Dikko Umaru Radda, Katsina state governor-elect, is the immediate past Director General Small and Medium Enterprises Development Agency of Nigeria (SMEDAN).
In this interview, he speaks on his victory at the governorship polls, his plans for the state and what he expects from the people of Katsina, among others. BODE OLAGOKE, reports.
How did you feel when you saw your dreams of becoming a governor come to through and what should the people of Katsina state expect immediately when you are sworn in?
There is nothing spectacular about being a governor. I think it’s just a responsibility that someone has to do. And when I was declared the winner and when I saw the overwhelming victory that I received in my state, it gave me joy but sometimes with a mixed feeling that the people of Katsina state have now given me the mandate. What is left is for me to deliver on the mandate and I know that the people of Katsina have a lot of hope in me; they believe in me, they have given me their mandate.
I won 33 local government areas in Katsina state out of the 34 councils. Even in the remaining one I got very high votes and that has given me joy. When you look at the results in Katsina state across the polling units, the wards, and the local governments, the pattern is almost the same. We can only count the number of polling units that we did not win, which I believe are not up to 10% of the total polling units. I think this is a very great victory and this has shown that the people believe so much in what we have said and what we have done before, and the task is now on me.
So when I was announced winner of the election, what I did was to prostrate to the Almighty God and thanked Him for what He has done for me. So many people never thought I would win the election. Thinking of what has happened, a lot of issues pertaining to insecurity, under our government, APC, I can say despite all these challenges, including the cash crunch, the naira redesign, which brought a lot of hardship on our citizens, a lot of people felt with these things APC may not win election, but in Katsina, it has happened. We got it and we thank Almighty Allah for the victory. And we know that we have a task ahead of us. So, we are ready to face the challenges to confront all the problems and try to provide lasting solutions to them.
Across the country there’s so much outcry about the conduct of the elections, including voters’ suppression, violence. What is your assessment of the entire election and why is that of Katsina state different from the others?
I have been in the field since 1983. I was a polling clerk in 1983. I think this is the first time I have seen an election that allows people’s vote to count. The BVAS has done a lot of good to the country. It has done a lot of good to the development of democracy in our country. All those figures that we used to see before – millions of voters, instead only 200 or 300 people voted. It is no longer so this time around. Any vote that you see was really the vote that was cast. I’m not saying that in any election you can have 100% success. There must be issues. There were so many people who attempted to snatch ballots boxes, but at the end of it, they ended up having those polling units cancelled. There are some people who tried to do overboard by getting a lot of ballot papers and thumbprint them but at the end of it, those ballot boxes were cancelled because the number of accredited voters was lower than the number of votes cast. So I think it really helped to conduct a very transparent election we have ever seen, even though people were saying that APC did not win the state which was wrong. We had three elections on that same day. We won three senatorial districts, and when you look at the margin of votes for APC Senators, between the PDP senators, is almost in the range of about 50,000 votes. When you look at the House of Reps election, we had 15 House of Reps members and we won nine out of the 15. If you look at the margin in the presidential election, it is only about 6,000 and Katsina is the third state that provided the highest votes for Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu.
So for what really happened at the presidential election, you cannot take away tribal sentiment and religion, especially, in the core North. I think that was what played out and that was the reason we got that presidential margin in Katsina state. When it comes to gubernatorial election, people were more concerned. They wanted to elect their governor and House of Assembly members. It is only the elite that are concerned about the presidential election because they are the people that can reach out to Abuja but people at the grassroots are concerned about who is going to be their governor. What Katsina did this time around is that they voted for credibility and merit. People no longer care about political party and I have said it before that political parties in Nigeria have nothing to judge because when you look at it, people jump from one political party to the other to meet their aspirations, and not because of the ideologies of that political party, not because they believe in what those political parties are delivering. So people in Katsina state now voted for credibility, merits and quality leadership. If you measure the leaders or the people that contested for the governorship election, it is very simple to separate between light and darkness. So Katsina state has done it and they have shown it.
What’s your blueprint for the people of Katsina state?
I think a year before I aspired to become a governor, I already had my blueprint. We call it building a future and we have a strategic policy to back a packet and this strategic policy has some focus areas and that is why I take this strategic policies so dear to my heart because it’s something that we’ve conceived. It’s something that we analysed, it is something that we produced and this is part of what we put. Our focus areas is insecurity. We want to tackle the issue of security in Katsina state. This is our major area of concern.
Secondly, we want to also reform the public service. Public Service needs to be reformed. We need to digitalize it, we need to provide training or retraining for our public servant because they are the bridge within which you can carry out your policies. If you don’t reform the public service, you cannot carry your policy down to the local level. So we need to reform the public service in terms of retraining, digitalizing the system, making them very knowledgeable and skillful, so that they can achieve the policy direction of our administration. We also want to look at education which is also a cardinal part of any development in any nation. Healthcare is also our major concern because when you look at the social aspect of our society, because of this insurgency, there are so many people who are displaced from their houses, there are so many old men who cannot carter for themselves. They need the help of the government.
So we want to also establish public care scheme and this public care scheme will need at least 15 Public Social Care Centers that will cater for those categories of people in Katsina state. We also want to prepare the local economy and MSMEs because this is the engine room for any economic development and that is the only way you can provide the job opportunity for our teeming youths. That is where I will bring the experience in the lives of the people of Katsina state, which I did when I was the DG of Small and Medium Scale Enterprise Development Agency of Nigeria (SMEDA). I want to also establish an agency like SMEDAN which will be under the office of the governor so that I can handle it seriously and ensure that it’s effective down to the people. And then we also want to look at the internally generated revenue. We don’t want a situation whereby the state will continue to rely on the federal allocation for its activities. We also want to look at the internally generated revenue and land reforms. We want to review our land and also review our masterplan so that we can have a state of our dream, a capital of our dream, and this is the policy direction of our administration.
But before you get into this focus areas, you need to have some blocks for you to build. Any foundation you have to lay needs blocks and the blocks that we are using to lay our strategic policy is the budget. You need to have your budget, determine how much money you have, how will you spend it, how you will allocate it to the various sectors of the economy. You must have the skills, the knowledge. Those personnel that are going to carry the policy must be forced to have the knowledge to do it at the right time. So capacity is very important. You need to have the organisation to carry down these policies. If you have these organisations in existence, you have to see how you will review those organisation so that we meet your needs and you need to have laws where they are lacking.
So you need to formulate laws through the state assembly so that you can achieve what you want to achieve and security because without security you cannot do anything and then you also need to have the community. Our approach is going to be community based approach. We will do it from the bottom to the top. We will not stay at our offices under the comfort of ACs and design policies for our people, we must carry the policy down and that was the only thing that informed my decision to go down to each and every ward in the state during my campaign so that I can have firsthand information from the people. As I’m speak to you now, all the information and the request we’ve collected from those people in the rural areas, we have used them to form a booklet which is going to be our guiding principle. We will be using that booklet whenever we are formulating a budget or anything. We will look at that book, pick those areas that the money can handle, do it and continue to do that so that we meet the yearnings and aspirations of the people. I told you I have a very huge challenge because the people have a lot of confidence in me.
How tough was it to win the governorship race and what challenges did you encounter?
I mentioned that PDP fought. Of course, definitely they will fight and we are lucky for two things; First of all, I told you that Katsina is an early state, I think because the first secondary school during the colonial masters in the northern part of the country was built in Katsina state, most of the prominent people from Katsina who were in the First Republic, were the product of that college and I think people just decided that they will go for credibility and merits and that is what made it easy. In Katsina state, there was no violence, there was nothing. People came out and voted peacefully; the collation was peaceful. I think even those people who were challenging the election could not come out during the election; may be they carried baseless allegations. And all the people know that those allegations were baseless because we won all the local governments which is so amazing. I think there were some journalists who covered the election in Katsina state who can give you more information about what happened. We never had any serious violence during the election. It was seamlessly done and people are happy about what happened. PDP gave us a fight for a person who scored 450 but I think it is a good fight and we just feel that we are extending our hand of fellowship and friendship to them so that we can work together to move Katsina state forward. The era of politics is now over.
What do you expect from opposition parties and the people of Kastina?
I think for the opposition, I’m expecting each and every one of them to come on board let’s build Katsina state together and I think for anybody who aspired to be a governor of the state, his mind is just on the people. What do I do to change the lives of the people? How do I provide better living standard for the people? I think that is the essence of government. So for anybody to aspire to be a governor, and in any election there should be a winner and a loser. And I’ve said it even before now I have prayed to Almighty God, to give me the best for the people of Katsina. God give this leadership to me and if there is anybody who is better than me, God give that leadership to you. But despite this prayer God gave me the leadership. I got elected. So that means I have a lot of tasks ahead of me. So I’m expecting all of them. And I’ve said it over and over. Please come over. The term of politics is over so let us come on board.
