Europeans don’t want Africa’s Development, says Ex-minister

Former Minister of Agriculture, Audu Ogbeh addresses issues of governance structure, Local Government, under development, and other matters in this interview with Laolu Akande, on the Inside Sources Programme of Channels TV, OLUMIDE OLUSEGUN brings excerpts.

If you look at where we are now as a country, do you say that we are on the right direction?


I think we are striving to get it right. And usually the pains of tutelage are very intense. I think we are heading there. We understand what the problems are. We have to educate our people. We have to industrialise. We have to feed well and maintain peace, law and order. In all of those areas, I think we are heading somewhere. But the journey is slow and tedious and is full of challenges, some of which we don’t have the resources to meet. But we are getting somewhere.

From 1999 up to now, we have had 25 years of uninterrupted civilian rule. Would you say that we are getting more of the democracy dividend and how would you compare this period from 1999 to our previous experience with other republic as a nation?


The other republics were essentially military. The problem with the military regime is that it is not democratic. And I often say if we were to compare Nigeria with India, India became independent on the 15th of August, 1947. I was 13 days old. Same day with Pakistan. And before India became independent, Winston Churchill, the great hero of the World War, had said that India could not be a country. That it was a land of warring religious bigots and tribal and ethnic warlords, and therefore could not survive unless Germany sent troops commanded by Gestapo officers to keep law and order. That was Winston Churchill, as Prime Minister of the UK. But between that 1947, August 15th, and today, there has never been a coup in India. On the other hand, Pakistan has a different story. No elected government in Pakistan has ever finished its tenure. And they got independent the same day. So you can see the beauty of democracy. It’s very messy sometimes, but it’s better. Because in India, the great benefit of steady democracy is that India has one of the most powerful judiciaries. Politicians are frightened to death of the judiciary in India. Nobody escapes them. And even though India hasn’t finished dealing with poverty, India is making progress. They are getting to the moon, they are inventing things, and it is the fastest growing economy in the world now. With that huge population, ethnic and religious differences, India has maintained a democracy. They have just finished an election. The military tried. They did their bit here. But when they came in 1966, they broke down a system that was evolving. The regions were very much on their own. Each of the regions had a diplomat in London. I remember Okorodudu, whose son I met at King’s College, was agent general of Western Nigeria in London. Jolly Yusuf Tanko was agent general of Northern Nigeria in London. And I think it was a guy from the East, who was representing the East. But we carried on. All of them had their agents separate from Nigeria Ambassadors. The disruptions created problems. The coups happened and disrupted a lot of things. Brought in very bitter ethnic feelings. So when we got out of that and became a democracy in 1999 again, we thank God for that and luckily, we had a strong man like Obasanjo who came along. I became chairman in 2001. So we did make some progress and whatever it is, a democracy is preferable. Certainly.

For the most part, you don’t normally see any distinct distinction between the political parties. What is meant to be the expectation or the role of the political party in the government?


In 1979, I was an NPN, House of Assembly Deputy Speaker. Then in 82, Shagari called me to Lagos. And I remember that once in a while, if Adisa Akinloye phoned Shagari and we were at a cabinet meeting, Shagari would stand up to go and answer the call. He would Stop the meeting and go and answer. Party was that strong then. And Shagari himself, being a democrat, respected the chairman. Parties have weakened substantially because they haven’t gone beyond machinery for conducting elections and then retiring to partial oblivion after the election. It is something that has bothered me a bit. When I was chairman, I did say that a party must hold conferences. I put the idea to President Obasanjo and he liked it. We had one. At which he explained the party policies, where he was heading, and the problems he had.

And this was in the first term of office?


Yes, but there were people in the party who didn’t like that, who complained that I was arrogant and I had no business calling the president to account. And I said, no. We produced him. I can tell you some of the stories that happened. When we were about to pick candidates in 1999, one or two northerners came up and they wanted to contest. Abubakar Aminu wanted to contest. And at a meeting in Jerry Ghana’s house at night began at 8 p.m and it ended at 4 o’clock in the morning. Solomon La, Chief Awoniyi, Iyiocha Ayu, Jerry Ghana and so on, were persuading Aminu not to run. Aminu said he was going to run. And we said, no, this thing must go south. And then the arguments, you know, the south has economic power, then fine. They didn’t take it from you, they built it. But that’s not a reason for the north to keep power permanently. The argument went, you can’t believe it, one of the elders actually burst into tears. We took him to the bathroom, washed his face.

One of the northern elders?
Yes, we were saying, look, in particular, after June 12th, let’s not take the south or anybody for granted. This country is better together than splitting up again and all the chaos. Around 4 o’clock in the morning, finally we persuaded him. He said he was going to run. And he argued also that the only position that the north could have in the system was to be at the political helm because southerners control the banks, the industries. Yes, that’s not a defense. So he agreed. He said he would run. He wanted to run as vice president. Fine. Run as vice president. But allow the south. After June 12th and the trauma, we can’t tell the south again to sit there. It’s our (north) business to run the country. And at the Jos convention in 99, there was no northerner. You had Ikweme, Douglas, Jim Obodo. I can name all of them. So I said we should carry on with this tradition of party conferences. And I give them the example. The oldest political party in Africa is the ANC, founded in 1912 in South Africa? Whoever you are, the party is bigger than you because the party produces you and then you go on. And it worked.

You served in the APC government from 2015 to 2019. I think that the promises that the party made in 2015, by the time the Buhari administration ended, it seemed as if it didn’t do a complete job. What do you think?
Well, let me again say this. When government takes off, the pressure on the president and the governors can be absolutely horrendous. What is the cause of the pressure? The poverty in the environment. Every day, at least 10, 15 people want to see the president for their personal problems like appointments, and favours. And he dares not say, I don’t want to see anybody. We put him there, now he doesn’t want to see us. It is a very bad score. So he has to see them but some of the most brilliant ideas he wants to pursue, he keeps pushing away. Until he gets to the routine of just cancelling meetings, memos, approvals, and so on. And that occupies his entire schedule. It is a very difficult thing to manage. So you will find that no matter how determined he is, how hard he tries to pursue his agenda, he declines. It is the same thing at the state level. The governors go through a lot of pressure. People don’t know this. The entire elite class would like to see the governor one day or the other. They have a favour they want. My mother died. I have no money to bury her. My daughter is getting married. We suffered for you. I want money. I am going abroad. I have a health problem. I am broke and so on. And each person of some prominence would like to take this problem to the governor personally. And believe you me, the governor can go to bed at 2 a.m., wake up at 7 or 8am, and believe me, to read his files would be a problem because if he doesn’t see them, they take offense. Yes. We made him governor, now he doesn’t want to see us. So the societal problem, the poverty, the inequality in the economic system, makes governance very difficult. And if you sit there and say, I am a technocrat, I just do the work, I don’t care, and you lose the next election. History may turn around and say, he did very well, but you have lost because that is not what counts on Election Day.

So, this seems like a conundrum. How is this meant not to affect development of the country because the president and the governor have been elected to deliver to the people. What kind of scenario must we have to deal with this kind of situation?
That is what I said about these conferences. Transfer the load of things that don’t need to come to you. Because a governor, a president, my God, a president is a slave worker. He works. Sometimes you wonder, do they sleep? Because the number of problems in the head at the end of each day, diplomatic issues, security matters, the budget, the cabinet, your health, all that comes together in one person. And it’s big. So it’s about saying, during this conference, I have some trusted elders. You deal with this problem and report to me. You deal with that. This is what I suggest. You say, no, it won’t work because in this area there’s X, Y, Z. Okay, put it together, let me know. It’s easier for him to take that advice and move on because the job on his table is extremely huge. And so we need to look seriously. A democracy is not just an election day matter. You have to keep in touch. You need to send people to do so. And get the feedback and let you know because the burden of the job is extremely huge.

I observe that in the U.S., for instance, so they have think tanks. Some are supported and sponsored by the Democratic Party and the other by the Republican Party. When there is a Republican president, he hires from the people who were in the think tank when Democrats were in power. The same thing is done when you have Democrat President. It seems that this may be the kind of innovation that we might develop. What do you think?


It would be a great idea because otherwise, the president alone is overwhelmed. We need to do that. It is a system which some people say we shouldn’t have inherited. We should have stayed with the parliamentary system. I don’t see anything wrong with the presidential constitution, but we need to design structures to support it. And as you said, people have to be there working on issues and problems.

What do we do about this?
The president doesn’t have time.

But just like President Tinubu said, they asked for the job.

Yes, they did. But ask them now. Imagine a man like Bola Tinubu, he is my friend. Personally, he is a very kind person. Today, he has taken an economic step, which every presidential candidate said they would take. Remove subsidy. He has removed the subsidy. Now, there are unintended consequences and unexpected developments. That couldn’t have been obvious to any of them as candidates when they took the steps, when they were promising that.

I guess they would know that it’s going to cause some discomfort.

Yes, but not as intense as what we have. And today, people blame them, oh, he came to make us suffer. No. Which president wins an election to make people suffer? It’s not true but now, he’s here. And it’s so intense, so widespread, that it definitely bothers him. The cost of garri, yam and tomato. For God’s sake, what do my people eat? These things are so expensive. Now, Labour wants their pay hiked. He calculates how much impact it will make on the entire budget of the country. And he realises it can only go so far. And Labour says, whatever you give us within this range can’t help. Those are problems that nobody really anticipated in detail at the time the Europeans were telling us remove subsidy. Right? And I have my own views about some of the advice we get from Western Europe. A few days ago, I heard a comment by Jeffrey Sachs (an American economist and public policy analyst, professor at Columbia University). An advisor to the United Nations on economic matters. I admire him because he has never accepted SAP (Structural Adjustment Programme).You know what he said? He said he is not sure if the advanced economies of the world will want to see an industrialised Africa. In other words, hey, you niggers there, stay there. You have raw materials, we will buy from you but depend on us for your toothpicks, your pins, your erasers, and your pencils. Don’t do anything because if we industrialise, they lose. That’s the plain truth. I am not sure anybody got into those details. That’s Jeffrey Sachs. He’s always complained about it. He and Paul Krugman, Nobel Prize winner and economic professor. They warned against SAP. Even the US House of Representatives had a committee that said that structural adjustment had never helped any developing country. But we got into it. So today, the president now carries the load and takes the blame. Which is where a think tank is necessary. It will go through all the details of the scenarios. If you do this, what happens? If we don’t do this, what goes on? And then present them and explain them to the president. He makes a choice based on the advice and the resources available.

Part of the reason why it seems to be something that makes sense is that there is loss of institutional memory. APC has been in power since 2015 up until 2023 but because of what seems to be the detachment of the lack of involvement of the party, I am not sure that the current administration is benefiting from the level of information and experience that exists within the party. There is disconnect between the party and the administration and therefore, there is no institutional memory benefit.

Absolutely. This is exactly why I said, even at the level of the party, those conferences and think tanks and documentation, you need to keep reviving them and representing them. Presenting them to a man who is overwhelmed by work and issues. We find a solution in some of the things the think tank had 10, to 15 years ago. But like you said, the party has a manifesto and you use it to win the election. And when you get there as a president, there are things that you could never have imagined in your manifesto. The security complications today. No matter what anybody said, the manifesto could never have gone beyond, we shall strengthen the military and improve police services, and pay them better to keep peace. That manifesto does not do the work of a committee of experts that will tell you that violence is being imported from across the borders by fanatics of different convictions, who are going to come in large numbers. And that small arms multiplication in the zone will increase. One expert in that committee may tell you, okay, why don’t we set up a system like the American Condor satellite, where you can sit in a control room and watch every bit of your borders, actually see people moving in and out? Nobody may mention that to you. It’s a security issue. Now, you need an expert to say, look, it will cost you so much. Hang this satellite, it watches your borders because you can’t build a wall around Nigeria’s borders. From Badagry to Sokoto to Maduguri, down to Rivers and to Lagos. It is 4,076 kilometres. What kind of wall are you going to build? But the satellite can tell you. Control rooms all over. Smugglers, bandits, Boko Haram, whatever. So as time goes on, this is the kind of team that needs to support a president because he is overwhelmed.

But the people will not take that excuse at all.

No, they won’t. It’s not an excuse, but this is the reality. And so it’s fine-tuning governance that will help. Pass the load to guys whose job it is to do this particular thing and feed you back and you stay on top of it.

Don’t you think the problems can get a better addressing if you have a president or a prime minister through the parliamentary system who is sitting in parliament to take questions, who doesn’t have an opportunity to hide unlike the presidential where President sits in the villa and sends a special assistant or the ministers? In a parliamentary system, the president is held to more account daily, and he must answer publicly. What do you think?

Well, you know why that’s difficult here? We are talking about rotation. A party may be strong enough to win the election but doesn’t have enough candidate material from certain parts of the country at a particular time. How do you then select your prime minister from that part of the country? Otherwise, one part of the country can continue being prime minister forever. It’s a danger. It happened in the UK. William Pitt, the elder, was prime minister for 20 years and handed over to his son, William Pitt, the younger, for another 20 years. 40 years of father and son. Nigeria wouldn’t accept it. The point you made about his involvement and presence, it’s very valid. The other point is the cost of running the presidential system, which is a bit too high. That can be fine-tuned because we’re also here arguing about zoning. One part of the country may dominate this business of being prime minister for too long and alienate the other parts. So there is merit in what you have said, and yet there are difficulties in implementation.

We have a federal constitution, where they say the two-tier or three-tier government, the federal, state, and the local governments. Some of the issues that affects the people are health, education and they are actually on the concurrent list and some are on the residual. But you find out that there is a lot of focus on the federal government, even for issues that are meant to be sorted out by the local and the state government. What do you say to that?

We are among the only three countries in the world practicing this kind of constitutional democracy. In the U.S., the federal, the state, the counties. In Nigeria, the federal, the state, the local government. Now Brazil is coming along with what they call the municipalities, very much like the local government. In theory, it should be a fantastic system of government. It should be great, that nothing is left out. The most minute elements in the local government have to be dealt with by the local government chairman. And the state government is dealing with the federal government. Here, you have a problem. Every little thing that happens, we blame PresidentTinubu, we blame Buhari, we blame whoever is at the center. Now, the elite who do the blaming and the complaining hardly go to their local governments. On election day, most of them don’t even vote. They have either gone abroad, they don’t want any wahala, they have gone abroad, and they don’t have time but they are very vocal, lashing at governments as well. Here you have a system, which unfortunately is not working, If it were working well, a lot of these problems would be dealt with. You have a governor in the state, and in the state there are 10, 15, 20 local governments and the local government system is failing. We had a meeting at the Army Policy Center about eight weeks ago. The Sultan of Sokoto and former Head of State, Abdulsalam were there with about 11 governors. I presented a paper about the chaos in the north. And I asked them, Your Excellencies, tell us the truth. Is your local government system working? Two of them got up and said no.

Two of the governors?


Yes. One of them said he had had to pay about N7billion debts owed by local governments. What did they achieve with it? They couldn’t see anything. So, supervision. Number two, funds are shared out. Since the removal of subsidy. The quantum of cash reaching the federal, states and local governments has gone up. From N720 billion on the average, when I was in government, increased to N1.2 trillion. You would expect, therefore, that some money is going down there. Go to the local government. Most of us, the political elite, don’t go home unless there’s a burial or some chieftaincy stuff. We don’t go there. These are the people who deliver the votes. On election day, you see widows and old women waiting patiently, smiling with their cards to vote for us. After the election, we seem not to remember them anymore. Because, where is the vote for the local government? It goes to a so-called joint account. And the rumor is that some governors will give the chairman some pocket money and tell him to take a walk. Now, primary schools are broken down. Children are lying on their bellies to read and write in the classroom because there are no desks. Some schools now recruit teachers who have retired to come back and teach on a salary of N5,000 per month. I have seen this myself. You don’t see a roof of the primary school. You don’t see a maternity where a pregnant woman can be taken to deliver. In some places, they put her in a wheelbarrow to try and push her to deliver. Some die bleeding. No exaggeration. And each month, there is money being released. But where is it? This is the crime that the political class is committing against the people. On the other hand, on election day, it’s these same people who line up more faithfully than all we noisemakers here to vote. So, what I want to say to Nigerians is if you don’t want the local government system, scrap it. If it were allowed to work, it would be a fantastic system. Because we, the elite who criticize, don’t see this point. Much money is going, N300 million, N400 million and It disappears. Where does it go? And so, we are committing a heinous crime against the people whose vote sustains us and makes us the big shots we are. It is wrong. Because if these local governments became platforms for industrial growth, that’s where the raw materials are. Take a Ekiti, Akwa Ibom and Cross River, you can become a major exporter of bananas to Europe. Guess who controls the banana industry in the world? Germans.

Do they produce it?

No. The Germans didn’t take any major part in the slave trade but after that, they did a lot of work in the West Indies, where they grew the Macintosh banana. Even in the Cameroons where they were also the masters. Their bananas are superior to ours in thickness of flesh. They can endure the stress of travel. I went to a market in London once, Spinterfield Market. Opens at midnight, closes at 6am. Vegetables and fruits from the rest of the world. By 6 o’clock the market is done and closed. There is nothing from your beloved country. A young Yoruba boy took me there. We left at 4am to go to the market. You couldn’t believe it. Planes have landed in Gatwick and they are brought bananas, yams. We are the largest producers of yams in the world but Ghana is the biggest exporter. These are the problems confronting governance and we are not dealing with them.

What kind of panacea would you recommend to the governors and possibly the president to deal with some of these issues?

What I am going to say here is, and I don’t know if they will take it, in the very near future, the president, the vice-president, the vice-president is chairman of the National Economic Council. They should sit down at a meeting between governors and decide what they want to do with local governments and they should be very honest about it. Any governor who sets up a caretaker committee should not receive any funds because the caretaker is illegal by the Supreme Court. Don’t send them cash. Deduct their own and keep it. But sit down with the governors. We are building anger and frustration among the young people who ordinarily would be in the villages making their money. Instead of invading the cities and going into crime. Lagos, Abuja. These are our own children. But they have no access. If there were two or three or five industries in my local government, some of the young boys I see here, won’t come. They can’t pay the rent, they can’t feed, they can’t earn anything and they easily end up in crime. So I will suggest this to Mr. President, hold a two-day meeting here with the governors on this issue. Do we want the local governments and if we don’t want, let’s ask the National Assembly to scrap them because I can’t be sending you money which disappears. You don’t repair primary schools, you don’t do anything. The money simply vanishes and they say they are paying workers. For which work? I go home, which work do you do? You’re on scale 15, the local government. What do you do? Nothing. You stroll around in the morning and drink palm wine. But these are the issues. Those failures are really creating serious, dangerous problems for the country.

The Attorney General of the Federation has gone to court to compel local government autonomy. What’s your take on that?

I like that because I think in the end we have got to take some action. The governor should see the local governments as partners in progress. You deal with this. You have a greater leveling village road so the farmers can go about their work. Pump water from a stream, treat it well with alum and chlorine and activated carbon. We give the people clean water and remove the menace of cholera. You repair primary schools, clinics, maternities, and so on. And keep the place alive. That’s why you are a chairman of a local government. That’s why money is allocated to you. Now if you don’t do that, what do you do? What do you do when you say go to work? Nothing.

I think a former president once said some of the local government chairmen sign the paper that they collect the money but in the real sense, it was the governors that were collecting it.

Yes, they call it a joint account. I was part of the constitutional conference of 1994 during Abacha regime. That’s what we said. Look, why would you not allow funds to get to these people? You don’t want the local government. You alone can’t cope with the problems in villages. You can’t organise the people. If we were to go back to the old DIFRI, which was a good program under IBB. Now, the money vanishes and we are still having more problems. And we seem to be shy of dealing with the matter.

There are those who argue though that what happens at the local government ought to be the business of the state.

It is not for them to decide. We have chosen this constitution. Like I said, it’s the US, Brazil and Nigeria, practicing this. We chose it. The military introduced it because they found it would work. In 1964, I was in Form 3, the Kano state government gave a loan to the northern Nigerian government because in those days, tax collection was no joke. Once you were 18, as a young man, there was a law. You had to pay tax. There was another law against loitering around in the morning. If you are found wandering around, you will be arrested. Why aren’t you on a farm? Why aren’t you busy? What are you wandering around doing? Wandering around trying to prey on other people or women or whatever. So, the native authorities were rich. They gave scholarships.

And these were the equivalent of the local government which has virtually disappeared.

Precisely. Which is why Obasanjo, in the reform of 1978, put this thing in place and decided that this was the way to go. And he expected that retired Perm secs, diplomats, people of a certain maturity, would run these local governments and bring life to the villages. We are not bringing life to the villages. We are creating rebellion and anger among our own children who are coming to the cities and doing horrendous things. If you hear of some of the things that these boys are doing, get some babalao (native doctors) who tell them if they do this, they will become rich. And they do horrible things because we are not providing for them. Incredible.

Still talking about some of these concurrent issues in health and education. Are you concerned about some of the conditions under which people live in, even in the universities?

That is the one grieving me most. As far back as the Abacha days, Nasser El Rufai and I started a campaign for the rehabilitation of university hostels. In 2018, I went to Zaria, to the Institute of Agricultural Research. And I stopped over in the VC’s office. He brought tea, we were drinking. He said, Audu where were you last year? I said, since I left in 72, I haven’t come this way. He said, when you were here, there were 14,000 undergraduates, now we have 44,000. We haven’t added one block until Dangote came and built some hostels. So, we took my daughter to school not too long ago. And when they opened the hostel, including our celebrated UI, sometimes the girls have to come out at 5am to quickly bathe outside before rushing back to their rooms. It’s the same everywhere. Ife, Nsukka, go and see where our children who will replace us are living. So, not too long ago, I had a meeting with the committee of vice-chancellors. I even raised this matter with President Obasanjo. We couldn’t push it far. Let’s get the private sector to build hostels by some arrangement. I hear that the PTF has reached some format but ABU is sitting on land as large as the local government, from aviation in Samaru to Shika. You have land, endless large. The private sector has to come in and provide some of these things. Go and see the toilets. I keep saying, we are old we will go, what are we doing to them? How can you grow up in a ghetto and become a leader? And somehow, there’s no response. These are the issues that a party or governance can come up with. A professor who is a member of your party can say, this is what we have. Let the committee visit. What do we do? Ask the African Development Bank. Can you find us a fund? We want to put in hostels. Because if these kids grow up in a healthy environment, they will have a better mental attitude toward life and development. And it’s something I haven’t given up on, because I think we need to do something and create jobs. Imagine of the 252 universities we have now, private and public, we start a programme of housing. Let the treasury not be the one to carry the load, but the private sector. Imagine the quarries and the tipper drivers and block makers, people plastering electricians, painters, and then put solar energy as the source of energy on the roofs. And over the next 30 years, you collect your money back. It’s doable.

So you have been active in national life since 1979, what would you consider to be your greatest impact in all of your public up until when you became minister of agriculture in 2015?

When I was in the Ministry of Communications, one of the things that they had started before I got there was the splitting of the P&T. it was called Post and Telecoms into two, which now became NITEL and NIPOST. A previous minister there had done a draft. I had to redo the draft and take it to the council. Finally, they were broken into two. So NITEL emerged and NIPOST. I was only there for a year before the coup. Then after the elections, President Shagari sent me to the steel industry, Ajaokuta. For just 45 days before the coup. When I visited and I came back, I said to him, sir, if you leave me here for two and a half years, I’d like to try and link up every state in Nigeria by standard rail. Because there’s a place in Ajaokuta called the medium steel section for making railway lines and it’s cheaper to build a railway line than a road. So I said, why? All these heavy trailers, 60 tons driving along here, and build your roads with iron and steel. So put in a railway system and save your roads. And he said, fine. But then the coup came. We were detained and then we came out and all that. And then I stayed away for a while before I returned. More recently, my happiest event was turning Nigeria up to become the largest producer of rice in Africa in 2018 overtaking Egypt. The FAO announced it. Then Egypt asked us to export rice to them. I said we don’t have enough yet because the rice bill was about $5 million a day on average. Rice, wheat, milk was averagely $5 million each a day. We are consuming N7 million tons. A million tons of rice will fill up 33,000 trailers. That’s what we are eating. It is from Thailand and India. And because I grew up following my mother to the rice mill when I was a little boy, 7, 8 years old, I got interested in rice. I was the first Nigerian private person to make rice free of stones in Markurdi in 1986. President Obasanjo brought me the machines from South Korea. Otherwise, the local rice had a problem with stones. So that was the high point.

What is your assessment of President Tinubu’s one year in office?

My assessment is that the removal of subsidy has thrown up unexpected issues and unintended problems. Dealing with them is going to be quite tough. Farmers are trying now. The season is here. I hope that food prices will drop by the beginning of harvest in September but between now and September, it’s quite a trek. The issue of agriculture is one that is quite complex. I visited Ibadan when Ajimobi was governor and talked to farmers. Also, I visited Ekiti. Ajimobi quietly said to me, you know my problem here? I said, what? He said these young boys are no longer interested in agriculture. Oyo and Kano are the two states with the largest number of dams in the country. How do we get the younger generation interested in agriculture? And if we don’t get them interested, how do we feed? Getting them interested is not as simple as that. They need machinery to farm. The hoe and cutlass can’t do too much now. Those are my big concerns. Food first. Stabilise the Nigerian family. Make the cost of food affordable and go down. And then you go into a power supply which they are working on because without electricity you can’t industrialise. Those two will go a long way in reducing the crime rate, stabilising young people in their home bases. You don’t have to go to Lagos and sleep under the bridge. You trek to Abuja where you come to submit application for employment. Which work? There’s nothing here. Federal capitals are not industrial capitals. I mean, Washington. They started building Washington in 1876. Today, the population of Washington is still under 600,000.

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