Katsina governor doesn’t listen to us – Dr Kurfi

Dr Bashir Kurfi is the Convener of the Katsina Security Community Initiative, which is working towards resolving the insecurity in Katsina State. The scholar of International Finance, who spoke to Daily Trust on phone last night, said Governor Dikko Umar Radda does not listen to elders, and alleged that they were attacked by government thugs […]

Dr Bashir Kurfi is the Convener of the Katsina Security Community Initiative, which is working towards resolving the insecurity in Katsina State. The scholar of International Finance, who spoke to Daily Trust on phone last night, said Governor Dikko Umar Radda does not listen to elders, and alleged that they were attacked by government thugs during their meeting yesterday.

 

We saw some disturbing videos from an event in Katsina, and we saw some of you there. What was the meeting about and what happened?

Well, the meeting was that Katsina elites decided to come together and see how we can collaborate to stop this bloodshed that is going on in our state. As you know now, Katsina is basically shut up. You cannot go to Katsina through Kankara. You cannot go through Faskari. You cannot go to Katsina now through even Malumfashi because of what happened last time. So now, people from Abuja and Kaduna go through Kano before they can access Katsina. And there are all these killings. Sixty per cent of schools in Katsina are not operating. So, you have these kids, for the last five years… things are going on like this. So we, as elites who have gone to schools with public funds, thought that we have a responsibility to meet and discuss.

We initially met in Abuja and I think your newspaper published a story on that. And we also met in Kaduna. And then also there was a meeting by students of Katsina and their professors in Zaria.

So now, we decided to come to Katsina. We wrote to government that we wanted to have this meeting. So you see, it’s not that we wanted to embarrass the government or whatever.

And this organization started long ago and it doesn’t have any political affiliation. We are a group of professionals; the organic chairman was Muhammad Abubakar Dan Musa. He was former Speaker and Deputy President of the Senate. We have the former Director of DSS. We have academics like me. We have a former head of intelligence. So these are people who ordinarily… but then this governor, you come and say that you are open to discussion, your telephone is open, your office is open for advice. We said that if he wanted to discuss further, he could call our committee. To date, he hasn’t talked to anybody. And even when this thing is going on, in normal circumstances, maybe he could have even asked us to sit with him and ask about our views. We are older than him. Most of us are in our 70s. I have been teaching in ABU for 40 years. So what else would I do for my community?

 

What were you exactly trying to do when the venue was disrupted?

It was a roundtable discussion. It’s not like we were going to a conference or something like that. And many people were there. The elites. Because everybody is sick and tired of this bloodshed, you know? So, I was making the opening remarks and Bugaje was also to speak, and then all of a sudden, thugs entered and started throwing chairs at us. They sacked everybody out of the hall.

 

When you met in Kaduna, some local government chairmen from Katsina were in attendance. Is that correct?

Exactly.

 

Now, what changed this time around that a local government chairman allegedly led some thugs to attack you?

I believe it must be the directive of government because, how could the government allow those kinds of things even to happen? I was thinking, with the calibre of people that we met in that place, we should be protected. But then, instead, the government saw it like… no, because we raised questions.

 

What sort of questions did you raise that you think may have angered the government?

What I noticed, unfortunately, is that our people practice democracy, but they don’t either understand it or they bastardize it, because people have been killed. No school is going on. Hospital closed. Now, what is wrong for people to raise questions? Why is this thing going on? Of course, there is an issue that his Commissioner of Security said that in two years since they came to office, they spent 36 billion naira on security alone. So we are saying if you spend the money, you should expect the result. To say that we cannot even talk, what kind of country are we in? We tried to reach out to some people close to the government.

 

There are allegations that you didn’t hold some of these meetings during the administration of former governor Aminu Bello Masari. Is that true?

I know that Masari did his best in coordinating us because we are private and voluntary. Then you have the army, you have the navy. We formed what you call an operation room, where we brought intelligence officers of all these services together in one place, monitoring the intelligence activity. And we did it in the headquarters of the police.

 

Why were you doing that?

So that there would be synergy among the security services, because the Air Force should know what the police are doing in terms of coordinating the security of the mandatory.

 

Was the governor aware of your latest meeting?

We wrote to the state government. We also sent a message to the governor.

 

But then, do you think you will succeed without actually getting the buy-in of the governor, who is the chief security officer?

We want the buy-in of everybody, including the federal government. We cannot be fighting bandits and we are fighting government. Why are we fighting the government? We say, look, let’s all come together, and let’s put our heads together. But, apparently, the governor of Katsina State has no respect for the people of Katsina State. Because he doesn’t talk to anybody, he doesn’t understand anything. So, that is a clear danger for democratic development.

 

So, you strongly believe that it is the government that destabilized your meeting?

I do believe that.

 

Who do you think will intercede to resolve the problem in Katsina?

When you bring knowledgeable people, retired people who have no interest in politicians or whatever… so if they can discuss with everybody, then we can come and arrive at the solution to this problem. Is it in my interest? Now I am over 70 but I’m running around, I should have been a retired academic writing books and giving interviews. I taught International Finance for 40 years. If I wanted, I could also go and steal. I even have more technical capacity to do that.