Ambassador Godknows Boladei Igali is a governorship aspirant on the platform of the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, ahead of the September 3 primaries in Bayelsa State. A career diplomat, he was Nigeria’s Consul-General in Cameroon and served as the Secretary to the State Government under the Goodluck Jonathan administration. He later became ambassador to Scandinavian countries and Permanent Secretary, Federal Ministry of Water Resources. In this interview with Tony Olutomiwa, Ambassador Igali spoke on his aspiration, vision for the state, policies and programmes, among other issues.
Let’s start by looking at your aspiration. Why are you running for governor at this time?
Thank you very much. I am aspiring to be governor of Bayelsa State because I believe and quite solemnly that I have what it takes to rule this state and to take this state to the next level. Governance is about making life better for the people. Governance is about improving the lives of the people. Governance is making sure people live in the 21stcentury as if we are in the 21st century and not living in the 21st century as if we are in the 19th century. I have the capacity to take Bayelsa State to that level. Particularly, world leaders met in New York in the year 2000 and came up with what is called the Millennium Development Goals, MDGs. And when those Millennium Development Goals, finished in 2015, they now met again and came up with Sustainable Development Goals, SDGs. Sustainable Development Goals covers every gamut of human development, human existence and human lives; how people can live as human beings and not like animals. So, my interest is to take Bayelsa to that level and benchmark Bayelsa against the SDGs.
So, how do you intend to domesticate the critical areas of the SDGs like education, health and poverty reduction?
Well, we have looked at the indices and generally as a country, Nigeria is trying but we are not there in terms of attainment of the SDGs. For example, the critical sectors like water and sanitation. The country is generally not doing too well and Bayelsa is even worse despite the fact that we live inside water. So, we have to up it, we have to get to our national average and go beyond our national average. Issues like open defecation, we are not doing so well because people still go to the river and pass out human waste. Areas such as girl child education, for example… girl child education, Bayelsa State is doing well. We are trying. Primary school enrolment, generally, we are doing well but when it comes to nutrition of children, we are not doing well. Nutrition of children in Bayelsa State is below some of the national average which needs critical intervention. When it comes to access to healthcare, in relative terms, we’ve not seen marked improvement of the number of health institutions from 2012 up to 2017. Healthcare must be affordable, must be accessible as early as possible to people. So, we have a lot of work to do in that area. Rural economy and inclusiveness is another area where we are not doing too well because of the riverine nature of the state. A lot of people are still in the rural areas, especially in the deep Southern Ijaw and deep Ekeremor areas, those two local governments in particular, they are people much inside water. So we need to increase those levels. Those are some of the areas of concern. Yet the area of economic inclusiveness of people and generating jobs for our young people is another area where there is a challenge. There are a lot of women, who are in the informal sector of the economy that needs to be included in the mainstream like bringing them from informal to formal sector. That is, having micro and sub-micro enterprises like the woman selling banana that hawks and runs after cars, this won’t happen under my watch. We would try to improve their economic status by giving you a place where you can sell your wares. So these are some of the areas where we would need intervention and that do not need too much money. We are not going to spend what will cost a submarine to do it. Those are basic areas of economic empowerment that can bring about economic inclusiveness.
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Beyond intervention to possibly attain the SDGs, what are your strategic ideas to boost economic development of the state?
There are few states that have the endowments of Bayelsa State, very few. Number one, we are the largest province of gas and the products you can get from gas are in their hundreds. Not all gas-related businesses are in their billions. There are micro enterprises you can get from gas that will be in couples of millions of naira. Like up to N10 million you can have an LPG factory. You can be producing liquefied natural gas; you can produce compressed natural gas, and many others. So with small investments, we are going to put a lot of our boys and girls into those activities. In the oil sector, downstream and medium stream, there are a lot of activities we are going to involve our people. We will train them, retrain them and give them the financial wherewithal. I have said it before and I am repeating it now that every month, I will put about 36 of our young men into businesses funded by the state government, every month. We would scale it up to may be about 50 and even go beyond 50 so that at the end of the year, critically, we would have been able to train about 360 young people with our own funded businesses that are doing their own businesses. And when we do that over the years, we can increase the number of such people and each person you empower will give employment to 2, 3, 4 and some even up to 10 people. Then there are also young people with existing businesses. I did it when I was the Secretary to the Bayelsa State Government in 2006. I made sure that we funded and recapitalised all the existing businesses…hotels, entertainment and hospitality industry. We focused on them. And agriculture, too, we started to fund some of the existing ones. I did it and all those who got it are today doing so well. That was how today, we had hotels in Bayelsa. Before, there were no hotels. So, we’ve done it before and we are now on it. I have employed a private consultant already, who is going round Yenagoa to identify which businesses belong to our people that we can now see when we come in to help strengthen existing businesses and introduce new business status. Now in agriculture, you see, agriculture needs the right water levels, right climate to grow food and oxygen and so on. Many other states in the country need irrigation and dams. I was the Permanent Secretary in the Federal Ministry of Water Resources. We built dams, dams and dams and you still have to irrigate the water through canals over kilometers to get to the farm because the land is hungry for water. But here, God has buttered our bread, the land is fertile. God himself has watered the land for us, so there is what we call a flood plain. A flood plain is a natural manure because flood has covered the place before, where agriculture boost rice production, everything. The whole of Niger Delta and particularly in Bayelsa because of the deltaic nature is a flood plain. That’s why we don’t need fertilizer in this state to grow anything. We are going to invest robustly in agriculture. We would acquire lands from the communities on lease or whatever long term basis, 100 years or whatever. Then we now sub-lease it to the young people. We would prepare the land for them, give them the tools to work with and allow them to farm. Form them into cooperatives, organise product buy-back arrangement with major people who need the products. We are going to focus on rice. We are a rice belt, rice from the Peremabiri Southern Ijaw side to Kolo and Ogbia side, rice to Sampou and the Ekeremor side and western Delta. So rice is a big deal for us in Bayelsa State. We would also focus on plantain and banana. As you know, these items grow wild in this environment. Everywhere you go, you see plantain. So we focus on Banana and plantain. We would also focus on sugarcane. Sugarcane and elephant grass grow wild in Southern Ijaw. They grow wild all over the state, so we would focus more on sugarcane. Nigeria needs about 2 million metric tons of sugarcane in a year but right now we are doing only 5 percent. Bayelsa State will take up that gap and fill it by turning all these fertile but fallow lands into sugarcane and plantain plantations. These are just some of the products, including palm plantation. You know we have the Bayelsa Palm plantation; we are going to expand it and put mills there that can produce. Another product is vegetable product.
Now, what about the maritime economy?
We are people by the coast. When you are by the coast, you cannot be left out in maritime economy. The maritime economy is in front of us. Marine and maritime economy… one is deep sea fishing. We can’t be fishing by taking a hook to go and catch fish to come and eat, no. We are Ijaw people, we are not afraid of water, from here to Brazil, from here to Australia, we can go with canoe. We grow up inside the water. So we are going to begin to give our young men and women boats, proper fishing boats, to go to the sea and catch fish. We would meet Nigeria’s fishing gap. Today, Nigeria needs about 2.7 million metric tons of fish. We are producing only 700. The rest is coming from India and other kind of places. Bayelsa will feed Nigeria with fish because the sea is there in front of us. We get vessels and put our boys and girls. They are ready, they are waiting. They are willing for me to give them the capacity. So we will begin to catch our own fish for the Nigerian market. So all these and many other economic activities like tourism will help to boost the state economy and generate jobs. Look, there is no state, even Lagos State that has the kind of beautiful beaches we have in Bayelsa State. By the time roads get there and open up those places, the beaches on Opoma, the beaches in Kolama, the beaches in Foropa, the beaches in other places, all of them, we open them up and young people will then be running hospitality businesses there. And we have a lot of historic artifacts like that of Akasa which is the town of the Commonsense Senator, Ben Bruce. You still see where they kept slaves. You see the graves of colonial people that died in 1895. The Akasa graves, the graves are all marked, colonial graves, rich tourism potential and same in Brass Island. We open up all those areas. There are a lot of lakes and a lot of fishing festivals. So, the economy is going to be our priority, it’s going to be jobs, jobs and jobs. Everybody will be working. There will be no time for anyone to clap for others, because everybody will be working; keep our young men busy and young women busy, keep the older people busy and those older people who go on pension and retirement, we take care of them very well. We pay their pensions, we pay their gratuities. I have said it before, in terms of healthcare, healthcare will be affordable, healthcare will be available, and healthcare will be everywhere. If you are in Bayelsa State, if a child is below 5 years, you will not pay one kobo for any medicine anywhere. The same way if you are below 10 years; we give you food, we feed you. All children in primary and secondary schools will eat 2 meals a day when they go to school, one meal in the beginning and one meal at the end of the day. So when they go back home, their job is to help their parents in little things and to study because we’ll give them books to reads, books and books and books to read and do home work. A child cannot be schooling and also be looking for food, so we would feed them. If you are above 65 years in Bayelsa State, you will receive free medical treatment, anybody above 65. After 70 years, every month, we give you nutrition support, the same way with those who have some critical diseases like diabetes, hypertension, stroke, dementia, all those kind of debilitating sicknesses, we take care of them. Now for other people not captured in this special group, we’ll give them health insurance, we take care of them.
All these sound as good but how about the funding and indeed how sustainable as government policies?
What do you mean by how sustainable?
The problem of Nigerians is that we are too pessimistic, we are too negative. You know, is it possible, can he do it? When Chief Awolowo (Obafemi) wanted to do free education, they said all kinds of things about him. How will it work? This arrogant man, where will he get the money to do free education? But Awolowo said, don’t worry; the money will come. So, I tell you the money will come. How will the money come? The money will come because I am going to fund infrastructure differently. Governor Seriake Dickson has done well in infrastructure, he has tried, we give that to him. But most of his infrastructural projects came from public sector spending, which means the money is tied down in building roads, in building bridges. To take care of a hundred people’s health is not up to building one hospital, because it’s heavy. Now, if infrastructure is funded from another model through the market, through bonds, through market-based instruments, then infrastructure takes care of itself, or contractor finance, some kind of market formula which we’ve worked out with a few of our partners. Then you’ve now unlocked a lot of money for social spending, for poverty alleviation, for things of the common good that will make people happy. Now life expectancy in Sweden, Denmark, Norway, Finland, Thailand, Malaysia, is well over 80 years. Here, life expectancy is still 52 years for men and 54 years for women. These are the things that make people die early. By the time you take care of all these things, Bayelsa will get a life expectancy of may be above 70 and may be Nigeria would be doing about 50 .That’s what we want to attain, so the money will come from money that have been saved through non-investment, non-use of budgeted funds to do capital projects. What we are going to put in roads will be counterpart funding. If I have oil and gas resources, deep sea resources down the coast, contractors and developers are ready to make roads to that place because at the end of the day, they will make their money.
I will invest heavily in housing. In fact, it’s one of the areas we would put money on. We would do away with mud houses. By the time I finish the first four years, there will be no bachas anywhere in Bayelsa State. We would build houses in their thousands and keep people in those houses. We are talking with mortgage people. The woman that is selling plantain on the road side, she has an income. Her income may be small but if she owns a home and she knows that every month I am to pay thirty thousand because of her economic status, she would do it because she knows that I am doing this because it is my house and I can give it to my children, as inheritance, not a rented house. We will train our people how to save and pay for the services that they get. So, with two mortgage companies, we are going to flood this state with houses. So basically, we would get money by saving money from reduction in spending on capital projects and we would also get money by stopping people from trying to be corrupt or to be wasteful through the procurement process mostly. Social spending is what will make human beings happy and we will spend on social issues.
Looking ahead, can Bayelsa survive without oil money?
I’ve just told you that Bayelsa State is the state with the highest agricultural potential. Our strength will be agriculture. Oil and gas, yes, because God has placed them here but our strength will be agriculture. Our strength will be in service sector. Our strength will not be how much crude oil is sold but how much gas has been turned to become useful to people. We sell gas to industries. We sell gas to everybody for domestic uses and so on, so we will do a lot of application of gas.
How would you relate the huge youth population with crime and crime prevention? Have you given this a thought as a social concern?
One of my major priorities is security. Wrongly, they place Bayelsa as a flashpoint. We are not a flashpoint. Almost every other state is unsafe than Bayelsa State. We are the safest state. But we are not yet where we want it to be. Therefore, look at me here; I was President (Olusegun) Obasanjo’s envoy to Niger Delta on peace. I brought the militants to a negotiating table. I was President Yar’Adua’s envoy on peace. I brought them to the negotiating table. I brought MEND to negotiate and later when Avengers came, I brought Avengers to negotiate with President (Muhammadu) Buhari’s government and we had a unilateral ceasefire. So, it’s what I’ve done before. So, what’s the key? The key is to work with the communities. Communities are the ultimate people that will bring down insecurity because when the community takes charge, they make sure nothing happens. And that’s what we did in the previous cases and I will do it again. But then, we are going to use electronic system, so many of them are quite useful in tracking crimes. And we would also work on the rehabilitation of people that have been involved in crime. We would work with the security people to help them in their intelligence gathering on criminality and those kinds of activities. But more importantly is to keep people busy, particularly the young ones.
While PDP won majority in the last election, a number of your candidates lost to APC. Do you believe APC has really gained some strategic advantage in Bayelsa State and does this bother you?
Well, it bothers me because I am a PDP man. Right now, APC has two House of Representatives and one senate seat. That is too close for comfort. Well, what that shows is that there’s a presence of APC in Bayelsa State. It may not be as strong as us PDP. But that they are here and we note that they are present here. But you know in the 2018 election, a lot of things happened, we don’t want to remember them. In my local government, two people were even shot and killed. So, we don’t want to remember those things.
A record 21 of you are gunning for the same governorship ticket at the primaries. Are you worried there may be implosion and how do you think such implosion can be averted?
I don’t think so. I think the number is a reflection of interest in the party because the amount to buy the form was quite high. And I would have thought it would reduce the number but many people were still excited to serve under this party, which means the party is well rooted in the state. Now, coming to the number of candidates, well, it is ok. But for me, implosion is not likely to occur because we know ourselves. Everybody knows he has different capacities; some of us have a little bit more experience than others in a composite manner. But I think that as we begin to talk and get closer, there will be negotiations, alliances and alignment and even if that does not happen, everybody will go there and vote and walk away.
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You were a career diplomat. How will you assess the country’s current foreign relations?
Our foreign relations have been doing well. We have professionals, who are doing well. We believe that people in the foreign countries should talk more about the country because we have a situation whereby people go abroad and just say Nigeria is not doing well, Nigeria is vey corrupt, Nigerians are very terrible, Nigerians kill people and these are government officials. This contrasts sharply with our own training, during our time. The job of a diplomat is to talk good about his country no matter the situation. You’re to defend your country, no matter. When we come back home, we can fight among ourselves but not in a foreign land. So I think we still need to talk more positively about this country outside our shores.
Will you, for instance, recommend a re-jig of the nation’s foreign policy in view of recent developments as they relate to our core national interest?
I would not want to use the word re-jig. The foreign policy is still there. The issue is sometimes the implementation, the instrument to implement. You saw on the social media our ambassador in Congo was being ejected from his house and they aired it and put it on the social media because we are owing.
And what are your chances in this election?
Definitely I am the one that will win the election. Some of the delegates came to talk with me, say ambassador, we know you don’t have the money some people have. Yes, some of the aspirants with me have money but we would vote for you. On that day when the delegates would be voting, what would be in their minds is their future. A future we know is secured, a future that will give Bayelsans predominance in this multi-ethnic country.
