One year in office: How my govt is transforming Kastina – Gov Radda

Malam Dikko Radda is the executive governor of Katsina state. He recently marked his one-year in office. In this interview, he speaks about his achievements within the year, his major challenge of insecurity and how his government is tackling the challenge and what the state should expect going forward, among others.

What has been the journey so far?

We came in last year confronted with multiple issues, especially the burning issue of insecurity. We concluded that we must do something, as a state, not just fold our arms because security is under the control and sole responsibility of the federal government.
As a governor, I cannot just fold my hands and allow criminals to kill my people daily. I must do something to support what the federal government is doing to reduce the incidence of insecurity in the state.
When we took over, about 23 LGAs were categorised into two frontline areas. Eight of the number were the vulnerable ones and they were border front-line local governments.
Insecurity has gotten to places like Charanchi, Ingawa, Bindawa, and Kankia LGAs and moving into others but, as Almighty Allah will have it, when we came on board, we set up a local security outfit that has reduced it drastically. The battle has now shifted down to the frontline LGAs with only, maybe one or two, vulnerable ones that are affected in one way or the other from time to time.
Their tactics have changed from coming as they want, and molesting people as they want to carrying out almost 90 per cent of those attacks at night and in very hard-to-reach areas that take security agents about two to three hours. They are now in very bad terrains.
We have taken the battle with them to the next level. We have organised an operation in all the eight LGAs where the security agencies are attacking the bandits instead of waiting for them to attack. What we have done in months and still appraising our performances and assessing the operation to see the success before we strategise on the next stage which I don’t have to mention the details of our plans.
We have actually lost several people and several properties. This keeps occurring, the system, terrain, and strategy look almost the same. The security agents will need to study and do something different from what we used to do before. We had a series of security meetings which I don’t want to disclose, but we are also working toward eliminating the issues to the barest minimum.
We have been calling and seeking the synergy and collaboration of security agencies that have the most superior fighting power that can match what the bandits have. A few days ago, we had a bandit attack. They used a rocket propeller which hit one of our APC vehicles and made it to somersault. But, with the intervention of the security agencies we were able to restore calm, recover the vehicle, and rescue the personnel.
The war is not as easy as people think. It is a very difficult battle in which you don’t know which is your friend and enemy. You don’t even know if you are sleeping with an enemy in your house. Whatever strategy we put in place the people in the bush may get the information in 30 minutes or one hour before us.
That is what makes the war difficult. I remember our guest speaker recently, Patrick Lumumba said that everybody needs to be a policeman. It is only when all of us are police that we can provide valuable information that can make the war against banditry and criminality easier to control. However, the situation has not stopped us from pursuing some developmental projects or the benefits of the people of Katsina state.

What have been the challenges and your unfulfilled targets in your one year in office?

In our last council meeting, I told the members that we had not done enough because I thought by now the security would have improved much more than this. But, I can understand the challenges. I don’t want to be carried away by what we have been able to achieve in the first year because I am looking ahead. This is not what I wanted Katsina to be. I had set for myself a very high expectation.
I am working to match those expectations, but my major target as governor is always to make sure that the right person gets the right thing. That is why I moved away from the era of lobbying, political consideration, and favouritism to making sure that my approach to governance is to reach out to the people at the bottom of the pyramid.
I was so happy when we had the farewell event for the 41 students that we took to Egypt to do their MBA. They came from public schools, the children of the poor without the influence of one individual in this state. They got the opportunity based only on merit. They sat for the examinations and got the scholarship.
Why we did that was to give opportunity to everyone or anybody who wants to take his child to a public school. Their children will have the capacity to study anywhere in the world. We are targeting those who cannot take their children to private school because they can only afford public school. They are children of the poor and the opportunity was for everybody because we allow every LGA to produce the best they have.
When we recruited teachers in the state, I did not allow any member of my cabinet or Assembly to manipulate or influence decisions over who should be shortlisted. We allowed them to sit for the examination and everybody was given equal opportunity to get permanent and pensionable appointments.
Immediately after my swearing-in, I dissolved all the Permanent Secretaries and made them write examinations. If I can start from the top, everyone from the lower level should sit up because we are not here for a joke. That was one of my happiest moments at that time of my administration.
The saddest one was receiving calls that 20 people were killed at a place and their houses burnt. Some of their women were raped and some were kidnapped. The only way you can appreciate their pain is to place yourself in their position. The news will make one fall ill, especially myself who has already developed feelings because my elder brother was killed by the bandits.
He was the same father and same mother as me. He left behind 27 children and three wives. I don’t think there is any citizen of the state in one way or the other whose relative or somebody close to them has not been affected by the activities of the bandits. That does not only give us good sleep but also reduces our appetite. Sometimes, I feel why I should be here when people are killed and I can’t do anything.
That formed the debate for the state police. Before I became the Governor, I was one of the harshest critics of state police, but I have seen the need for it and I have seen the efforts the Katsina State Community Watch Corps is making toward tackling the insecurity.
It was utmost courage, determination, and sincerity that informed my decision to call on the President to make sure that any police officers from the rank of the ASP should be posted to his state of origin. Any military officer at the junior level should also be posted to their state of origin.
They will protect the lives of their people because they are their relatives, brothers, or sisters. If they like, let them allow people to kill them. The deployment will motivate people because they have everything at stake. I think the debate of the state police is apt now.
I keep wondering when people say that the state governors are going to manipulate state security apparatus to oppress their opponents. I wonder whether they were not in Nigeria when former President Jonathan, with all the security agencies, lost the election.
If they say that an elected governor is going to manipulate and use state apparatus against his opponent, what makes Mr. President a saint not to do it when he has control of all at the federal level? It is about leadership, responsibility, doing the right thing and at the right time. A leader should be guided by the laws and the constitution of Nigeria. No fear or favour.
We swore by that, it is the responsibility of the leader to use the apparatus appropriately for the benefit of the nation. If you use the state police against the opponent as a governor today, when you are out of office tomorrow your opponent will use it against you too. So, why can’t you do the right thing? It is about responsibility and having responsible leaders.

So, what kind of help do you think the federal government should give you to address this challenge of banditry in Katsina?

We must address the issue of insecurity squarely. As a country, the government must deploy technology in the fight against insecurity. What stops us from having a coordinated joint operation, from being proactive instead of reactive, why should we wait until they attack us before we retaliate, why can’t we launch attacks on a selective target? Why can’t we use drones, area surveillance, and trackers to defeat these people?
Fighting insecurity requires some level of strength. We have to show capacity in fighting insecurity before the people can relax. When there are issues of lack of coordination, it makes it difficult to control them. As a government, there should be a clear and supportive approach between the national and sub-national governments.
If they want to address the governors, they call them the chief security officers of the state, but in reality, we are not because we don’t control. We must address this holistically to have peace and development. The developments at these frontline LGAs have been destroyed by these bandits and it is retrogressing the state. We are channeling so many resources to help those affected. Inflation is not also helping matters.

What are you doing to expose these suspected government officials involved in banditry activities?

I hold the security agencies in high esteem because they too are being killed daily in their pursuit to curb the insecurity in the state. But the point is, there is no set category of people who are not involved in this. What are we hiding here? Who was not arrested? Different categories of people were arrested on allegations of being involved in banditry, criminality, and many other vices even here in Katsina.
I don’t know why people should be bothering themselves with why I said this other than the fact that some people want to fuel it. I still maintain that different categories of people, whether in government or anywhere, are involved. That is because there are several arrests and security reports we have. Even in prisons now, you will see the people we arrested from the security operatives, government officials, and traditional rulers.
But the issue we should understand is that we have bad eggs, good people everywhere, but we can’t get away from the bad ones, and bad eggs are with us. Why should they be here when you hear the information from the discussion you had after an hour or 30 minutes? Someone from those people who attended the meeting must have linked out the information.
You must ask yourself who told them that. It is not rocket science but logic. We don’t want to tell the truth because we don’t want to get to the root of the problem. We are shielding ourselves from wrongdoing. We must tell ourselves the truth. We have to examine ourselves. No organisation doesn’t have bad eggs in it. We should deal with it so that we get out of it.
But, when we keep hiding things that we don’t want to blackmail, it continues and there will be no time that it will end. So, it is high time we told ourselves the truth. When we do that, we will correct it. Somebody can challenge me by doing something wrong, and that may be the basis for my correction. Why should we be hiding things from ourselves? And that is one of the major problems affecting this country.

Is there any update on those you placed on surveillance in the state?

To answer your question, I will say yes that we have arrested a representative of a village head in Guga village in Bakori local government of the state because of his involvement with the bandits. He was given N700,000 to allow bandits access into his village to kill over 30 people.
The government deployed so many approaches but the notable ones are the kinetic and non-kinetic approaches and within, there are tangible approaches that have gone a long way in tackling security.
I think the security agencies are working very hard because even recently in Danmusa town, we have arrested some people providing health services to the bandits.
We have arrested a man who is a Chemist and also worked at a Primary Health Centre in the area, providing health services to the bandits. When I said there are people in government what is wrong in that statement?
We are getting information and we are making some arrests. But things are escalating. What we want to do is to reduce poverty, provide employment opportunities and we will reduce the number of informants in the society. As I have said earlier, everybody must contribute, everybody must be a policeman, and everybody must report the cases. If we can do that, we have done a great disservice to our nation.

What about the threats from bandits to farmers to stop them from going to their farms?

There are indeed several threats coming from those communities to stop farmers from going to their farms, but we are equally strategising to see how we can address that issue. We had a security meeting and set up a committee to come up with a strategy on how to address it. And then, as for the Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs), I may not say much but the majority of the children roaming the streets in Katsina, are not from those localities.
They are people suffering from poverty within and they roam about as IDPs. There are some women you follow at night; you will confirm the claim. Some groups of women I once met insisted that they came from IDPs. I gave them money to make them comfortable and I told them to tell me where they came from.
I threatened to call the police to arrest them if they didn’t tell me the truth before they quickly told me where they were and that their husbands had travelled. They complained of no food to eat. The level of poverty is forcing some people to disguise themselves as IDPs. But what we normally do since I came on board, if they kidnapped victims in the village, I will send my SSA to victims of banditry to give support to the families and to treat those injured.
We provide free medical services to those killed, we support the families with money and food so that they can reboot and continue with life. So, we spent a lot of money every month. I signed over N80 million to be disbursed to those displaced. If you ask those villages, they will tell you.
In Katsina, we refused to build IDPs because that would create another social menace. We are trying as much as possible to contain it. Look at what happened at Wulmat where the attack happened. When I went there the following day, there were no single human beings in that village that consisted of over 5000 people.
But, we can take them back to their houses and put up over 100 security agencies to help them continue with their lives. The same thing happened in the village of Baskari where they killed five military officers, killed people, displaced, and burnt their houses.

Everybody ran away from the village but we were able to take them back and put up a security structure there and support them with food and money. We are doing this daily but sometimes people don’t know what we do. It is like we can’t do more than we are doing, expectations are very high; the resources are also meagre because some sectors need money.
We are just battling the situation but we are working hard to reduce children roaming the streets and poverty in our land with the support of wealthy people around us. We can curtail the situation.

What are you doing about clearing the debt owed to retirees?

When we took over power, I inherited debt arrears of N23 billion of such debt from the local government and N10 billion from the state, making it a total debt of about N33 billion. We constituted a verification committee and insisted on starting the payment from those who are dead as from 2019 in both the local government and the state.
The payment amounted to N6 billion. We will clear the arrears owed to both of them this week and I want to assure you that by June, we will finish everything about the arrears of debt owed to the retirees and we will continue with the living.