Education key to security, development in Gombe – Dankwambo

Dr. Ibrahim Hassan Dankwambo is a second term Governor of Gombe state, who is, no doubt, ahead of his peers in terms of provision of security and overall infrastructural development. In this interview, the former Accountant General of the Federation renders an account of his stewardship so far. CHAMBA SIMEH reports

 

In your inaugural speech you stated that education was your first, second and third priority, why did you choose education as your key government priority?

When we came, the school pass rate was less than 1percent, and to grow any society, we need a very good and enlightened population. Apart from the pass rate, we were also faced with youth restiveness in Gombe. At one time in our history, none of us can stay at work till 7pm for fear of being harassed on the way home, and the perpetrators were people who dropped out of school or had no school to go to, or no teachers to take care of their education. But I know that no matter how a person is, if he obtains even secondary school education, he will be better than somebody who hasn’t gone to school at all.

And if that person can advance to get a degree or an NCE, even if he doesn’t get government employment, he will find a way to engage himself and survive and consequently be a better person than others who roam the streets. I know that the most important resource is the human resource; all other things are a product of the human resource. So, why invest in building a plane, when I can invest in the person that can build a plane?

That is why we decided to invest in our people. When we came we realised we will require about N29 billion to maintain status quo, to upgrade and expand the schools to meet the specification of 45 to 50 students per classroom, hire teachers, get working materials, provide furniture and change the orientation from where people shy away from going to school to where they now go to school. So, we started work and the result today is that the pass rate has gone from less than 1percent in 2011 to around 26percent.

That gave rise to the need for a university that can accommodate about 2000 intake per annum. We discouraged government from giving overseas scholarships and taking children to private universities, because if we give overseas scholarships we will not give equal opportunity. You will find out that children of commissioners, governor or Chief of staff are the ones that will get the scholarships, while the ordinary Gombe person will not get the opportunity.

So, to make it equitable, we said no foreign scholarship except some few that we have done for specialized marine engineering and a few specialized ones for handicapped people. Otherwise, all the resources are channelled into our schools to improve and make them attractive for students.

What are you doing in the area of agriculture?

I have stopped going to meetings on agriculture because we have reached up to 420 percent yield per hectare in agriculture as measured by the Federal Ministry of Agriculture. At a time, I was even discouraging people from farming certain crops because in 2015 I went round urging people to farm cotton and wheat with the understanding that the excess cotton would be bought by the federal government. Provision was made for it in the federal budget, but it was not released. Being that it was at the peak of insecurity in the North-east, foreigners that used to come and buy cotton stopped.

At one time I had over 5 billion stock of cotton and wheat from one zone in Gombe state; they kept asking me to come and buy. I couldn’t buy because budgetary release for the mop up that the federal government promised did not happen, after asking us to push farmers to produce those crops. We lost election in that area because they thought we lied to them.

Other than that challenge, we have since completed other necessary aspects such as soil analysis, in terms of support to farmers, every year we do no less than 20-30 metric tons of fertilizer with improved variety of seeds. For the small farmers, we buy bulls and ploughs yearly; we give them 100 per ward. We give them soft loans, we started with over N600million revolving facility that has grown to about N1.8 billion now. We have also supported dry season farming yearly, we eat fresh in Gombe.

We already have clusters for groundnut harvesters and rice millers. I discouraged them from bringing large rice mills, because if we do that it will take away jobs from the small millers, so I thought it was better to have small mills that will hire about five people than have one big machine and only about 10 or 20 people will be employed. After reaching these milestones in agriculture, we decided to develop the concept of commodity farming, because one of the things that discourage farming is the lack of guaranteed prices. So we initiated the commodity exchange, a simple concept that will involve government and the private sector.

Government will provide about N5-10 billion yearly as liquid cash, through borrowing, to fund the market. When farmers harvest they take it to the commodity market, already knowing how much they will get. So if the market is steady for 3-5 years, the private sector can now begin to invest in farmers to get certain quantity of commodity, knowing that their return on investment is certain. This is how financial markets are developed. This is how jobs are developed around the agric sector.

When they say agric is the largest employer of labour, it is not that everyone will become a farmer, it is the institutions created around the market that brings employment. So, the concept of agriculture as an employer of labour has to be well understood and modified. We did the costing and design of this concept and sent it to the Federal Ministry of Agriculture for them to support us, because it’s a project that is above us.

Suddenly, we heard that some silos are privatized, because one of the finance aspects is the silos for storage, we bided, so that what we will only need to do is to bring technology and liquidity into the market. Then I heard that they say I am PDP, why should I be allowed to do it? I don’t know what is PDP in food provision in this country, when we all have collective responsibility as leaders?

Notwithstanding, I said they should do it in an APC state, that I will give them the concept and support them, because my objective is for Nigeria to grow, we should start thinking as collective leaders. The next thing a “white man” (European) approached me to say he bought the silos that I should construct roads for him. I asked what he was building around the silos.

He said he is selling flour. He will be buying flour and cassava and be storing there before he will transport them to Lagos where his company is situated. I said I will provide him any support he needs. Fundamentally, what I’m saying is that there is solution around making agriculture a business. I will keep on emphasizing that it is not about creating 100 farmlands of one hectare each for 100 youths.

At the rate we are growing, the American ambassador recently visited me and said by their projection, Nigeria will be 500 million people by year 2050. So there won’t be farmlands anymore, we will occupy all our land space with housing as population grows. So, we should start thinking of agriculture as business in some other modern ways.

 

‘…Gombe ‘ll be North-east industrial hub’

Where is the place of technology in Gombe in the future that you see?

From my understanding, the places of our traditional universities are fast becoming very archaic. I think there are things that are not adequately catered for. For example, when an architect designs a building, builds and delivers it, you may not need an architect to work on the building again in the next 20-25 years, but every day you will need someone to check the bulbs, trippings, or cracks in the walls. So, the place of technology is the place that we are supposed to be in today, we should discourage routing university and discourage as many people as possible from going into those straight jacket courses; but a university where there will be research in things that will improve maintenance, sustenance and bring innovation about how to prolong the life span of projects.

When we started, I thought the school of technical education will be the solution, so we constructed so many of them. There’s a mentality that it’s not enough for one to get a certificate from technical and vocational skill course, because of the kind of attachment given to paper certificate in Nigeria. So, we built the Science and Technology University to sustain the technical schools. From what we have done there, in the next 10 years there may not be need for any additional structure, according to the briefs that were prepared by the National Universities Commission (NUC) to us which captured the projected growth of the university.

 

How do you ensure security of Gombe state and what are you doing on healthcare?

We have done a lot in the area of healthcare. In the last six years we had only one case of polio and that was by mistake; it was a migration polio. One of the people displaced from Yobe State came and settled down here, but we discovered the person within the first five days of their migration to Gombe. We cleared and sanitized the place and since then there has been no single case of polio. We don’t experience the outbreak of other diseases such as cholera in Gombe, because to a large extent we maintain high standard of hygiene and environmental cleanliness amongst our people.

On security, let me first state that there is light always in Gombe. We have at least six hours of electricity daily. By virtue of our location in the centre of the North-east we knew it was necessary to light up the place because criminals tend to run from very bright places to dark places. We have invested so much on informants, equipment, and all sorts of formal and informal ways of ensuring safety of our people. So, the impact of what has happened in the North-east is very minimal, if not negligible, in Gombe state.

Proactively, we have taken so many measures that I will not begin to state now, to achieve safety as bottom line. So, having put all these measures in place, in 2016 we set the agenda for industrialization of the state. We have set up clusters for so many trades, intervening for people to be independent entrepreneurs, negotiate for providers of finance and educate them on how to access facilities to start up their businesses. So far, we have created over 20, 000 direct and indirect jobs, since 2012. This figure was articulated by the Federal Ministries of Agriculture, Trade and Industry and the Bank of Industry (BoI) because we have collaboration with them.

In achieving our industrialization agenda, landmass is the main challenge we have. We have to maximize by creating clusters, taking cognizance the comparative advantage of towns and local governments depending on what their strengths are.

 

How did you get round finding solution to Gombe problem?

When we came we reviewed what was on ground and felt it was better to carry everybody along because one person cannot really find solutions to Gombe people. They are very difficult people but they are also very appreciative. It’s just like what this administration should have done.

When expectation is high, then you need to let people know what the real situation is so that you manage people’s expectation and understanding and they get to know what they should realistically expect from you. So, in our case, Gombe people were involved in governance from day one. They were carried along in decisions and they are ready to make sacrifices because they know why you are taking those decisions.

And even in our national governance, some of the key things that happen is in the process of trying to score political points that we try to take our people by surprise. Human beings don’t want to be taken by surprise, it is not birthday present. For decisions that affect their lives, they want to be carried along, they want to fine-tune and add value to those decisions so that over all everyone becomes a winner. So, we had the solution because everybody was carried along, we all were moving and interacting together.

We formed 11-man committee and we vowed not to discriminate against any citizen of Gombe state whether by virtue of his faith, political affiliations or where he lives. We brought in everyone from across political parties. We brought in professionals. We assembled over 50 professors, experts in engineering, science and technology and related sectors. We discussed and agreed on certain conclusions.

So, on education, we have a plan, in health and related sectors we also have a plan. After each year of implementation we came together to review. So, all the development in Gombe state was by agreed design, standards; none was by accident. If we award you a project, all the stages are specified and standardized, and we have a team of professionals to follow-up and ensure that our set quality and standard is maintained. A standard road should last for about 30 years. So, the roads we are constructing now are expected to last that long, not a situation where contractors cut corners and the roads go bad within two years.

 

How did you achieve executing these projects in spite of paucity of funds?

I always tell people that I was accountant general of the federation. I know how much money I released to federal government and I know how much money is being released to federal government today. I think it’s all about sincerity of leadership. Priority and problems of governance differ and vary from one place to the other. The approach to solving them also differs.

Maybe my priority is to invest in qualitative and better things here while in some places their priority is completely different. So, the available resources are not the matter here. I want to tell you we still have states that are paying N3, 500 minimum wage and some even owe it 7 months in arrears. So, management of funds by my training depends on the prioritization and sincerity of the leadership.

 

Despite all your landmark achievements, why has Gombe state been under-reported?

I agree with you that we have shied away from publicity, maybe it’s because of my training. You know, accountants are not noisy. I agree that we have been conservative, but this is because I felt we are expected to provide these things. I don’t see it as if we are doing anything different which we need to be announcing. But I have seen one of my colleagues commissioning transformer with red carpet. I saw another commissioning classroom; another was on a live TV coverage of competition for skinning cow while one was distributing donkeys and bicycles as empowerment.

However, after taking some milestones we thought it is good to open up Gombe state, not for the purpose of scoring political points but for people to develop interest and invest in Gombe. For me, this is just a part time job, it will finish in about two years and I will take my laptop and go back to my profession as an accountant. My expectation is that when the next government comes in, they will review what we have done and see what they will carry forward, that is the meaning of continuity.

Continuity is not PDP go PDP come or APC go APC come. Continuity is sustenance of policies and programmes of government. And I can guarantee that any governor that comes next will be judged by Gombe people within six months of his term, because they know what the standard of a road or school is in Gombe. So, the people can rebel to bring you in and they can rebel to take you out.

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