If I am elected as the president, I will ensure that the education sector attracts the best brains by working with the states to achieve targeted salary increase for teachers and lecturers. You cannot have a local government councillor earning more money than a lecturer and expect our best brains to be attracted to the academia. I would change that.
I was shocked to find out that Nigerians spend a billion dollars to educate their children in Ghana every year. When you add the cost of educating their wards in Europe and America, you are looking at a further $1 billion. I am assuring you that if we invest in our education sector and make it as good as Ghana’s and definitely even better, that $2 billion will no longer leave Nigeria. It will circulate internally and boost the quality of our education and the value of our Naira.
Recently, you were said to have promised to devote 21 per cent of your national budget to education. Tell us, how you will do this because we actually need a concrete plan of action and specificity in this regard?
Yes, I did make that commitment and I make it here again. I pledge that if I am chosen by my party, the Peoples Democratic Party, to be its presidential candidate, and if I am subsequently elected as the President by Nigerians, I will go above and beyond the United Nations’ recommendations and ensure that a minimum of 21 per cent of the federal budget is devoted to education. Beyond that, I will reserve 10 per cent of that amount to further and continuous education for our public school teachers. Nigeria’s education sector must progress from creating job seekers. We must train our teachers to train our children to be job creators as well.
As for the specifics, for the last 10 years, Nigeria has budgeted the equivalent of $30 billion at the federal level, give or take. Twenty-one per cent of that is about $6.5 billion. I already mentioned to you that if elected as the president, I would sit with the heads of the legislature and the judiciary for the purpose of coming to an agreement on how we can scale down our overheads.
On the side of the executive, there are so many things we can cut down on. Recently, I wanted to go to Azerbaijan and I found out that they don’t have an embassy in Nigeria or any other country near Nigeria. To get a visa, you apply online to their foreign office.
Nigeria maintains literally hundreds of embassies and foreign missions in multiple nations that we really do not need. We can close down two-thirds of these missions and have one embassy service as many as four nations in the geographic vicinity. We can use technology to provide consular services.
In 2018, we budgeted N63 billion for recurrent expenditure in foreign affairs. Under an Atiku presidency, we would spend only a quarter of that. The rest will go to education.
In the same budget, we are spending N1 trillion paying salaries for our military and paramilitary officers and men, and less than half of that paying salaries in the education sector. As an educator, I see the problem immediately. The less you spend on education the more you have to spend on security. The more you spend on education the less you have to spend on security. It is interconnected. We are having to spend so much on defence because over the years we have not invested enough in education. Beginning from my first year, I will reverse that. The money will be re-channelled to education.
In the 2018 budget, we have N112 billion going to the Office of the Secretary to the Government of the Federation. To do what? Award grass cutter contracts? Under an Atiku administration, whoever is the Secretary to the Government of the Federation just has to find a way to manage 10 per cent of that money. The rest will go to education. I am serious about this. This is not rhetoric. I have achieved it in my private capacity as an educator and if given the chance, I will replicate it in Nigeria’s public sector.
Nigeria nationalised education in 1975 and that has been the root of the crisis in the education sector. How would you resolve that particular issue of centralised control of education that has destroyed the educational system? Would you allow states to have total control over education, limiting federal intervention to the barest level? And how would you use the increased budgetary allocation to education you have proposed to ensure our education is more relevant to the economic and scientific growth of the country?
I believe I answered the first part of your question when I said I would use Executive Orders to devolve some powers. To be more specific, by Executive Order, the President can hand over universities to the states in which they are located. By Executive Order, the President can also hand over all unity secondary schools to the states in which they are located. Where these schools were taken over by the Federal Government from religious bodies and missions, they should be returned to such religious bodies and missions.
As to the second part of your question, the bulk of the 21 per cent sectorial allocation will not go towards paying salaries, as is currently the case. Almost half will go towards infrastructure and capacity building. I will set up a fund for the compulsory training and continuous education of all Nigerian teachers. I will issue an Executive Order mandating that all Nigerian schools must be WiFi-equipped at federal government expense. We will work with the private sector to take in students as interns so that they can learn on the job during their holidays and the federal government will be responsible for paying these students a learning bursary.
Our research and development agencies will be retooled. They must deliver. How could the Buhari administration be considering importing grass from Brazil when we have research agencies like the Federal Institute of Industrial Research, Oshodi, and the non-government owned International Institute of Tropical Agriculture, Ibadan? I would order our research agencies to work with fully Nigerian-owned businesses, like Innoson Motors. Because of the immense successes we have had at the American University of Nigeria, Yola, I know that Nigeria as a whole can have similar successes.
Are you going to devolve responsibilities for education to the states? And how will you engender competition among the states to ensure that the educational system is merit-driven?
I already answered this question and in some detail too. As to the second part of your question, the federal government will retain ministries and agencies, like the ministry of education and the National Universities Commission and other agencies for other levels of education to ensure that minimal national standards are in force in institutions. As long as these institutions maintain these standards, the federal government will continue to intervene in those institutions through the initiatives I already outlined.
Some people are worried about your age. Many also say that you don’t have the cult-like followership that Buhari has, to be able to win the election. The belief is that even though you have national support, winning the presidential election is still going to be a tall order. What is your reaction to this?
How old am I versus the incumbent? I know when I was born. This is my exact age. I do not have a football age. But the issue is even beyond age. It is about fitness. I am fit. I am ready to publish my medical records and I challenge all those who are running, including the incumbent, to give that same assurance. As to the cult-like following, yes, you are right, I am not a cultist, nor will I ever be. The history of the human race has shown that personality cults do more harm than good. But if this cult is so powerful, how come it could not help elect Muhammadu Buhari in 2003, 2007 and 2011? How come Nasir el-Rufai, my former protégé, said on October 4, 2010 that Buhari is ‘perpetually unelectable’?
The truth, which you and I know, is that without the support of Bola Tinubu, Buhari would not have been elected as the President, his cult followership notwithstanding.
Some have also said that your chances of being president would be enhanced if you commit to only one term so that you will be the bridge between the old and the future. Would you commit to one term only?
Of course, I would! I have said this before on my own initiative. I believe in it. If I am elected as the President in 2019, I give an undertaking that I would only do one term.
Having said that, let me remind Nigerians that Buhari also gave such an undertaking in 2011, but he is not living up to it today. My own case will be different. I am prepared to sign an undertaking to do only one term.
Are you not just saying this to get the ticket and, ultimately, get elected after which you would feel no obligation to honour your words? But how do you make us believe you, since Buhari, as you have said, failed to honour his own 2011 pledge?
I am not Muhammadu Buhari. I do not make promises I cannot keep. I am assuring Nigerians that I will keep this promise. I am making it out here in the open. I am willing to sign a written document. If you or any other Nigerian can come up with an iron-clad legal document that binds me, I am willing to publicly commit to it.
Would you eliminate State of Origin and replace it with State of Birth to herald a new Nigeria?
I have said this publicly before now. And this is not a new thing. The first elected mayor of Enugu, Umaru Altine, was a Fulani resident of the coal city. On the 10th of November, 1956, Altine was also elected the leader of his local branch of the NCNC without any opposition.
In fact, our constitution does not give prominence to this dichotomy. That is why my party, the PDP, fielded Oghene Egoh, from the South-south, and Rita Orji and Tony Nwolu from the South-east, as candidates for election into the House of Representatives, representing Lagos constituencies and the good thing is that they won. So, it is already happening, and if I am elected as the president, it will become an official government policy.
The APC has been mobilising to remove the Senate President and his deputy. How do you see a move like this by a party that benefitted from defections that it celebrated with fanfare a couple of years ago, which, of course, helped it to win the 2015?
Hypocrisy has always been the APC’s stock in trade. They claimed that the PDP mismanaged Nigeria for 16 years, yet in just three years of APC being in power, Nigeria experienced a recession, which we never experienced under the PDP. Nigeria’s currency became the fourth worst performing currency in the world and in just three years, they have taken more loans than the PDP took in 16 years. They claim the PDP was corrupt, yet Nigeria made its best showing in Transparency International’s annual Corruption Perception Index under the PDP in 2014 when we moved eight places forward, from 144 to 136. Meanwhile, under the so-called anti-corruption government of the APC, we made our worst performance ever, moving 12 places backward, from 136 to 148.
They claim that the PDP lost the war on terror and they declared victory. But look at where we are today? Terror has spread nationwide and the man who said the PDP was weak on terror says there is nothing he can do but pray! So when you talk about hypocrisy and the APC, you are referring to two evil twins that are so identical that one can pass for the other.
How would you resolve the security challenge in the country – Boko Haram, ISIS, herdsmen, etc.? Many worry that the spate of killings threatens the very existence of the country. Why do you think it is so difficult for the government to protect lives and property?
It is all about leadership. Pure and simple. I have said it before that Nigeria has 150,000 policemen performing non-core police functions, chief of which is guarding VIPs. Do you know that Leah Sharibu’s father, Nathan, is a policeman? He is a member of the Nigerian Police Force’s Special Protection Unit. Just look at how we failed him and his family as a nation. At a time when he was protecting others, nobody was protecting his daughter’s school in Dapchi. How do you think he will feel?
My solution to the current insecurity in Nigeria is that I would commercialise the Special Protection Unit. Those 150,000 policemen will still guard VIPs and the private sector. But those VIPs and the private sector will have to pay for their services. From the money realised, we will recruit an additional 150,000 policemen and send them to security hot spots, thereby creating jobs by securing the nation.
It is all about priorities. The other day we had an election in Ekiti State and this administration mobilised 30,000 policemen there. Then two weeks later, the government proudly announced that they were sending a 1,000-strong force to tackle the scourge of banditry in Zamfara State. Under an Atiku presidency, this will not happen.