No going back on preaching regulation !!!

No going back on preaching regulation – El-Rufai

Governor Nasir El-Rufai of Kaduna State, in this interview, speaks on some of his policies considered controversial and why he must implement them.

You made an observation that everything in Kaduna is reduced to politics of ethnicity and religion, how is that?
What I found in Kaduna State is that in everything, even come and eat, people can bring religion into it. I thought more than any state in Nigeria, Kaduna State has suffered more in terms of religious and ethnic divisions and that should be a lesson to us to walk away from that, but what I found out  is that the elite  have one weapon and that is religion and it is sad. But, unfortunately for them they have not studied me. If anyone has studied my career at FCT, he would know that playing religious card will fail all the time, because the moment you play that card, I know you are an adversary that needs to be put down and I will not look back until I am done with you.

Our religion is our personal business. Most people in this country believe in one God. We believe we are worshipping the same God in different ways. The moment I got elected, the number of people that came to me who wanted to be the secretary of the Muslims Pilgrims Board showed to me that there is a problem. Nobody wanted to be the commissioner of finance and so on. That means there is something happening there in the name of religion.
But honestly, one of the legacies Architect Barnabas Bala Bantex and I want to leave behind in this state is the complete separation of religion from governance and the hypocrisy associated with it. I say hypocrisy because the same person that preaches and incites  people against a Christian has no problem going to the hospital to see a Christian doctor if the doctor is good. He would not remember that the doctor is a Christian then.
The problem that we found in Kaduna State is that ethnicity and religion come first; competence and capacity last. We want to reverse that, because we believe that those who work, those that are competent, those that can deliver benefit everyone.
One thing that has generated controversy is the religious preaching bill. What does the government intend to achieve when it becomes law and how are  you going to tackle the anxiety generated?
Well, Kaduna State more than any state in Nigeria,  if you take out the Yobe, Borno  and Adamawa axis  that have suffered from Boko Haram insurgency, has suffered the most from death and destruction of property, due to misuse and abuse of religion. More people have been killed in Kaduna from words that  people have said and if you go back to history, some of you are not old enough, but I was when Maitatsine happened. He was a Cameroonian that came to Nigeria and started preaching. The Emir of Kano had him deported back to Cameroon, that is the grandfather of the current emir. After then, he managed to smuggle himself back again and continued preaching.
He was preaching a version of Islam that was intolerant, that called other Muslims pagans and so on and so forth. But in spite of what he was preaching, he began to acquire followers and we all know what happened. Military operation needed to be mounted to flush them out. Those that escaped from the Maitatsine moved to Borno State and started the Kalakato sect, which again led to many deaths and destruction. All these came from people that are not trained in religious matters, people  that woke up and started  preaching and  acquiring followers and inevitably that  sect will  grow into large numbers to threaten communities and there will be clash.
That was also how Mohammed Yusuf started. He was a student of Sheik Jafar Adam in Kano. They fell out because Jafar felt that some of the views he was expressing were extreme and intolerant. He went and started his own sect and we know what happened and we are still dealing with it. So, when you have such kind of things happening in your country, I think as  leaders,  we have to sit down and examine ourselves and the society and say what  we can do to prevent that.
In my opinion, it is the lack of regulation of religion that led to all these circle of death and destructions. Just recently, we had the Shi’ite problem in Zaria, following a similar pattern. I believe that before you start preaching in any religion, you should have gone through a system of education, training and some kind of certification. Even those that deal with the physical life get certified, let alone those that deal with the spiritual life. We initiated this bill from the Kaduna State security council, based on reports of new sects emerging in Kaduna State. There is one around Makarfi called Gausiyya, they do their Zuhr prayer around 11am, different from other Muslims. This is how these things start and if you don’t resolve it quickly, they grow into something else.
A woman in Makarfi said Prophet Muhammad (SAW) was speaking to her and sick people started going to her for their healing. The husband of this woman was busy collecting N1,000 as consultancy fee before people could see his wife. We had to take steps to end that movement because before you know it people would start coming from far and wide and this woman would become our next problem.
It was the report of two or three of these that compelled us in the security council to ask a question, whether there is a law that regulates preaching. Then we were told there has been a law since 1984 after the Maitasine problems, the administration   passed the law. It was subsequently amended several times to increase the fine and the imprisonment term. This is a living problem and we know it. Christian priests, the ones I know go to seminary and spend so many years there, they study under a more experienced Reverend to learn what to say and what not to say.
Religious leaders don’t preach hatred; they preach peace, tolerance and love. But today in my religion of Islam, anybody can wake up and start a sect, no control. In those days, from Islamiyya school, if you choose that line, you need to study more books. After that you go to the East (Borno area) for more studies  and training, then from there you go to a mosque and begin to call to prayers before you become Imam in any mosque. Before you become an Imam of a Friday mosque, the community must agree that you are well learned and competent. But now, everyone can build a mosque, put loudspeakers and call himself Imam and start disturbing people at night.
A priest that has gone through thorough teachings and training would not go and ask people to cause trouble and kill each other. They are trained men of God. In Christendom today, we all know that some people would drink something overnight and wake up the next day and claim they are  Apostles, that God has spoken to them. You cannot disprove that because you are not there with him, and he begins to collect followers and when he begins to preach hatred what can you do? Is this the society we want? This is the question. The logic behind this law is to strengthen the 1984 Law so as to regulate and ensure that those that are given the opportunity to preach, at least know what they are doing, they have a level of responsibility to develop society rather than divide it. This is our goal; we don’t have anything against any religion or anybody. Some people have argued that there is freedom of religion. Of course. Section 38 is very clear we must not have a state religion. Every Nigerian is allowed to practise his faith or not to have any religion  at all.
In my speeches, I have made it clear that I am the governor of Kaduna State and everybody that lives here, whether he is a Muslim, Christian or pagan has a right over me as a governor, to give him his right and also protect him and his religion and I would do that with the last drop of my blood. However, those that are quoting Section 38 of the constitution, conveniently forget Section 45 which says that you can regulate any human right if it would affect the right of others. You can practise your religion but you can’t do it in a way that abuses the right of another person.
So, there is nothing in this law that is not in conformity with the constitution, or there is nothing new about it other than its scope. I saw an article that alerted us to what we did not include - blocking of federal highways, but that is in the Penal Code. It is good to have put it there because every Friday you see most mosques blocking roads. Why? And after we sent the bill to the House of Assembly.
In my opinion, this is a law that we need not only in Kaduna State but almost all states in Nigeria and I want to assure you that I just came back from the National Economic  Council meeting, and a  handful of the governors have asked me to send them our own law, because they think they also need it in their states. Everybody is watching to see how we will handle our own. We sent it to the state assembly in October 2015 because some people are saying we sent it because of the Shi’ite problem, No! It was the state assembly that kept on looking at it and saying this one ‘Na hot potato’ until now. But, on a very serious note, we don’t have any ulterior motive other than to put a framework that would ensure that Kaduna State people live in peace with everyone practicing his religion and disallowing every Tom, Dick and Harry to come and say he can preach.
I tell people who disagree with the bill to read it and tell me what they  don’t like. Don’t tell me you don’t like the entire law because we know we have a problem and I am the governor and I need a solution. Are you telling me it is okay for someone to put speakers in the night and start blaring preaching, be it Islam or Christianity, disturbing people? Is that okay? Which chapter in both the holy books says that Jesus or Muhammad (SAW) did that? Are we not trying to copy them? Are they not the perfections of both our  religions? Jesus said, ‘give to God what is God’s and to Caesar what is Caesar’s’. Government is the Caesar.
We have informed CAN and JNI that if they  have problem with any section, if there is anything to be done, if they  don’t  want the government to be involved we will remove it, but they must  regulate.

You promised you were not going to demolish houses during your campaign, but here we are having issues of land recovery. What went wrong?
We want to recover school land for obvious reasons. Our population is growing and we need more land for schools. Every year, Nigeria’s population increases by six million people and already the schools we have are congested because the land earmarked for them have been encroached upon by communities largely because of our carelessness. Because if you fence up a school land, it would be more difficult to encroach upon but the previous governments have not done that and now we are doing that. We started with the Alhudahuda College, Zaria.
Zaria is my father’s hometown. Those that are living in Alhudahuda College are mostly Hausa-Fulani and Muslims like me. We started there because we noticed that the college exhibited the most serious form of abuse and impunity. Now, the college is clean, we are fencing the school and moving to the next phase and that is the Rimi College. We saw that unlike the former college, most of the people living on the land of Rimi College are title holders.
But Alhudahuda College costs us nothing, no compensation because the Land Use Act and the Nigeria Urban and Regional Planning Act says you are only entitled to compensation if you have Certificate of Occupancy and development permit. So, if you have C of O and no permission to build from KAPSUDA, it will be taken down as illegal building. You need both. In Alhudahuda College, they didn’t have any because it was essentially some Village Heads or traditional rulers saying to the people ‘you can build here.’ We moved to Rimi College and that was a bit more difficult because we found out that they all have certificates of occupancy.
So, recovering the land in Rimi College cost us N380 million for compensation and we had to give them alternative land. That is the law and we complied with the law even if the beneficiaries are PDP people. In Rimi College, it was not demolition, we call it land recovery. Most of the buildings in Rimi College will be used as staff housing or hostels and that would make Rimi College a boarding school again. I think it is a tragedy because it was one of our most important boarding schools in Kaduna established in 1946 and was later converted to a day school. We are restoring Rimi College back to a proper boarding school and we will use some of those mansions that we paid for as student hostels, staff housing and so on.
So nothing is lost as such. By December 2016, In Shaa Allah, we will admit boarding students into Rimi College.
We want to restore it back to the old Saint John’s glory. There are other places that have not caught your attention but work is going on. The one that you will ask if I don’t comment on it is the Kaduna Polytechnic and Gbagyi Villa. That is not in our programme because Kaduna Polytechnic is not a state institution, we didn’t even know there was a problem there because it is not one of our schools. We have the list of all our schools and we know exactly what needs to be done and we are doing it quietly. If you notice, all those shops around primary schools are going. We just tell them park before we come and they know we mean business.
The Rector of Kaduna Polytechnic paid us a courtesy call and complained that land earmarked for the polytechnic has been encroached upon. So we asked him to write. He gave us the details and we checked and realised that, yes, they were given this land in the 1970s.
The land was properly acquired, compensation was paid, we have the records and the name of those that collected the compensation and it is polytechnic land. When the Federal Government took over the polytechnic, it moved from being polytechnic land to federal government land. No state governor can touch federal land. Even if I want to give land in Kaduna polytechnic, I cannot because I am disallowed by the Land Use Act. So, these people that encroached have picked a fight with the Federal Government of Nigeria. When they gave us the report, we say we will go and mark the buildings that have encroached poly land.
The first time we tried, the people became violent and chased us away. So we went back with the Nigeria Army and we marked them. During the tenure of the late Governor Yakowa, this issue had come up. Kaduna Polytechnic had complained and he said, ‘let me go and see the extent of the encroachment’. He went, he saw and said, ‘okay, stop it here’. He drew a line and a fence was built. He said he will appeal to the Kaduna Polytechnic to live with the encroachment since the remaining land is still significant.
So that kind of interim agreement was made. The polytechnic did not quite accept and there was nothing in writing but of course, they can’t look at the governor and say, ‘we don’t agree’ particularly, since they are neighbours. Then Yakowa left. The Gbagyi Villa occupants broke the fence and continued building. Now, tell me, should they be allowed to stand? When we made the markings, the community made a strategic mistake.
Kaduna State government has no interest in all these things other than enforcing the law, because within our territory we have the duty to enforce whatever is the law, but we are not benefiting from this land. We are just enforcing the law and ensuring that those that live in Kaduna State comply with the law. They decided, as usual,  to Christianise it, saying, El-Rufai is attacking Christians and I said ‘Alhamdulillah, they are guilty.’ If they had come out and say, ‘yes Yakowa drew this land and yes we are sorry we made a mistake, let’s go back to that line’, we can then discuss it.
You,  a criminal, you broke the law, you stole people’s land and also built without development permit and you are saying it is because you are a Christian that you are being persecuted. Christianity is not a façade  for illegality,  neither is Islam. You can’t hide under one finger and say what you want to say. I told KASUPDA to  go and mark the structures for demolition  and we will give polytechnic their land.
Millennium city is slightly different. The land was acquired by the state government.  Compensation was duly paid to some of the customary title holders and there are some sections where compensation was not paid because  they refused to accept it. We have the plan to build 20,000 housing capacity in Kaduna in the next four years. So we brought some developers that would build at their own cost in the millennium city. We took them to the part where compensation has been paid and gave them title. The villagers chased them away. I went to the Village Head because I know they are the organizers  of the youth that are chasing the developers. I told them that you have been paid compensation and so you don’t have the right to do what you are doing.
What he wants is that they want to expand the village beyond the boundary and I  said they would not have that. I said we should go back to the village and plan it otherwise it will be like Obalende and Ikoyi. I have seen that in Abuja. It is like Garki village and Garki. You just create a slum within the city. When government officials went there for  inspection, they found out that  people had already created the extension for themselves.  So I asked them to bring the structures  down. In this state,  as long as I remain the governor, nobody will get  involved  in an illegal development and get away with it. I want everybody to understand that. When we were in Abuja, it took us one and half years for people to understand and when they did, we became friends but initially it was all insults.

Stories have started filtering out that you were engaged in fisticuffs with your deputy….
I have known Architect Bala Bantex since 1976 in our days at the Ahmadu Bello University and we have never even argued once, because to a large extent we think and act alike. I think the problem that we are facing is that some people think that we are getting along too well in a state where deputy governors are supposed to be spare tyres. They don’t chair Executive Council meetings, don’t act when the governor is absent. We have been informed that no deputy governor has ever chaired an executive meeting. Bantex and I operate as partners and some people don’t like it. They want to create division between us and you know today with the internet you can manufacture any story and it can get traction because people like this kind of thing. They once said I insulted the vice president in a meeting and he walked out of that meeting. So these kinds of rumours are meant to create divisions between people.
I had a story that we had an argument concerning the retrenchment of the state workers. Bantex  and I have never discussed  the retrenchment of workers in Kaduna State. The people that wrote the story are also not quite intelligent because if I was the one to write the story I would say governor and deputy governor slapped each other in the governor’s office. I think that people are just mischievous and I don’t know what their motives are but we leave everything to God, but I want to assure you that Architect Bantex and I have never had an argument since 1976. And I have never slapped anyone in my life. I am not a physical person. I fight with words.

By Andrew Agbese, Kaduna for Dailytrust Newspaper