You were in this state when our traditional rulers were assembled to come and receive cows from South Africa. If our traditional rulers were such treated with disdain that tells you how other Kwarans were treated.
This is the concluding part of Mallam Abdullateef Gidado Alakawa's response to issues raised by a key member of the opposition during an interview with this medium. Alakawa is Kwara State Governor’s Special Adviser Political, SAPOL https://midlandpost.ng/index.php/features-and-interviews
How would you defend the opposition’s claim of the governor’s lacklustre performance against the background of your O to ge and Isenlo mantras?
Generally, O to ge was a movement as I said, to stop dehumanization of humanity, reduction of humanity to its lowest ebb, where animals became more important than humans. You were in this state when our traditional rulers were assembled to come and receive cows from South Africa. If our traditional rulers were such treated with disdain that tells you how other Kwarans were treated. Part of the O to ge angst was a situation where those who were working were worse off than those who were not working, in terms of salary. To put Kwara in trouble, just don’t pay salaries. Today, O to ge came and swept that off. Civil servants today are sure that on 25th of every month their salary would come whether allocation is here or not here. It is the first line charge of government without affecting the ongoing projects. Today, Kwara workers also do not want to remember the inglorious past, when their salaries were not sure.
Then came the issue of minimum wage. At a time when several states that had signed it into law were reverting and reneging on their promises, Kwara was a bit more careful to ensure that whatever we said, we are going to mean it. And we keyed in into it to ensure that nobody in Kwara was earning less than 30,000 Naira. The good news is signing of the consequential adjustment. Whatever our governor says- and he is a man of few words- many people can only accuse him for what is wrong. For what he does or what he does not do, not what he says or what he does not say. He does not say anything if he is not prepared to make sure he matches it with action. Recently Kwara celebrated the eventual signing of that consequential adjustment, so from January as the governor promised, all things being equal, Kwara workers will also be earning sustainable minimum wage, sustainable implementable minimum wage. And that is what we have had generally.
And when you talk about the health sector, I always say it, no matter the kind of health infrastructure you put in place, if you don’t have the right human resources, then there is a problem. What has the governor done? When he came most facilities were ill staffed or ill motivated or not properly trained. Today, that is a thing of the past. We now have enough staff who are motivated, encouraged, properly trained, and very well-conditioned to work. When they are sure that their safety, opportunities and everything they need are guaranteed under this administration, they also want to do their best and of course, to ensure that the ratio of doctors to patients flows in line with normal international best practices. Government has on several occasions employed capable hands, including attendants and other personnel within the health sector. And of course the necessary tools have been given to them to work with. Just recently, Governor Abdulrazaq, also approved a generous increase of special package for health workers so that they can go to the same market with their colleagues and contemporaries in the federal service. This also helps to reduce brain drain, a situation where people want to move their services from here to the federal service. This tells you the commitment of government.
The closest of the health facilities is the primary health care sector, this administration met it in comatose. It was no longer functioning because a lot of programmes that were being run through counterpart funding- polio, malaria and others were no longer funded. UNESCO was no longer here, most of those partners were no longer here because the former administration could not do so much about what they were supposed to do as far as health is concerned. This government came and quickly paid all the counterpart funding. Today the records are there. Look at government performance in malaria management, government performance in polio eradication. See the health sector in term of facilities. See what government did at Sobi Specialist Hospital, Ilorin. All those things that have been done found expression in Kwara response during Covid-19 pandemic, when other states were running everywhere and saw how Kwara was able to mitigate the effect of covid-19 and the covid-19 patients for Kwara were not necessarily transferred to other states. We treated here, and that is the success story that the Federal Government, donor agencies and other people have acknowledged and commended this state for. That is part of what we have done.
Today as we speak, government has completed about 40 primary health facilities in the state, including general hospitals. Some of these are still ongoing. One thing about this government is that it believes we should not be the one to tell people what has been done, people themselves should know whether they want to continue to go forward.
In talking about achievements, you must put it in context. How was it and how is it today. Look at education. Let us start from the basis. As at the time we came, everybody in Kwara knew that Kwara had already been blacklisted by UBEC. That was a criminal breach of trust. Rather than pay your counterpart fund you did not pay, you squandered the one that was paid. That is crime against humanity. It gave Kwara a kind of name that is not supposed to be Kwara’s standard. Kwarans have contributed their best to the development of this country. But at a point where it is expected that the best of the people are elected to do the job under the expectation of government of the people, those that kwara elected in the last sixteen years were not the set of people that complied with morality but rather squandered money meant for people’s basic education.
You can imagine a situation where no kobo was spent on education for years and that is why many people were taking their children to private schools. But this government came and said look, not many people attend private schools. Public schools were doing fine in the past. If they were doing fine, then let us go back to the basic schools. This is why this government has decided to make extra sacrifices to ensure that our image is properly redeemed to make sure that education is returned to the people so that the children of nobody and the lowest of the income earners can as well access education and that is what we have done. And with the investment of government, you can see the way it is going to manifest.
Just recently kwara came first in a major competition, when pupils of public primary school brought out the image and glory of kwara state in the presidential schools debate. Kwara for the first time in so many years would be going to represent Nigeria. What does that tell? With little investment in education, our children would go places. We had about N7b accumulated un-accessed fund in UBEC because they refused to pay the N450m counterpart fund that some people squandered. So this government offset the liabilities and raised resources to make sure we are able to access the fund. Kwara has been able to access the N7billion UBEC fund with our own N7 billion, we are investing about N14 billion into primary education. I don’t know whether all the private schools put together in kwara State will be able to raise that kind of resources to operate their schools. So if N14 billion is going into that sector, you will see that people will begin to remove their children from nursery schools and that in a way reduces the burden of some of the parents and of course it brings about competition in the provision of education. So people will go to nursery schools not because the public schools are not good, but their own choice to go to nursery schools.
When we talk about secondary education, the same thing that we talked about in health is what we find, you talk about the human capital being well developed, well encouraged and the environment provided properly. No matter how much you pay a teacher, if the facilities are not there, there is nothing they can do. Just recently, in the most transparent way for both SUBEB and TESCOM about 5,000 teachers were recruited and we have it on record that it was strictly based on performance. It was a clear departure from those days when appointments for teaching were shared at ward meetings. This government made it abundantly clear that there are two areas you dear not play politics with- health and education. Because you cannot give what you don’t have, this government opened it up and said only the best of Kwarans should be recruited regardless of your background to make sure the future of Kwara is guaranteed.
Will you say that policy informed your approach to the sunset teachers’ issue?
No. You see, sunset teachers' issue is a different ball game entirely. There are rules and procedures and it is never late to effect what is good. The sunset teachers are kwarans and this governor loves them. The first time the governor came in, he was of the opinion that the status quo remains, but when reality was coming up and he saw that the future of Kwarans for which he was popularly elected was being dangerously put at risk, he had to weigh the options to secure the future of millions of Kwarans. He said let us go back to the process and now that we have found out certain irregularities let us regularize what was not okay. Within the six months under which they were not paid, he said pay their money but let everybody now go back and reapply. Substantial number of them who were really qualified got reabsorbed into the system. It does not matter, the bulk of the people that complained are members of our party, and so if the governor had done politics with it, they would have been celebrating it. If you go to APC today, there is no where they are celebrating it except now that the pains have now become gains. But before it was understood to be part of our gains, it was even criticized by our own party. Some said how can we be in government and we cannot give appointments to our sons, but the governor said if he has a son that wants to be a teacher, he needs to go and pass. Anybody can do any other job but not teaching, or in the health sector.
Soon, you will begin to see Kwara performance in the subsequent WAEC and NECO examinations. You cannot give what you don’t have. So when the people are educated, you will see the effect of it in their capacity, in the reduction of poverty, diseases and criminality. A government that thinks of the self and now, will never think to help other people improve but a government that thinks of all and then the future, will know that tomorrow begins from now and we must begin to do things differently to get different results. So that is what we have done in education. You can see a lot that is going on in SUBEB.
Look at our tertiary institutions. When this government came they were being owed some hundreds of millions of naira. They were not paid for months as they were all on strike. Today, there is no strike going on in any of our higher institutions as far as this state is concerned. There was the issue of re-accreditation, many of the courses were de-accredited and this government came, paid off and made sure that resources are put in place and the environment set in a way that will allow the re-accreditation of the suspended courses. Look at what happened when the governor went to commission Late Mohammed Lawal Hall in Kwara Polytechnic. Government is a continuum. That project was initiated and commenced by Mohammed Lawal’s administration, but abandoned for sixteen years. That is millions of Kwarans tax payers money. You don’t necessarily have to start something fresh if the first one was commenced with people’s money. So, it is about making sure that people have the best benefits for the taxes they pay, for the sacrifices they make for the state. Kwara Poly is the pride of every Kwaran. Go to College of Education, you see a lot of things going on. Even if you go to KWASU you’ll see the new thinking- the new innovation, the new policy options, the new alternatives. If KWASU is a state institution, government must einsure that the best is done to ensure that Kwarans are able to access the best opportunities of going to that school. All of those policies decision and directions are ongoing to make sure that KWASU is really for Kwarans.
Your take on the leadership recruitment process in our political system.
Well, I see leadership generally in the contest of our democracy; democracy as a Western idea.
In Western democracy they believed that leaders are born and trained, they believe that children should be communally trained and at that point of communal training, the skill of every child is identified and developed. And that is where community, hopes, society and education have symbiotic relations. No child is a child of his own parents. Every child is a child of community, because actions and reactions of all children of everybody have effect on the community. So, everybody should be interested. When you discover the potentials of a child and that the child is always willing to make sacrifice, always willing to listen, to be selfless, then you can begin to understand what the child is made for. The ideal s to understand, identify and tailor every child in the area they want to excel, so when they grow up, they will grow to understand that leadership is a responsibility and does not have anything to do with the superiority of the person on the driver’s seat.
So the concept of leadership should from the very beginning, be taught and so when we do that, we will discover that leadership is not a job for everybody and that those who are not doing the job of leadership does not mean that they are in a way less in capacity, ability to those who are in leadership position. When the community comes to train the people and tailor them in line with their natural talents, then we are going to have the best of leaders who are not going to be influenced by offices but would be the ones influencing the offices.
In such situation, leaders that we will have are going to be such that the society would not expect certain things from. I’m saying here that there will be minimum standard that somebody would have before he becomes a leader, not a situation where he comes, changes the attitude like a chameleon in a way that gives you an impression of a person who is nice, humble, humane, and selfless only to make sure that he gets what he wants and once that happens eventually, he gets there and does a different thing.
But the challenge in that is the irony that comes with philosophy and democracy, because the opinion of majority on matters, usually may not always be the best, because a lot of sentiments usually drive what the majority opinion is. But if we take it again from the very background, then we can evolve a system that will ensure a paradigm shift from the current thinking and that is why it is still very possible in Nigeria because of our evolving democracy. We can begin to integrate it in our education system, to ensure that leaders are identified and also put in our rule books, to spell out the requirements for minimum standard for leadership to get the best for us.
We think that way leadership recruitment will get the best for us. But the current system that we have when it is about democracy, opinion of majority may usually not give us the very best if we do not improve on it by inculcating the right culture, the right system to ensure that somebody who is supposed to be a soldier does not now become a doctor, a teacher does not want to become a judge, If we do that our society will evolve a new system.
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