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My Vision For Nigeria —Donald Duke
Posted by admin on 2006/11/7 9:55:35 (1793 reads)
Governor Donald Duke of Cross River State is a very interesting personality. So obsessed with work is this man that he rarely has the time to grant media interviews. For those not familiar with his character, there is always a temptation to think he is contemptuous of journalists. But that is not correct. The truth is, he is extremely busy, working hard to better the lot of his state. After nearly a week of hide and seek, he eventually took his seat to talk to TheNEWS editors. It was a very engaging and animating discourse that left everyone convinced of the stuff Duke is made of. At the end, Duke, who was reluctant to grant an interview, was the same person who asked: “Haven’t you got more questions for me, as everyone of us enjoyed talking about Nigeria.” Below is the full text of the interview
Q: You have been around for almost eight years, how has the journey been?
A: In a nutshell, it’s been very interesting. We had challenges, promises and it’s been ups and downs like every journey through life. But all through, it’s been a wonderful experience. The most cherished experience in my life is the opportunity to serve. And I mean this with all sense of responsibility. Being in charge of improving the lot of the people, I think, is an onerous task and you get satisfaction when you know you have done well or you are doing the best you could under the circumstances.
Q: When you got the idea to run for governorship, what were the areas you felt required attention?
A: My biggest concern, not just for Cross River but for all of Nigeria, was the large army of unemployed people.
Your entire training from birth, through when you start school, right up to maturity, is to prepare you to become a useful citizen. You go to school, medicare is provided so that your body is in good shape, your mind is trained – all that is meant to enable you become productive. The challenge we face in Cross River and elsewhere in Nigeria is that most of our people are not productive and the wherewithal for production is not there. The infrastructure is also not there. We had to focus and find out where we have our strength – what is it that we can do better than any other person or any other people in the country? And we took agriculture and tourism.
Agriculture because our state is very large, about 26,000 square kilometres, 3 million people and we can grow virtually anything from tropical to temperate crops here in Cross River State. Tourism? Yes, because everywhere is supposed to be a new concept in our country and it holds great promise. When I say this, I am not looking at tourism bringing loads of expatriates into Nigeria!
No! I am looking at the frustrated demand for tourism here in Nigeria. I mean, where do the children go? Where do they relax? Children love parks, adults love parks, but we don’t talk tourism here not because we don’t like tourism, but because there is no avenue for tourism. So I thought that we could develop this concept. Looking at our landscape, our culture, our history. If we could develop this concept, and if we do, we would be charting a new course, pioneering a course that would create employment for the vast number of our unemployed people. This was the primary thought – to create an industry, from the planks of tourism and agriculture.
Every state has what it can focus on. Like an individual, why do you become a musician? Because you have a flair for that and because it is something you can do to earn a living. Why do I want to be an engineer? Because I am intrigued by engineering and I want to invest my time in it so that from it, I can earn a living. So, every occupation is guided by that.
We have looked at our state and we have seen that it has very vast potentials in agriculture and tourism and if there is one thing that will occur in the tenure of Donald Duke, it is to galvanise our energies to realise this. I cannot tell you that we have attained what we set out to achieve. No. We are still at its infancy and it may take us maybe 20 years to get there. But the important thing is that we have at least started something.
Q: Your administration is one that advertises its interest in agriculture. In what ways are you supporting farmers in the state?
A: Our approach is radically different from the past. In the past, we had state partnership in agriculture and we found out that it never really worked. Again, people talk about subsidy, but we don’t have the means to subsidise. And I have problems with that because subsidy can easily be abused. So, I thought we had to be quite tactful. First of all, we’ve got to identify the crops and I always think about where you have strength. Where do we have our strength? Which crops are we familiar with? We took cassava, which grows throughout our state; oil palm, we are the largest oil palm producer in Nigeria.
We took cocoa and are now the second largest producer of cocoa. We took pineapple which is grown extensively in Cross River, but we have not made an industry of it even it is in abundance in Orimekpang, a community in Boki Local Government Area. All they grow is pineapple. Then we took cashew in the Northern part of the state and we focused on it by providing seedlings and extension services to the farmers – organising them into co-operative groups. And that’s part of our problems with agriculture. We lack organisation – organisation that allows them get the kind of support they ought to get from government.
So we organised them into co-operatives so that they will know where to go if they have problems. And we set up Extension Services and provided seedlings free–of-charge. We produce about 3 million oil palm seedlings annually. I don’t have the exact figure for cocoa, but it is also in millions. I told you we are the second largest producer in Nigeria. Our aim is that by the year 2010, we will, by far, be the largest producer of cocoa. We are probably doing 15,000-20,000 hectares of oil palm annually. We have been able to attract private sector operators in the oil palm industry and they are doing very well. Agriculture is culture and I think largely, we have a very promising agricultural sector. We are not only focusing on growing but we are also focusing on processing.
Redundant oil palm estates have been parceled out to private holders or communities and we have supported them in processing them and I think it’s been quite successful.
We’ve been to the ranch at Obudu…A: You went there?
Yes!
You’ve been having fun then.
Q: We were in Tinapa, the boldest sign of your administration so far…A: I disagree. I think the boldest move or step for this administration is our endeavour to provide electricity for the communities in Cross River. Because providing electricity is a catalyst for development, and as we speak, about 75 per cent of Cross River is on the national grid. This figure is by far the highest in the country. But it doesn’t have the same appeal of Tinapa or the Obudu Cattle Ranch Cable Car. People want to judge me on that. But it’s okay.
Q: A criticism of your initiatives is that they would not work in Nigeria because of problems like insecurity and poor physical infrastructure which are a disincentive to investors. How would you react to this?
A: Talking about infrastructural development, there is not one person in the Ranch community that is idle. Not one person. Some of them hold two or three jobs. But you know the spillover goes beyond the Ranch. The traffic that goes to the Ranch is affecting communities in Ogoja, Obudu and people are building hotels. Even at that, trying to get someone an accommodation is difficult because the place is perpetually fully booked. Certainly, it is generating a lot of employment not only in the tourism sector but also in the agriculture. We have a honey factory there because there are a lot of communities that are engaged in bee farming. We have a dairy facility out there and we have a programme where virtually every community would keep two, three, four heads of cattle. It generates a lot of employment.
The construction of Tinapa’s first phase alone would engage 10,000 persons. Currently there are 7,000 of them out there but by the end of this year, their number would increase to 10,000 persons. Most of the 7,000 persons working there had no jobs previously. Some of them were farmers. When I go there and I see those folks, people who never knew how to mix cement, but are now involved in tiling, iron bending and others, I feel good because I ask myself what these folks would have been doing if we were not involved in the development of Tinapa?
In 1999, there was a $116 million contract that was awarded before we came in. The contractors had been mobilised and were about to start their job when I invited them for a meeting. I informed them that it was unheard of for $116 million to be spent in this state and the effect will not trickle down to the people and I asked how we would ensure that the people benefited from it.
I mean I knew we were going to benefit from it and at the same time get the work done. I was equally sure it would be a first class facility. But even at the contractual stage, I wanted the folks in Cross River to feel that this contract was for them. So, I decided that all the trenches where the pipes would be laid would be dug through human labour but they (the contractors) had a well laid out mechanised arrangement and they complained that if they were to comply, they may never finish the contract. I, however, insisted on this. Then we agreed and we got an army of unemployed boys and they dug the trenches. And believe me, this is no exaggeration, for the nine months that this programme lasted, there was not one reported case of crime in Calabar. What we heard of was people beating up their wives and other silly matters. But outside that, believe me, there was no reported case of crime. If you have criminals and crime-related problems, a good chunk of them are related to unemployment. We are not inherently criminal in Nigeria.
There was a time ships were diverted to the Calabar Port because of congestion in the major ports. Whenever I got to the port, I saw an army of boys working and engaged in all sorts of things.
If you look at those that have been employed in Tinapa alone, we will go beyond that. When Tinapa is ready, we expect three million visitors in Cross River annually. This is a consumer nation and so we are providing consumer goods duty-free. We are providing avenues for traders. All those folks who travel to Dubai need not go there anymore. Let Dubai come here. Don’t forget that for every trader that goes to Dubai, there are sub-traders – about 20-30 who buy wholesale. So we expect a minimum of three million people annually from the sheer number of traffic in Cross River. These three million visitors will stay in hotels, restaurants, and buy one thing or the other. Assuming that they spend N50,000 per person and they are a million, that could run into about N50 billion into the economy of Cross River State.
Take the multiplier effect for instance, because every N1 you spend can positively affect 10 to15 persons. Multiply 150 by five, you know what you are going to get. That is just on the sheer number of people coming in. As I talk to you, there are over a thousand hotel rooms under development in Calabar. Take a look at the metropolis, people are coming in and they have invested about N1.5 billion in there.
And I know that is just the beginning. The demand for taxi services, people that will clean up the expressway, not to talk of other services. So, I don’t share the in the view of pessimists who say it will not work or that Tinapa is a white elephant project.
Be assured that it won’t be a white elephant project because it would be properly managed, it doesn’t belong to the state and none of the projects belong to the state. They are all private sector driven. Tinapa was conceived and promoted by the state, but it belongs to the private sector. The owners are private sector people.
Again, our venturing into these things has created several related industries. I will give you an example.
We privatised Calabar Cement Company (Calcemco) and I believe our privatisation programme in Cross River can easily be adjudged as the most successful in the country. Calcemco was bought over by Flour Mills and they bought it over for N1.2 or N1.3 billion. But don’t forget that Calcemco ceased functioning about 10 years before that time. They have turned it around and it is working at 100 per cent production capacity. In fact it has exceeded 100 per cent. They are producing what is in high demand. It is also an ecologically-friendly cement factory. We are trying to make it the most ecologically-friendly factory in the world. If you go to the factory site, you will hardly see any cement dust. The cement required in Tinapa was obtained from that factory. Today, the cement factory has gone into partnership with Orascom, an Egyptian company. They are building the biggest cement factory in the world.
That factory will employ 5000 people. When you look at the multiplier effect, it’s going to be over 30,000 people. My emphasis is that whatever we do as a nation, as a people, should be focused on getting people employed. If we don’t do that, we are going to have a social problem in the community, state and country.
Why do we provide electricity in communities? The reason is that it will be a catalyst for industrial development. Why do we even provide roads? We need people to move about in order to have positive impact on the economy. We emphasise tourism and keep our environment clean because these things attract people.
I met a few people who were from Kano and they came up to me and expressed their appreciation of what is going on. I asked them what they were doing and they said they were from Kano. I asked them what they were doing in the state and they said they were on vacation, a long vacation, and they felt that the place they could have a vacation in Nigeria was Cross River. They just came from the Ranch and were going to spend the night in Calabar before leaving. They spent some money there and you could take that as one family. But when you transpose that to several other families, you are contributing to the economy. Lastly, what we are doing here is not an act of genius. It has been replicated severally all over the world. For instance, Las Vegas was a desert called
Nevada Desert. There was absolutely nothing. So what did they do? They created a place where people could come and spend money, where you can have all the fun in the world and spend money. That singular step created that economy. The economy of California is built around entertainment. California was seen as the end of the world but when America expanded to California, the movie industry, the glamour and all that moved in also. People went there and spent money.
Today, California is the largest single economy in the United States. If California were a country, it would have been the eighth largest economy in the World. Dubai is similar. There are so many restrictions in the Middle-East – you can’t race, you can’t gamble, you can’t drink. Dubai created a place where all these people who want to unwind can do so, whether they are foreigners or whatever. That is the spirit behind Dubai and it has been a success story for them. Hong Kong played the same role for China.
The Chinese communists have restrictions and couldn’t do that, but the success of Hong Kong was based on the fact that they could go somewhere and unwind. Monte Carlo was a poor community, a very small enclave, a gaming area, no restriction and all that, and today, you will always hear something good about Monte Carlo.
So, you see, what we are doing in Cross River State is not unique. People have money in Nigeria but they don’t know how to spend it. Rather than go abroad for your shopping or entertainment, just come here. They don’t want to go abroad because they just want to travel. But like I told you, those guys from Kano had a week’s holiday here. It wasn’t worth going abroad and coming back. So, for them it was, let’s go to Cross River. If Tinapa was ready, you can imagine the amount of entertainment that those boys would have had. The parents would do all the shopping they want and have a total package. On top of that, we are building a movie studio also at Tinapa. In other words, the movie industry will move to Cross River State and that again will create jobs. So it may be the ordinary, run-of-the-mill sort of investment. I won’t set up an oil palm mill here. I won’t do that. That is for the private sector. I could create an agriculture-based industry and support it in such a manner that it will attract people to that area. But directly, I wouldn’t do that. What we are thinking of here is a major statement. Not only are we saying that this will create jobs, but we also want to make a statement that it can also be done.
Q: How much of your resources have you invested in physical infrastructure?
A: Plenty. It is difficult to give you the exact figure but I think the entire Urban Renewal Programme is about N15 billion and that includes 210 kilometres of roads in Calabar alone, 15 kilometres in Ugep, 35 kilometres in Ikom, 20 kilometres in Ogoja, and 12 kilometres in Obudu. Obudu is the last council we are about to start work on now. All these come to about N15 billion. All our urban roads have sidewalks. You have been around the state for a while and I believe we have one of the best urban infrastructure in Nigeria today.
Q: Many reckon that Tinapa will not be completed before you leave office. Why did you not start earlier?
A: Projects like Tinapa ordinarily take 10 years or more to conceive, design, build and deliver.
Tinapa’s construction to me is radically fast. From the time we started the feasibility studies, late 2000, don’t forget we have had an election in 2003 and when you are having an election, nobody is going to give you any support. So we started in 2000, but I just see the project only for the value they can bring to my society or my state. The time it takes to convince people that this would not fail, I cannot begin to tell you the number of one-on-one meetings we had with bankers. You can’t pull the wool over their eyes. We had to convince them on why Tinapa was the best and probably one of their most profitable investments. It’s a free zone bla bla bla… and with that, everything you want, anything you are looking for, you can get. So I think we have done radically well in seven years to get this far.
Q: How did you convince the banks?
A: I have a private sector background. If you want to do business in Cross River, don’t come in here, set up shop, take all our deposit and announce your huge profit and walk away, have a beautiful Annual General Meeting in Lagos or Abuja. Meanwhile, your profit comes from my state. No, come and invest here. I think that is smart. You know how much we raised? N2.5 billion. You see, you must understand the banking industry. Every branch is a profit centre in the banking industry. If here in Cross River you are not doing business with the state government, you are probably going to be a failed bank or a failed branch. If the state government would not do business with you, it’s likely the private sector would also not do business with you. So they complied and we raised a lot of money, which is good for the project. It is not that they were not investing. Some were investing N50 million, N20 million, just tokenism. We said no, the minimum was N200 million.
Q: When will you declare for the presidency?
A: You are assuming that I will run for the presidency. If I decide, I will let you know.
Q: So what will be your areas of attention when you declare?
A: There are three key things you must do as a foundation for the development of any society. You must train the mind in a sound body with the requisite infrastructure. You have got to radically invest in education, medicare and infrastructure. By infrastructure, I mean power, road network, rail, seaport, airport, telecommunication – not GSM.
GSM is not telecommunication. GSM is an equivalent of a mobile or radio or walkie-talkie. I am talking of telecommunication where you can get internet access and all that. Because what is an economy all about? It is movement of goods and services. If the economy is slow, probably you don’t have the infrastructure to move it, you have to invest in infrastructural development. Can you imagine an economy without communication? Can you imagine where we were? I mean, things have moved rapidly since the advent of the GSM. Then, when you were on phone, it would take forever to get through, until the advent of the internet and all that. In other words, money is tied down for so long doing nothing. So, you have to invest in infrastructure. It’s something you don’t have to do overnight. It can happen in 10 years.
Believe me, every state has to find out where it has its strength and every state should go and do its SWOT analysis – where there is strength and/or weakness. We did it in Cross River and I believe that we are not unique. There are states that have greater potentials than we have but you have got to know where these potentials are. There is a biblical saying that ‘man, know thyself.’ You’ve got to know yourself and where you know yourself you will equally know what you have a flair for. There are people who are such wonderful dancers. The other day I went to a show - comedy. And
I was looking at this guy. He must have abused virtually everybody in that hall that day and they still clapped for him. It’s not easy to stand before a huge audience and be cracking jokes. You must have the flair because if you crack a joke and nobody likes it, it can be very embarrassing. You will be totally disoriented. Now, these guys are eating off it because they have a flair for it. One of the problems with us is that we often stifle ourselves and people don’t have that ability to express themselves in various fields.
And the beauty of it all is that we are such endowed people. In all sorts of things there is always one opportunity or the other. Today, fortunately, comedy has grown and so people who you ordinarily would not have heard of are now carving a niche there. There are several other sectors like that which could grow. Who would have known Ali Baba for instance? But his name created an industry and attracted many others. There are many people who would like to go into music but they don’t have the opportunities. People like to do gardening.
Look, you have been through Calabar and all that and you have seen the incredible landscape. There are people who are making money and are living on it. So, every state has to go about finding out where it has strength and should work out how best to harness the inherent potentials as we have done here in Cross River by getting public-private partnership. We have enormous limestone deposits in our state and we want to develop a massive cement industry because as a developing nation, we need tonnes and tonnes of cement and it is going to employ thousands of people and be of multiplier advantage to several other thousands. So, when you talk of Gombe, Kebbi or other states, you will think of something. At least now, when you think of Cross River you are beginning to think of our export and tourism. Every state should be doing that and the totality of all that forms the national economy.
Today when you talk about Nigeria, you hear oil and gas. We are beyond oil and gas. Oil and gas are just the tonic we use in fuelling. But today, we are eating the fuel. In which case we don’t have a national economy. The biggest challenge for us is creating jobs. If you don’t send your children to school, you know what will happen to them. They will become unproductive and are most likely to become useless. So the ultimate aim of educating your child is to make sure the child fits into a productive lifestyle. If we do as individuals, why don’t we do it as a nation? What is going on in America, the land of opportunities. Our people are leaving for Europe and America because they are looking for opportunities. So why can’t we create the opportunities here? We are the products of our own ineptitude and failure. We should take a critical look at ourselves. They (criminals) may be wicked and may do dastardly things. I am not saying this out of ignorance. I have been attacked by robbers and I have had a gun to my head and I have been kicked and all that. But you see, the question is: why is this guy doing this? If he had a better opportunity, would he have done it? The point I am trying to make is that we need to create opportunities. We are not better than the man next door who doesn’t have the opportunity. You think they won’t like to come and sit down here?
We just have to provide opportunities and do all we can to ensure that we do what we owe them. Our failure to provide electricity has stifled industry and growth. And by stifling industry and growth, we could have created millions of jobs. Sometimes when I look back, I see criminal neglect. The amount of gas we flare every year can power the whole of Africa. The oil companies want only the oil. The gas is not what they want, so they flare it.They are burning your resource. God gave you that resource, but the oil companies don’t need the gas, associated gas, but oil. One day you will wake up and won’t have gas any longer. What happens? They’ve burnt it. That gas can provide energy for the whole of Africa, South Africa inclusive.
Q: What elements of the economic reforms of President Olusegun Obasanjo’s administration do you subscribe to?
A: I have been greatly involved in a lot of these reforms and I am chairman of a project he set up called
‘Destination Nigeria,’ a project to ensure that Nigeria turns out to be a major player in certain key sectors where we have comparative advantage by theyear 2020. Largely, I agree with him. But I believe that having laid the foundation, we should now look at other areas. Consolidating banks and making them have a minimum share capital of N25 billion is just the smallest part of the story. We have to ensure that banks can give credit at affordable interest rates and at appropriate gestation. If we cannot, there is no need having a bank that has N200 billion share capital. I see banks advertise that they are the largest banks in Nigeria. Big deal? What is your interest rate? How much credit are you lending? Are you giving only traders? Each time you give funds to traders, you are helping industries in other countries. Why don’t you go to the real sector – the manufacturing sector, the agricultural sector? That is why a bank should be big, so that it can have the leverage to give you money and wait for 10-20 years without collapsing. These banks give you money and they are all competing with having the best profits and they charge in different rates – 15-20 per cent – and they want the money back in a year or two. Industries do not do this; trading does that. They will give the money to traders because in trading, it is 90 days or 120 days.
So if you give me N1 billion at 16 or 20 percent, in 120 days I will have to return the money. That is killing, not banking. It should be service-oriented, but they are not providing this service. What we have in this country is not banking but money-laundering institutions. We need to now groom them into banks so that they can be a service industry. We need to continue strengthening the infrastructure because the key component of the reform is infrastructure –electricity and all that. I am not satisfied with 10,000 megawatts of power. When I look at the Obudu Cattle Ranch, we generate 4,000 megawatts for that tiny community and you think the whole of Nigeria should be happy with 10,000 megawatts. It’s a start, but we are not there. If you ask the oil companies, give them four to six months to convert all the gas to energy, they will easily generate 50,000 to 60,000 megawatts of power. When we do that, I believe we should give Nigerians the subsidy on power. As a businessman, if I live in Europe and you ask me to invest in Nigeria, with all the stories I hear about Nigeria the likely reaction would be no! But if you create a market, people will come. Nigeria has a large population, but not a large market because the people have no money in their pockets.
Drag & Drop Champion!
