Why I’m sure of a second term - Fayemi

Governor John Kayode Fayemi of Ekiti State, recently spoke with newsmen on why he seeks a second term despite the impression that he has exhausted all his programmes in the current tenure. Excerpts:

There were reports that APC governors shunned a recent security meeting called by the President on grounds that they were not properly invited...
(Cuts in) We didn’t say we were not properly invited.  My brother, Governor Akpabio was the one who said we were not invited. I don’t know what he was talking about. In any case, we have asked the chairman of APC governors to issue a statement. We were invited by the President. The usual text message was sent and signals also came as they normally do for such meetings. Fourteen APC governors were in Abuja on Tuesday night for our meeting and when we were in Imo State Governor’s Lodge for the meeting at about 10pm, we got information that the security council meeting had been stepped

down. So, it wasn’t that we were not invited. We were invited and then notified of a postponement. It was a surprise to us that the meeting later held. We were in the hospitals to see victims of the Nyanya bombings; we were in Asokoro, we were also at the National Hospital before we all departed from Abuja since the meeting had been called off. So I don’t know what Governor Akpabio meant by his statement that we were not invited. In any case, if this was a meeting about security, APC states have been the most affected in the North East and our interest should necessarily be keener than those of non-APC states.
The state of emergency declared in three APC states is due for a review. Should the Federal Government consider an extension?
Well, the attitude of APC to the current state of emergency is that it has not produced the result that we would have loved to see. I don’t want to pre-judge what might happen.  In any case, there is a process for renewal of emergency rule in the Nigerian Constitution. I’m sure the President would adhere strictly to the provisions of the law as far as this matter is concerned.
You said somewhere that the Ekiti election is a referendum on your performance, can we know what do you mean by that and do you think you will be re-elected?
An election is necessarily a referendum of what an incumbent has done or failed to do in the judgment of the electorate. Somebody running for the first time can only make promises and hope that the people will believe him. As an incumbent, I am running on the record of the public goods that I’ve delivered in every community and constituency. I have been on the campaign trail for over three weeks now and in every place I get to, the people are the ones who reel out what we have done in their communities. It is a much taller order for me in the sense that I must present tangible, palpable, verifiable evidence of what I have done. That is what I have to sell. So, it is a referendum on my performance. It may not be a referendum on the performance of my competitors, except one who was in office in the state and would have to show what he did. Even if he chooses not to talk about that, others would talk about his record in office.
To your second question, ‘have I done enough to earn a second term?’ I ran in 2007 on a platform popularly known as ‘Roadmap to Ekiti Recovery – My 8 Point Agenda.’ At the time, I was very specific about what I was going to do in office.  As far back as 2006, when you talk about social security, if you read my inaugural speech, you will find social security benefit to the elderly there. You will see laptop per child there. There is nothing that we have done in this state that we have not picked up from the 8-point agenda. And everyone who is objective can attest to the fulfilment of what we promised Ekiti State people. In the various communities we go to meet people, they speak on that. So I think the answer to your question is yes. My performance has earned me a reason to believe that I would be re-elected. Today a result of one of the polls that we conducted in some communities came to me – one woman they spoke to basically just said: “We like Fayemi. He has done very well. He has fulfilled all his promises. He has not done anything that we don’t like but the issue is that since he has already done everything he promised, he should allow another person come in”.  I found that very interesting. But the thing is that we have not actually done everything. There are areas where I would score myself 70 per cent or even 60 per cent. There are still some things to be done.
Seriously speaking, I think we have done reasonably well. Don’t forget that this state is No. 35 on the revenue ladder of the country, people often forget that. And this is a state that gets N3bn a month against N23bn in Bayelsa with a smaller population. So I think it is important to put this in proper perspective. We run a social democratic agenda and it is a progressive government. You will see that in many of the policies that we put in place, we concentrate on how to pull up the weak and the vulnerable in our state.  Additionally, we have run a reasonably clean government. So, I think we have done enough to earn a second term. But we are also not unaware that performance itself is not the only factor in an election but it is the most critical success factor for an incumbent.
With the disparity in the money you get from the federation account, would you say you are comfortable with the federal system practised in Nigeria?
We don’t operate a federal system in Nigeria, or at best we operate a distorted pseudo-federal system which does not operate coordinate powers among the federating units but a hierarchical, subordinate powers inherited from our military past. If we operate a federal system, then you will not have things like UBEC and TETFUND which gives people the impression that states are beholden to the Federal government, whereas it is the funds jointly owned in the Federation Account that is being shared. If we run a proper Federal structure, you will not have us here spending our meagre resources in sustaining the police, whilst we have no authority over its activities in the state unless our views coincide with or reinforce the instructions from Abuja. It’s simply a distortion of federal system.
As for the disparities in earnings between Bayelsa, or Rivers and Ekiti, I do not have any problem with it.  I’m an advocate of fiscal federalism. So, I do not necessarily have a problem with Rivers State, for instance, earning what comes from its soil. However, in order for us not to undermine the nation, for any federal system to work well, we often need equilibrating mechanisms so that one side is not overwhelmingly rich and other sides of the federation so despicably poor. We have to find a mechanism to balance this and if you look at the Australian and the Canadian Constitutions, even in the American Constitution, you have these mechanisms there. We have them in ours as well but they are exercised in breach rather than in consistency with the law. So, I hope those who are working on this in the national conference will be able to come up with a federalism that is more cooperative than combative because states are being forced into a combative model. We once heard a President say “if you are not for me then you will be punished. Your purse would be depleted and that is what is happening. You have states like Ekiti where we have done several federal roads but are being owed billions. You also have other states that are being owed and have collected all they are being owed. So, you would ask yourself why that happens if there is justice, equity and fairness in our federal system.
One of your programmes that the opposition has not criticised is the digitalisation of income, what is it all about?
You are talking about the Integrated Payroll Biometric System. I don’t know if the opposition has not criticized it. When we started it, they called us all manners of names – that the agenda was to get rid of the civil servants but eventually, you are right, they couldn’t criticise it because the civil servants and the teachers became champions of the electronic payment system and it has saved us a lot of money spent on ghost workers. We are now even trying to use the same system for our Citizen Identity Management System and our social security payment, which is still manual payment and there is still a level of inefficiency and waste  that we have detected in the social security payment. But clearly, biometrics is the way to go. If you want to run an efficient government, technology has to play a major role. And that is how we have been able to reduce fraud in the system. We now save an average of N200 million.
Are you likely to pick another running mate or you’ll continue with the current deputy governor?
You know what they say, ‘if it is not broken, why fix it?’ The deputy governor has done very well. She did exceedingly well managing the state’s Universal Basic Education Board. My party has a position that the deputy must come from Ado – Ekiti and I cannot go against the position of the party on that. My late deputy was also from Ado – Ekiti as you know. So we just replaced her with another Ado – Ekiti person who happens to be a direct descendant of the monarch here. But that is not what qualifies her for the job. She is more importantly a professor and expert in education administration.
You were in Ondo for Mimiko’s inauguration, does that imply that after the election, you may also extend the hand of fellowship to both Opeyemi and Fayose?
If you know my politics you will know that that is not really exceptional. I’m very friendly with Peter Obi, but I went to campaign for my Party’s candidate - Chris Ngige in Anambra State and I actually called Peter that I was in town to campaign for Chris Ngige. Governor Mimiko is my Egbon in our local parlance here. I’d like to think he is still my friend. For me, there is a whole world of difference between ideological affinity and friendship. I’ve many friends in PDP, one of my closest friend was the PDP gubernatorial aspirant in Edo State before he eventually came back to us and became the Secretary to the State Government and even when he was in PDP and was working with President Obasanjo, it didn’t really affect our friendship. For me, my politics is not politics of bitterness. Opeyemi used to be a good friend, I’m sure you know. He chose to distance himself on account of his ambition and he has every right to be ambitious. Every human being should have ambition but that should not turn him into an enemy. He is therefore my opponent but he is not my enemy. Governor Fayose is my acquaintance and I’m sure if you ask him he would probably tell you the same. I may have my own issues with him, he probably has his own issues with me but he is a former governor of this state and deserves to be respected. For me, I do not think anyone who occupies this seat should do anything to denigrate the office because there is a mystique around the office that we must all protect; whether you are a putative aspirant for the office or you are the occupant, you should not denigrate the position. And you are right, after election is over, governance begins and don’t be surprised if there is any reason for us to come together in the ultimate best interest of Ekiti State and Ekiti people. I’m going to solicit for their assistance and their wise counsel. And besides, Ekiti is unique; we are different from any other state. This is the only mono-ethnic place you can point to in Nigeria. Even Bayelsa  has strands but in Ekiti, we are one stock. We are the same people and we are probably all related in one form or the other in our various 132 communities. In politics, there are no permanent friends and no permanent opponents.
What would be your focus if you get a second term in office?
Three things; agriculture, tourism and the knowledge economy, and let me explain what I mean by that. Clearly, I’m not going to stop my focus on education but it is going to be narrowed into the creation of knowledge economy. We have a lot of focus on technological education, on vocational education, on ICT and the knowledge park that we are constructing. We have a 3,000 hectare Ekiti Knowledge Zone in the making. It is probably bigger than the Lekki Free Zone; it is going to be the base for education tourism, medical tourism and ICT outsourcing. We feel that is an area that can give us an edge. Agriculture, understandably because of our own ground but it is expanding and developing the food value chain. We would be focusing on cassava, the revival of our cocoa, rice and oil palm. Three, tourism; we feel that Ekiti can still be the best destination of choice. We talk about what has happened in Cross River but we still feel we are better placed than Cross River because Cross River is much more difficult to get to, particularly Obudu. It is much easier to get to Ikogosi than Obudu. And we are building Ikogosi into a tourism hub to serve our grand vision of making poverty history in our state. So, it is more of consolidation of what we have been doing. But it is going to be driven by how many jobs can be generated from these sectors. It is going to be largely job focused.