Mallam Rafiu Ajakaye is the Chief Press Secretary to the Kwara State Governor, Mallam AbdulRahman AbdulRazaq. A well-exposed and versatile journalist, Ajakaye has left no one in doubt as to his competence to effectively and efficiently manage all media matters concerning his Principal since his appointment in 2019.
In this exclusive interview with AWA CONTENT’s Yusuf Suleiman, Moshood Yusuf, and Mercy Adeoye, he speaks extensively on his career as a journalist and how he emerged as the Governor’s spokesperson. The CPS also gives insights into how the Governor has fared since coming on board and why he believes he is the candidate to beat in the forthcoming Governorship Election in the state. Excerpts.
Click Here to Read Part 1 of the interview
AWA CONTENT: Thank you so much for your eloquence. I would also like to ask about the welfare of civil servants in the state and of course generally speaking, the ongoing projects in the state, how are we sure that before the expiration of the current administration, those projects would be completed?
CPS: We have several capital projects that are ongoing and some have been completed. I’ve mentioned a couple of them mostly in the hinterlands and the Osi-Obo road, which is ready now. The Ilesa-Gwanara road is over 90% complete or thereabout but the majority of the work has been done. Now, we have several projects here in the capital city, we have the General Tunde Idiagbon flyover which is going on very well and God willing, by March we should be saying when are you commissioning this project because when you go there now, you will see that a lot of work had been done in that facility. We have the Ilorin International Conference Centre here in the capital city, it is not a project we are going to complete before May, it is not even a project that can be completed this year because I think it has a construction lifespan of about two years because it’s going to be one of its kind in central Nigeria when it is completed but we have started as you can see it there. It is going to have a four-star hotel and it is going to have a conferencing facility that will be next only to the one we have in Abuja, that is the International Conference Centre in Abuja. When that is finished, you will see the traffic of conference moving down to Kwara, particularly with the security challenge we have in Jos and other places.
So, Kwara is gradually becoming the new go-to place in Northern Nigeria and of course even for many parts of Southwest Nigeria. We have the garment factory which is 100% ready for commissioning and it is there; it is a project that will employ at least 2000. Of course, there is a room for expansion of the project. There is also the Visual Art Centre that is right adjacent to the Government House. There is the Innovation Hub, which is also close by. These projects are very important because they have to do with the future of the world, and the future of the world is technology, the knowledge economy, that is the new gold. So, for the Innovation Hub, of course, it deals with technology and then you have the Visual Art Centre, which deals partly with tourism and then entertainment. The centre will have facilities that will be very useful for people in the movie industry; the kind of facilities we are going to have there are such facilities that are found possibly in Lagos and Accra and in South Africa for now in Africa. So, you can imagine when you have it in Ilorin, some of the traffic you are having in Lagos will come to Ilorin, because it’s about the finishing face of movies. I’m aware that when you go to Lagos, where you have such facility, there may be about 200 movies on the waiting list, so not many people would want to wait that long if they know that they have such a facility in Ilorin, which is just a flight away. So, it’s a project of the future, it’s a project that is going to put Kwara on the national, if not continental, map. This is one of the ongoing projects and it’s very close to completion.
There is also the film factory that is also ongoing which is not far away from where you have the KWASU Business School. It is a major project too and we are looking at the possibility of partnering with KWASU when the project is completed. All of those have to do with physical projects, of course. We are also constructing a new headquarters for KWIRS if you look at the 3D, something you will see that when these projects are completed, we are talking about the IICC, the headquarters for KWIRS, the Visual Art Centre, the Innovation Hub, when you look at the fact that these projects are located in this axis, you will see that what the governor is trying to do it to establish a well-planned business district or let me say the first business district for Kwara. It will be an area where a new economy outside of the usual civil service structure is emerging.
Today, when you don’t pay salaries, you will feel it at Ipata (Market); so, we want to have an economy that exists outside of that, that’s you creating another economy outside of civil service, that’s what the governor is looking at. When you have the garment factory that is so big, then don’t forget the moment you have the garment factory there, you are inadvertently establishing a new hub in that axis, because you will hire people there. Wherever you have up to 2,000 people going to work every day maybe shift, you will begin to have different canteens opening up because people must eat, you start having water factory along that axis not necessarily established by the government, you start having hospitals, you start having new schools, apart from the ones that are existing there. That’s how to open up a new economy. The same way when you finish the Conference Centre here, what it means is that you are also establishing a new economy around tourism and hospitality industry because Ilorin would now become another go-to place for conferencing.
I remember around 2006, 2005, people were taking conferences to Enugu that was when Nike Lake was newly founded, it’s a big conference facility for south east. In fact, many conferences around that axis are held there, so the same way when you finish this facility, like I said, it would be the biggest in Central Nigeria. When you finish, what it means is that you are taking traffic to Ilorin, so you also have a very good hotel here. There are some people that no matter what you tell them, because of their class, and class is part of their reality, they will not go and stay in a hotel where they will be paying N15,000, they would not stay there — one for security reasons, two some of them are aristocrats. They would say it belittles them to stay in such hotel and all of those things. There are some people who would ordinarily want to do one or two things in Ilorin, but they would say ‘Ok, when you go to Ilorin, do you have a four-star hotel there? They would say ‘do you have a conferencing facility that meets their tastes? So, all of these things would really open up Ilorin and Kwara State to the world. People would begin to come to do more things with Kwara State and once that happens, they would hire people. When they hire 100 people, social mobility would have occurred and that’s very important. Yes, social mobility would occur, some people who were not earning N10,000 before, the moment they get job there, they would start earning between N80,000, N100,000 and all of that. So, they are able to send their children to better school, they are able to afford hospital bills, they are able to also do Owanbe for their family and all of those things. With that, we will be having upward social mobility, that is the intention of the governor. He wants to open up the state, all of these projects are ongoing and God willing, some of them would be completed soon and some of them would not be completed until the next one or two years as I had mentioned earlier. IICC is ongoing while we just did the groundbreaking ceremony for the KWIRS headquarters. I think, of course, you know YEBUMOT, Adeta road, there are several of such projects here and there that are ongoing by this administration and the whole essence is to open up the state for business. It is to ensure that Kwara meets up with the standard of where it ought to be.
Kwara was created in 1967. Look at the states that were created in 1967, I’m not sure Kwara measures up to any of them and that is due to the quality of leaderships. Let me shock you! The first masterplan for Ilorin was drawn up in the 1970s or I say the first and the only one. Now look at the Ilorin of 1970, I was not born then. Where did Ilorin stop in 1970? That masterplan, from what I heard, ought to have lapsed in 2000. So, between 2000 and 2019, Ilorin has been on autopilot in terms of planning. That is what it means because the masterplan that was drawn in 1970 expired in 2000. This administration has just come up with a new masterplan for Ilorin, and what that tells you is that this is an administration that cares about planning, it cares about the future of the state. Why do you have flooding anytime there is rain in Ilorin today? It is because we have outgrown the original masterplan. You now have houses where you are not supposed to have houses. I will give you an example, the Oke-Erin bridge that collapsed about two years ago was because there were already buildings around that were not supposed to be there. Those buildings were standing on waterways and because of flooding and all of that, the bridge had become weak; it caved in. That’s one of the consequences of lack of planning. So, we are coming up with a new masterplan. It is ready actually and we are coming with masterplan for other parts of the state, too, because when you’ve failed to plan, then you’ve planned to fail. That’s what happens in Kwara.
AWA CONTENT: Let’s look at the workers, the civil servants in particular, their salaries and welfare, as well as youth employment and the new Health Insurance Scheme introduced by the state government. What are your thoughts on all these?
CPS: Why would a government be advertising prompt payment of salaries? That speaks to the context of where we are coming from; we are coming from an era where prompt payment of salaries was not the norms and people suffered for it. If you want to test the strength of our economy today, just refuse to pay February salary, you will see what would happen in the community, there would be noise because the entire economy rests on the salary that the government pays, that’s not how to grow an economy but that’s our reality. So, when the former government was not paying salary, people were feeling it, some people were actually committing suicide, teachers were doing menial jobs, they were doing birisope (bricklaying), as our people call it, because salary was not being paid. So, you look at it from the context of where we are coming from. That’s one. Another thing we have to look at is this: why should a government be so confident to put up a billboard that it is paying salaries promptly? That is because it is truly doing it and since those things have been there, the only thing you hear the opposition saying is that how can you be advertising prompt payment of salaries as an achievement? But what nobody has been able to say is that you are lying by saying this, nobody can say you are lying because they know it is the reality. We have been paying salaries as and when due. In fact, contrary to what we met whereby salaries were being paid maybe on the last day of the month or even on the 1st or on the 3rd or something like that, today people now get their salaries latest by 26th, 27th. That’s for the state level. For local government workers and the SUBEB people who have their own independence, they get their salaries the moment they get their FAAC, their account is credited from FAAC, nobody sits on their money anymore. So, as far as payment of salary is concerned, it’s excellent.
Now, in terms of pension, the former administration was not paying pension as and when due. We have been up to date in terms of pension payment. In terms of gratuity, when we came on board, the former administration was paying between fifteen million, twenty million, thirty million monthly to offset gratuities for people that numbered 10,000, 20,000 and all of that. So, how would that go round? But since coming on board, His Excellency has raised monthly release of gratuity from thirty-million-naira maximum to one hundred million naira every month and that’s why today, some people would say why are they giving us five hundred thousand. They have forgotten that in the past, they were not even getting anything. So, in terms of gratuity, pension payment the present administration has done so well within available resources. We want to do a lot more within the resources that we have. We have done so well compared to where we are coming from in terms of promotion and some other welfare. For the first time, this administration organised an award ceremony for teachers and for civil servants; it had never happened before, never, so the picture that paints again is an administration that caters for his people, an administration that cares so much about the welfare of its workers. So, in terms of workers’ welfare, I think compared to where we are coming from, we are 100% and we will continue to punch above our weight as resources may permit.
AWA CONTENT: But what do you have to say regarding the local government issue. You know all along we have not had local government chairmen and we’ve not even had an election at the local government level. What’s really happening?
CPS: That’s a big issue really, it’s a big issue because each time people talk about that, they are not looking at where we are coming from. Again, sometimes, we major in the minor and minor in the major. Yes, I will say for a reason. When we had elected local government so-called, they were not even paying salaries. I’ve given you an example of local government workers, SUBEB, today we are still battling with their arrears which we are still paying in bits as resources permit, and those were days when you had elected local government chairmen. So, for the workers who didn’t get paid, what was the point having elected local government chairmen? They are not having it now, they are getting their salaries as and when due. What does that tell you? I am not saying we are not going to organise an election, I’m just saying that people sometimes major in the minor, you had local government they were not even paying salaries, what’s the point, they were not doing anything, that’s one.
Secondly, for our critics, they did not look at the political crises that the former administration deliberately created for this administration. Election was held in March 2019 and they lost 100%. The same administration then went ahead to set up a statutory commission that would supervise local government election. I believe that the moralists who are talking now ought to have spoken up and that was against morality; you may say it is legal, but our laws are products of morality, you lost election 100%, you now hurriedly set up a commission that would supervise election for an administration where you do not have a single elected person, that’s being mischievous. People should have made a lot of noise and all of that but now we came onboard, there were issues regarding the propriety of the commission members and steps were taken in that regard. They took us to court, yes we’ve settled out of court now but the terms of settlement are still being worked on. And while that is on, it may not be fair to then to begin to take some steps here and there when you hear somebody has taken you to court. These are the challenges that people are not looking at.
I’m saying this without looking at the political correctness of the statement; the condition the former administration left local government was such that if you hold election, you will have elected chairmen, you will have elected councilors, you will have all class of people who would become chief executives. When they are there, they are entitled by law to certain perks of office, salaries and all of that statutory. if you look at that and you look at the resources available to the local government, we would be back to the era of ‘gerigedi’ (payment of half salary) because there are certain months the local government would struggle to pay 100% salary without the elected guys. You struggle to pay, sometimes they would have to fall back on their savings, sometimes they would have to appeal to the state to give them bailout, how did we get here? I heard that in early 2000 the percentage of wage bill to the revenue of local government was around 45 percent; that is, the amount you needed to pay salary was just 45% of your revenue which meant that you had 55% of resources to do ABCD across the state but as of 2022, salary payment and other obligations of local government were gulping between 90%, 95%, 100% above. It was worse before we came. How do you develop the grassroots that way? How did we get there? It is because of the nature of politics I mentioned earlier. The political culture we had in the past and what was that political culture? Part of it was that the CPS is here now, he has just been appointed, then his people from Alabe will say ha! CPS you have to appoint our brothers; we have to be in the service ooo. So, I will bring four people. The SA too will bring his own, the governor too will bring his own, commissioners too would bring their own and that was how they loaded the wage bill. When people talk about ghost workers now, the problem is not so much about ghost workers, it is so much about the number of people that have populated the wage bill.
Unfortunately, you cannot sack people in this economy now, if you do that you are going to create more problems, because by the time you throw people back to the labour market, there will be social problems, socio-tension and criticisms. By the time you send them back to the labour market, you have created more problem which goes beyond them not being able to feed, you can create a problem that would last several generations. For example, the moment a parent is unable to send their child to school, in a way you’ve affected the growth of that child, because education takes you to certain ladder in life. so when you deny a child access to proper education, it affects the child and the society in a way. According to some social scientists, if a child is properly breast fed, they have 50% chance of having proper brain development. they would likely do well in school, and that would affect the economy, the same way, if you fail to properly breast feed a child, they may become stunted, they would not cope in school and that would affect the economy. So, not just themselves, the economy and that affect everyone ultimately.
The same way when a parent is unable to send their children to school, those children, yes, they may go and learn one or two things, but even when you go to learn an art or something like that, you would do freedom now, after the freedom, you would need som money to set yourself up, so when you don’t have all of those things, you have created social liabilities, and that would come back to hunt the society in terms of crime rate. That is why this government is never interested in sacking anyone, rather we are managing the situation we’ve found ourselves. So, what we are doing now is this, you will see that the wage bill is gradually reducing not because we are sacking anyone, we are not sacking anyone, but you see the moment some people retire, if 100 people retire for instance, you don’t replace with 100. That was the practice before, they would replace with 100 and even more. For example, the former governor, his Excellency, Governor AbdulFatah Ahmed, gave approval for the employment of 1000 teachers, eventually they hired 2414 teachers, more than 100% of the approval. So, what we are doing now is that when people retire, you don’t replace with the number of people who have retired, you need to only look at the strategic offices and see how you can fix and all of those things, so we are gradually easing the wage bill.
Now, I am not saying that local government election would not happen but we have to stabilize. So many people who are making noise in most cases are people with political interest; their perception, their public statement, their behaviours are guided largely by their own selfish interest, not the public interest, because when elect chairmen and all others, they would also have PAs; they would do all kinds of things but they would not be able to pay 100% salary anymore; some people would be suffering. So, ultimately, the society suffers, but because our law, we have made our law look so rigid and we are not considering some other factors other than that. Kwara was in a state of emergency. We had to reset things and that’s exactly what his excellency has been doing; we are trying to reset things; it would take time; it would take years, the school infrastructure we are rebuilding now, it would take many years for us to get there. I will give example of our community again, I like to do that. The structures that I left in my primary school in 1994/1995 were the same structure we met in 2019; some of them had actually collapsed, and that’s the story across several parts of the state, how do you continue the same way?
AWA CONTENT: It is believed in some quarters that the ruling All Progressives Congress won’t have an easy ride in the forthcoming elections in Kwara State, because of the internal crises rocking the party since its victory in the last election. What are your thoughts on this?
CPS: I believe the APC would win again, I believe so because irrespective of whatever tension you had in the party because there is no tension in the party today, but there were tensions before, one has to admit that, but you see like I spoke about socio-change in 1994 when Mandela became the President of South Africa after several decades of Apartheid and ANC became the ruling party, suddenly ANC started having serious crises and then you had different factions coming out of ANC, one of them is among the opposition members in the parliament today in South Africa, but that has not denied ANC victory in all of the elections that have taken place since 1994 in South Africa. Now there would always be people who would not agree with the majority, and in most cases, they would be what I call lousy minority. It happens largely because their interest is not properly served in their own opinion, their interest in many cases does not necessarily align with the policies that are in the larger interest of the society. Some people under such arrangement may be driven by ego, some may be driven by sheer ambition and there is no crime in anyone having ambition anyway, but my point is that whatever disagreement you had in the APC was not about some people saying the governor was not taking the state to higher level, it was about some people saying the governor was not deferring to them. These are two different things and people need to get that clearly. So, there are people disagreeing with Mandela and they decided to part ways and they formed their own party.
Today they are just parties on the fringe in South Africa, so the point is this, in South Africa, people cannot forget their history in a hurry, they cannot forget the fact the ANC government that Mandela left behind is a product of the struggle of the people of South Africa and the people of Africa. So, whatever the imperfections along the way, South Africans and indeed the rest of Africa would not forget the fact that ANC government is a product of their sweat. It is the same thing for Kwara. The O’toge government is a product of the collective sweat of our people and they are in the majority, people who are not politicians, people who don’t care about politics at all. I’ve heard people calling me, statesmen who are not politicians at all, saying we are concerned about the crises within the party and we just hope that you people are able to talk to yourselves and ensure that you move on from there, but whatever happens, we think strongly that the governor is on the right path, he is doing so well, but we would prefer that he talks to these people along the way. What that tells you is that these people committed so much to the victory; APC is only a vehicle for that victory.
So, Kwara is unique unlike any other state in Nigeria. Kwara is in a class of its own in terms of what drives the politics of Kwara State. There are people in the academia, there are people in the business world, there are people in the entertainment industry, there are people in the cultural world, there are people everywhere who are Kwarans who just felt they’ve had enough. It’s not necessarily about APC or PDP which was why if you’ve checked very well, the people who were always in the opposing party before 2019, they were usually people who disagreed on principle with a particular family, so it was immaterial whether they were using AD, they were using APC or at some point they were using PDP, it was just that they didn’t want to belong where those guys were. I’m not sure there is any other state in this country where you had that kind of scenario, which means that Kwara is in a class of its own, it’s unique, which means that we have a unique history of people not wanting to be in political servitude anymore, people who do not want to be called the servant of anybody.
I remember very well when I was in the newsroom, I used to have a senior colleague who would say anytime they were having any conversation and I got involved, he would say ‘Rafiu, would you keep quiet there, even you from Kwara where somebody has been dictating your destiny.’ And this happened to many Kwarans outside of Kwara, we were seen as servants to a particular set of people. I’m not sure people who belong to that generation, I’m not talking about people who are just 17 something or 15 or something, people who are forty and above. I’m not sure those people have forgotten that history, so whatever imperfection of the change that occurred in 2019, they would rather continue to perfect it, panel-beat it rather than go back to where they were coming from; they would not. So, that history is there; there will be challenges and that is normal. I’ve given you the example of South Africa; it happens anywhere, too. So, wherever you have socio-change along the line, there would be social discontent here and there, but it does not take away the central idea of why they fought that battle, so you would see some people today who would say we don’t like him, but they would say, we would not go back to where we are coming from despite that.
I particularly appreciate that because it shows that our people truly appreciate their history. So, I believe so much that APC being the party for that change under which the people of Kwara State actualised their dream will still win the ballot. It doesn’t mean the party cannot do more, it doesn’t mean you don’t have to do things here and there. I’ve mentioned to you that we are not perfect, we have not achieved perfection in any area, but I’ve always spoken to you about the quantum of change, the feats that we have achieved in different areas and I think the people of this state will not forget their history in a hurry despite everything. APC is the party to beat because it is the party that represents the aspirations of the largest majority of our people. It is the party under which our people’s yearnings for freedom, political freedom, was realized. it is thr APC platform that has achieved that for Kwarans. It is not so much about alphabets APC, no, it is not also about alphabets PDP or whatever you call it, it is about that fact that people are seeing their aspirations under that platform, and they would continue to align with it for as long as the people at the helm of that party continue to reflect that, and you can see that like I said in how the governor carries himself in his policies and programmes. However imperfect they may be, they are clear departure from where we were coming from and that matters a lot to our people.
AWA CONTENT: Should the governor emerge victorious in the coming poll, what would he do differently in his second term?
CPS: He would continue to build on his achievements; he would also continue to put forward his reforms across the different sectors, education sector, health sector, water sector and name it. We would see more improvement in all of these sectors. We would see more reforms that would ensure that whatever achievements we have made, whatever progress we’ve made over the past four years, would be sustainable, because certain achievements may not be sustainable if care is not taken. More would be done in the area of ensuring that we implement a plan that makes living in Kwara State more sustainable into the future. This is why we came up with the idea of the masterplan, where we are not supposed to have your house, you should not have houses there, where you are not supposed to have a school, you should not have a school there because the moment you have a school there, you have disrupted the plan and there would be consequences for everybody. When the Oko-Erin bridge collapsed, at least two people died, so you need to close your eyes and imagine if those people had been you and I, close your eyes and imagine what would happen to our families, that’s because some people chose to be ‘responsible’. Where they were not supposed to have their buildings, they had their buildings there and then it obstructed the place where you are supposed to have water flow, and a bridge collapsed as a result, two people died, it shattered life. That is what it means; wives became widows, children became orphans, and public resources had to be committed to that again, but that is the smallest of it.
His Excellency would continue to push for reforms that would make the gains that we’ve made to be sustainable and that’s why whatever gains we’ve made now, it’s important that we re-elect the governor for that change to become sustainable through the future.
We cannot afford to go back to the era when teachers in secondary schools will not have O’ level. We need to consolidate on the gains of that reform that has ensured that we had a recruitment process that attracted fifty first-class brains to our secondary schools. We need to sustain that reform, we need to ensure that next time we are hiring teachers in this state, those who are to be hired are people who are truly competent and qualified to teach, not just people who would be hired on the bases of political sentiments which was the case before. The moment you reverse the gains of the past four years; it means we would go back to that status quo. We don’t need that, we cannot do that, and at the moment, I do not see credible alternatives with due respect, because the people I’ve seen are those people who would take us back to where we were coming from and we don’t need that, so we need another four years to consolidate on the gains of the past four years, and that’s so critical for the future of Kwara State.
AWA CONTENT: Let me quickly chip in this, please. As we are aware of this current naira swap crisis, the fuel scarcity, and all that, what is the state government doing to give palliatives to Kwarans?
CPS: Well, the governor has announced some palliatives. Different players particularly the less privileged would be reached out to, the government is packaging some things for widows, farmers, the Association of Okada riders, and all these people, and many people who are struggling to make ends meet, to ensure that we support them. We’ve also announced some palliatives even for students, particularly those who are within the metropolis; the government was taking them from Post Office to their campuses free of charge and that has a way of reducing the hardship associated with transporting themselves to school. There are some other measures that the government has also put in place. The government had also set up a task force headed by the Deputy Governor and some other very senior citizens, public servants, who would interface with the oil marketers to ensure that there is a proper supply of fuel, to the people and that would ease the difficulties that people have been going through before getting fuel.
A whole lot of other things are also ongoing – stakeholders’ engagement to ensure that we do not impose hardship on one another because if you look at our society, a lot of the problems we have, has to do with the hardship we impose on ourselves, even as citizens. Government policies in most cases are designed to support growth and development, but in the course of implementation, because we are humans, there may be mishaps here and there. Ultimately, if everybody cooperates with the government policies, even if a policy would bring some hardship, such hardship would be lessened if we cooperate with the government and we all act in good faith. The government, on its own, is doing so much to ensure that we reduce people’s hardship as a result of the new currency redesign and of course the fuel scarcity issue, but I’m also using this opportunity, taking advantage of this interface with the media, to appeal to our people that we should all work to lessen the hardships on ourselves because whatever you do, would have reverberating effect on the society. When you choose to be ‘responsible’, that being responsible would affect other people, would affect several layers of society and then the cycle continues if everybody chooses to be ‘responsible again’.
AWA CONTENT: What would you like to be remembered for as the Chief Press Secretary to the Governor and your advice for Kwarans?
CPS: In 2019 when I got this appointment, I made a promise to some of our people that, God willing, I will not be associated with lying to the public, because some information that some people dish out, amounts to intentional falsehood. I would not be involved in intentional falsehood. I don’t want to be that CPS that people would say, ‘that guy could lie’ and they would have a basis for saying that. Some people would ordinarily say that just to tarnish your image that he is a liar but they would not have a basis for it. But I am saying that in terms of people having genuine reasons to say you’ve lied and they would start giving you instances and they are things that you yourself know to be false, so I would not be associated with such. That’s a legacy I want to be remembered for.
In terms of my advice, no society grows above its people. Our value system determines the strength of our growth. If we decide today that we want to take this country to the next level in terms of having a very good value system, our society will change in a jiffy. If we all decide that we would be truthful, if we all decide that we would be responsible, our society would work like magic…
So I want to appeal to our people, that development is beyond a particular administration. It has to do with the collective resolve of the people to grow. All of us have that responsibility to our society to ensure that we are truly progressing in a sustainable way. This means that our expectations of public officers should change; our expectations, such as people expecting public officers to be giving out money from now and then. As long as we continue to see public offices as avenues for money-making, we would not grow. That is the truth. So, all of us must decide that we truly want to develop as a people. I think this also has to do with the elite; the elite must resolve that this is the direction they want to push the country too, and the moment they have agreed as an elite that they want a good society, things would fall into place. There may be resistance along the way but once the elite are united, things will improve. For instance, any issues that have to do with national unity and all of these things, we must all recognize them to be so. Where somebody has been caught for blatant infractions, we must all be united in saying this person has committed these infractions and must pay for it. That’s the only way we are not going to have a lawless society. But if a section of the elite interprets wrong doings according to the language that a person speaks, or where a person faces when they pray, then we would never grow and I think that is important.
Thank you.
Concluded
