Rt.Hon. Aminu Bello Masari, the Executive Governor of Katsina State was once the Speaker of the House of Representatives (2003-2007), after which he ran for the office of governor under the Congress for Progressive Change (CPC) party but lost. Three years later, he made another attempt under the All Progressives Congress (APC) party, and, succeeded. In this interesting interview, the governor, a workaholic who works from morning till 11pm every weekday, as well as on Saturdays, tells Effects while he chose to beat this path in his style of governance. The man who grew up an orphan also reveals why he has refused to sit on his office seat since he assumed power in 2015.
How does it feel being governor of the President’s home state? Does it come with any form of bragging rights or benefits from the Federal Government or, does it come with pressure?
President Buhari is someone I have known long before he became the president. Likewise, he has known me before I became governor of the state, so we are not new to each other. I have always known him to be a straightforward person. The fact that he is from Katsina is immaterial because he does not give us anything extra and he does not influence anybody to come here for any favour. The privilege of being the governor of the president’s state does not come with any bragging right. In fact, it won’t pay me to brag about it. What will count in my favour is what I am able to do with the little resources available to the people of the state. That is what will be in the ears of Mr. President on a daily basis. As regards pressure, what I know is that whatever we do in Katsina is right before his eyes and in his ears because 80 per cent of the people around the president are from Katsina, and not everyone of them is our friend.
You were once Speaker of the House of Representatives. What are the differences between the office of the governor and Speaker? What are the experiences you gained as a Speaker that have impacted the way you discharge your duties as governor?
Let me start from the last part of the question. From my little experience, people who have served at the national level have a better understanding of issues than people who spent time at the state level because of the exposure. So, if you carry out a survey, you will find out that in most cases, I am not saying in all cases, those that served at the federal level do better than those that do not have that kind of experience. If someone from here who has no experience of serving at the federal level is talking, he may talk about Daura to Funtua, it is the two ends of the state. But somebody who has served at the federal level, who has been to Bonny Island in Rivers State, Bama in Borno State and Ilela in Sokoto to Badagry in Lagos and then Abuja, will look at the other person and laugh because he will be talking from his little and narrow experience. His perception and understanding of issue would be totally different from that of the other person who has a much wider view and better understanding of issues. However, the problem that people who have served at the federal level have when they come down to serve at the state level is how to come to the level of the people, how to use their experience to relate and communicate with them so that they understand him and he understands them too. Really, there is no basis for comparison between a governor and the Speaker. The governor is the chief executive of the state and has direct access to the resources of the state. He can construct housing projects, road projects and schools projects for the people, but a Speaker or Senate President cannot do any of those. The best he can do is to put his interest in the budget and lobby the president or the appropriate minister to implement the project so that he can make an impact. Again, the pressures are different. The pressure in the House of Representatives and the Senate is more intense because every member of the legislature, all of the 360 members of the House in the case of the House of Representatives are qualified to occupy the seat of the Speaker. You are only first among equals. It is a position that you can go into and come out as an ordinary person; likewise you can go in as a Senate President and come out as an ordinary Senator. To balance the contending interests and carry your colleagues along with you is not easy. But as a governor, everybody here is at my beck and call.
The issue of padding in the National Assembly has become a recurrence in every budgetary cycle. What is your perspective on it?
The issue of padding didn’t happen during our time. And no member of the National Assembly can pad without the connivance of the Executive because ultimately they are the ones to implement the budget. So, if I pad the budget in connivance with a minister, the minister is equally guilty because I cannot pad the budget without the active connivance of the political head of that ministry. During our time, there was no padding; what obtained was that we put in what is called constituency projects. How that came about was that in 1999 all the governors and members of the National Assembly were elected without the influence of the other. When we went into the National Assembly, most of the governors then didn’t regard members of the National Assembly as anything. As it were then, when a governor constructed and commissioned a project, in say my community, local government or constituency, you found that the Commissioner, member of the House of Assembly, or even a minister often incite members of the area against the National Assembly, saying your representative at the National Assembly, what has he done for you? What project has he initiated or commissioned in your area whereas we are in the same party and supposed to share the credits when our party initiate, complete and commission projects in a particular constituency but you find yourself being sidelined by a commissioner or another political appointee or even by a member of the House of Assembly who is angling for your seat. That was what gave rise to the issue of constituency project. People want to put projects in the budget so that they can go back home and say I have brought this. That is what the local governments should actually be doing because the Federal Government has no business constructing boreholes, primary healthcare delivery clinics. Even constructing housing scheme is not the business of the Federal Government. We inherited some of these practices from the military era and we have not been able to do away with them.
You often say you took over a badly managed state. Was there anytime you felt like quitting based on the scale of problems you met when you mounted the saddle?
We knew it was bad, but never knew it was this bad. Leadership is about having the courage to face the most difficult task. If I run away from Katsina where will I go? My relations including my siblings that are in the village, where will they go? There was no time I felt like quitting the job.
What kept you going?
What kept me going was faith. I have faith that the job is challenging yet do-able; that we can do it; what is required is a lot of sacrifice and we are lucky. Till now, we are one of the first states to pay salaries in spite of the little that accrue to us from the federation account. And what we have been able to achieve in the area of education, agriculture, water supply, security, healthcare delivery in three and half years, they couldn’t achieve it in eight years. The rehabilitations we are doing in the education sector, for example, are being done to last. We are not just flooring the classrooms, we are building schools and the floors are being done with pure terrazzo. So, in the event of a worst-case scenario, the schoolchildren can sit on the floor. So far, we have rebuilt 282 classroom blocks. We have also built 746 new classroom blocks at primary school level. We have also completely upgraded and re-modelled all our girls’ secondary schools and improved them.
You were head of a firebrand House of Representatives during the turbulent period of third term agitation. Again, you said you met enormous challenges when you assumed office as governor of the state. But you were never daunted. What is your source of courage?
Well, I will say first and foremost (my inspiration comes) from God Almighty because I lost my father when I was two years old. I was practically brought up by my mother. That said, I have never been afraid of challenges all my life, probably because I grew up as an orphan and I had to fight through life, I have had to fight to get everything that I have. Probably, that has helped too. But really, it is a question that I cannot answer. I can only say it is from God.
Sir, I learnt that you don’t sit on your chair behind your desk?
Why I don’t like sitting on that seat (pointing to his official seat), is that this seat does not appeal to me. If you go to the president’s office, I don’t think it is as high as this one. The seat reminds me of Jean Fidel Bokassa when he was crowned Emperor of Zaire, so I detest the seat.
In that case, why have you not disposed of it?
It is government property. Even as the governor of the state I have no right to dispose of government property.
Are you saying you have never sat on it even once?
The only time I sat on it was after our swearing in; they insisted I sit on it to take photographs. I have never sat behind that desk since after 29th of May 2015.
Today is a Saturday and the time is 10 minutes past 8pm and here you are still attending to state matters, what is your normal day like? Is it work, work and work? How do you relax?
We normally resume here at 11am at the latest when we don’t have engagements outside of the Government House. We don’t close until around 11pm and midnight every day.
How do you relax?
I don’t understand what you mean by rest. You see if you at war, you don’t sleep. If you try to sleep somebody else will wake you up: so I don’t think Nigeria needs sleepy leaders at the moment because there is so much work to be done. If we can get four to five hours sleep a day I think that is enough for us.
You were born on May 29. Do you celebrate Democracy Day or your birthday?
You know what? People around here don’t attach any significance to birthdays, so we celebrate Democracy Day.
What are you promising the electorate as you go about your re-election campaigns?
What we are promising is what we promised them during our first term because the fundamental issues in Katsina still remain the issue of education, issue of security and how to make clean water available and accessible to the people, all-year-round. As at last September, we had built over 786 boreholes across the state and I am not talking about the ones that the local governments have built because since we came, local governments have built not less than 100 boreholes. We visited all the local government areas during our campaigns and we collated the number of boreholes that they were able to build. Besides, since we constituted the caretaker committees for the councils every month we give them N10 million to do certain interventions in different areas of the lives of the people.