We realised that you are more of a banker and development specialist. Why did you venture into politics?
I have worked in many places. I started my career as a university lecturer by accident. I said by accident because it was not my personal decision. I went to the university and did very well and came out with First Class in economics at the Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria. The university decided that I cannot serve elsewhere; I must serve in the same department where I just graduated. That was how I started my academic career, did my masters and PhD. I also lectured at the University of Ilorin, then went to banking and worked in three banks. I was a resource person for Revenue Allocation Committee at the Constitutional Conference in 1994. I was also a Special Assistant to the minister of Industries for a period of about three years. So, politics is not new to me, I have been part of it. I have been doing politics at the grassroots and I decided at this point in time to be more active because, the condition in my state is very deplorable. Look at any index of development; you will see that we will be counted from below.
Most politicians feels they are endowed intellectually but they ended up getting confused after winning election. What difference can you make?
I will make a large, huge difference. You see, I am highly focused, I know what to do. As I speak, I am already talking to investors outside Nigeria on the kind of things that I want to do, about the kind of investment that I want to bring to Kogi State. If you see the way I am talking to people, you will think that I have already won the election and just waiting to be sworn in. I told people that I will hit the ground running, because I am fully prepared as to what I want to do. In fact, I have already visited the United States of America in the course of my campaign where I spent seven days talking to people, talking to Kogi State indigenes that are living there because I know exactly what I want to do.
There are about 27 aspirants so far gunning for the ticket of the APC. Don't you think the stage is crowded?
The stage is crowded; there is no doubt about that. But it remains for the electorate… I know before the time, there may be reason to trim down the number but if that didn't happen, it will be unfortunate that we will split the votes. But I believe that we are becoming more enlightened, we are becoming more educated and we have suffered enough that the people have started looking for politicians that will actually bring about development to them. People are suffering and I will give you an instance. If you retire as a senior citizen of the state, they will say no money to pay your entitlements. On monthly basis, they make an allocation of one million naira to a local government to pay gratuity. How many people will share one million naira? Majority will have nothing to receive and many will die not receiving their benefits. Today, teachers are not paid, schools are closed. At a point, two months ago, Kogi State was looking at the possibility of paying 60 percent of salary. You can't reduce somebody's salary and expect him to be happy. Today, if you ply the roads in our state capital, they are full of potholes, you will be dancing on the road. As if to say that is not enough, the roads have become dumping ground for refuse.
Don't you think it is because of the dwindling revenue on the other hand?
No, it is not the dwindling revenue.
Before the revenue dwindled, which area will you say we did well?
Assuming you get the APC ticket to run, how would you confront the incumbent or any candidate of the PDP or other parties?
You see, defeating an incumbent is now common as far as Nigeria is concerned because even at the federal level, the incumbent has been defeated. It is also not difficult in the states because incumbents have been defeated. What I will let you know is that today in Kogi State, assuming we live in a country where you can do a poll easily and get the view of the people, we know that the rating of the present government will be less than 30 percent.
And if you win, what will be your key concern?
My key concern is to empower the people economically. One of the issues that we have is serious under development and very serious unemployment and this is also the reason for serious insecurity. So, I would address insecurity and work hard to create employment.
How would you give the people jobs?
(Cuts in) In the last ten years, I can tell you there has not been any regular employment in Kogi State and because of this, there will be some opening that we need to fill. For example, I will employ people in the ministry of works because I am going to do a lot of direct road construction, so there will be some employments that needs to be done like civil engineers and the rest. But those are the least I am looking at. I am looking at job creation and let me give you a little example of how I want to create jobs. We have all the natural resources you can talk about in Kogi State. We have minerals and in terms of agriculture, we have fertile land that can grow all kinds of agricultural products which we are going to use as the major base of development but in a different way. We have about two or three local government areas where you can grow a lot of rice. I have spoken to people abroad who are ready to bring sophisticated agricultural implements to us so that we cultivate large expanse of land that we would share to stakeholders, farmers, and youths. At harvest time, we would deploy harvesters and then pay all the farmers so that they have their money. We then move the produce to factories that will process them. We will set up milling companies where we would employ people. Even youths in the cities will come back home and take up farming.
I will do this for different kinds of products. I am thinking of something that does not exist in any state today in the federation. I want to turn Kogi to a biofuel state where we will be producing biofuel and biodiesel. You can get this fuel from a plant we call Jatropha and also from Sugarcane. We will grow them massively and again you get people employed. Then we will also put up the factories that will process the biofuel and biodiesel. Little bit of it will be consumed domestically while large part of it will be exported.
Do you think you can do all these in just four years?
Doing it in four years is not an issue, I will start almost immediately. What does it take you to start agriculture? It does not take time.
In four years, once you are focused and say yes, this is what you are going to do, you can achieve a lot. It is only when you are not sure of what you want to do that you will spend one year thinking of what to do and then another one year going for study tour.
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