolled out road projects of about N1.3bn. In two days’ time, my council is likely to award more. There are two key factors to this -- long-term planning and judicious management of resources. These have been the key and answer to what we are doing today. One of our problems, not just in Kano but in the country generally, is our failure to take our time and plan.

You can’t wake up and say you want to do a road of N2bn or N3bn, you have to plan. For example, towards the end of 2006, we anticipated we were coming back for the second term; whether or not we came back is a different matter, but I have to have a plan. And one of our problems has been, with all due respect to our past leaders, that people start to plan after they have taken over the government.

In our case, we start planning from day one. Take the waterworks, for example. From 2003, 2004 and the early part of 2005, we were all planning and saving the money for it. I saved almost N6bn before I embarked on that project. I never took a single kobo from it. We were going for 50 million litters, we expanded it and got up to 150 million litters, and we got experts from UNDP and DFID. We went through a lot of processes.

By the time we came out and said we were going to concentrate on waterworks of five or six billion naira, many banks were rushing to us, thinking that we could not do that without taking loans and I told them I’m not taking any loan. We did the same thing on roads. We plan and save for them. These roads you are seeing, we have been saving for them since the beginning of last year and dedicated it to what we call the Economic Development Roadmap.

We saved about ten to fifteen billion naira over time. The secret behind this is not that we are getting money more than every other state, it’s not that we are not being affected by the reduction in the take-home that comes in because of the economic meltdown, but we plan and prioritise. And the third factor, apart from planning and judicious management of resources, is identifying and getting our priorities right and in good time. The funding is no secret – we save.

Many non-oil producing states are said to be dependent on oil revenues. What effort are you making towards boosting the internally-generated revenue?

Shekarau: The crisis in Nigeria is not largely due to the global economic meltdown; of course, we have a share of that too. The main problem is the Niger Delta. By official OPEC allocation, we are supposed to sell out about 2.3 million barrels a day, but we don’t lift more than a million; not up to 50% because of the crisis. 60% of our problems with the revenue at the centre are as a result of the Niger Delta crisis.  Because of this, we are not getting the usual allocation. But for the internally-generated revenue, it has not been good enough for many years in Kano and we inherited it.

So we committed ourselves as a top priority to improve the internally-generated revenue. When we came in, it was a mere hundred plus, so we got it to two hundred and we are now talking of a billion plus. And this is still far away from our expected revenue target.

We have engaged the services of experts and we now have consultants who are helping us to sanitise, coordinate and identify taxable areas. We have not yet introduced new taxes; we are still making sure that the taxable ones are compelled to pay. We are likely to introduce many more areas of tax collection.