Khadijah Abdullahi-Iya is running for governor of Niger State for the All-Progressives’ Grand Alliance (APGA). She wants things to change. She is an award-winning innovator, an ideation specialist, a serial social entrepreneur, a lawyer, an author, a publisher, and a mentor, and most importantly Khadijah is a mother, who calls herself, the Womb, and a social change actor. She holds an LLB from the University of Abuja and a master’s degree in law and diplomacy from the University of Jos, as well as being a Fellow of the Institute of Management Consultants (FIMC) and a Certified Management Consultant (CMC). Khadijah spoke to LM’s Nkanu Egbe on her gubernatorial aspirations.
You are vying for the governorship, and so people would like to know where your background comes from, who you are as a person, and what your motivation is. They would like to have a little information about you so that they can really have bragging rights over you. So, tell me everything about yourself.
My name is Khadijah Abdullahi Iya, But my birth certificate reads Hadizatu Audu Bida, that’s my father’s name. I am Nupe by tribe. So I was born Hadizatu Bida. Hadizatu is the Hausa version of Khadijah.
When I grew up and found a full essence of myself, I decided to change the name to Khadijah because that’s the original name, which means “purity”.
My father was a philanthropist and he’s somebody that I’ve always looked up to. He is like my hero. It’s because of the way he cared a lot about the people that I believe that my humanitarian juices were stimulated – from the work that I see him do, the way he treated human beings and how he loves humanity. So I think that’s where I obtained my humanitarian juices.
My mother – has a lot of mixed blood in her; she has Arab blood, she also has Fulani and then Nupe blood, all combined together, and she’s also one of the strongest pillars of my life. She has always been very supportive and she’s almost like my best friend. I said almost, because, of course, she’s still my mother. She’s one person I can call any time of the day and when I have things that bother me, she’s one of the people that I can call. So she’s been like a very strong pillar in my life. And then my husband is the Iyan Nupe meaning that he’s like number four in the royal lineage in Nupe land. So he is another very strong pillar and one of my biggest fans.
I am who I am because of all these great human beings that have surrounded me, and also, I must say that I’m lucky to have a strong support system, good friends that have always been there, that have always urged me on and great human beings around me. So, I’m grateful for that.
Let’s talk about your humanitarian work, you have a registered foundation I believe.
How I started was I felt that Northern Nigeria is writhing with poverty and we needed to start changing the mindset of the next generation of Northern children, so we started financial literacy. Okay, in the beginning, what we started with was counselling. I started going from school to school because I felt that the children should know why they were there. I started doing counselling and mentoring with them. And at some point, I was sitting down because my husband worked in CBN and somebody told me that the CBN are looking for NGOs that they can partner with on financial literacy, and I thought that oh, by the way I’m doing counselling and mentoring, and adding financial literacy to our thematic areas would be great because we are also trying to eradicate poverty from the cradle.
So that was how Beyond Mentors Community Care Initiative started. I’m a lawyer by profession, I didn’t have the proper grand grounding for finance, I decided to ‘Okay, let me look for a friend who has been working in the bank, who I knew was well grounded in finance.’ I spoke to her to join me. She joined me about five years later, but she didn’t last too long because I think the rigours of going from one place to another without funds and grants were too much for her, and she stayed in Kaduna, so she left. But this is what I love to do – changing lives, impacting lives.
I also started Search Inward Magazine, which is like an offshoot of the column I was writing in leadership because the column’s name was Search Inward. We decided to start the magazine – the online magazine and all of that with Search Inward Magazine, which will continue the issues of the underreported. So it’s about humanitarian journalism and other development issues. We are now starting to bring in some money and the monies – the profit from that magazine, we use to nurture and groom the NGO aspect of our organisation.
So after the magazine we started, because one of the gifts of life that God has given men – I’m a very creative person and I think at some point I won the Innovation Award for Africa in Ghana a few years ago, I think about 2014 or thereabout. So we started creating stories because I wrote some books in 2013 – I published some books in 2013; three books, three children’s books, which are folkloric stories, about our past and all that, I felt that it was about time to convert them into animation. So in 2019, we started working on the animation, and last year, we launched the Tatsuniyya Network, which is putting together our folklore stories, putting all of them together, and converting them into animation.
We’re still working on that job because when people ask me, “What is my dream?” Like, what is the thing that I’ve always dreamed about? My dream had always been to have this huge network like a cartoon network for our children, because of the RES factor. I feel that there have always been these racial, and ethnic issues that our children have been bugged with; they do not understand their own person, and they do not understand that their colour is beautiful. They are black the way they are. They should be able to own up to who they are through stories, by telling the stories and showing them in animated form, so that our children will have a full version of who they are, through our stories, through our history, and through all the things that matter to us, our value system and all of that.
We had started compiling the stories when this gubernatorial thing came up. They came to me and started asking me if I should come out and vie for this position. I asked them, what about my dream, my dream – that’s the most important thing to me right now and they said, that your dream can come but all these people you have been working for – the women, the children and the youth all these years, do you think they are going to be waiting for you until you finish your dream? And that hit me hard because I felt there’s always a reason, there’s always a purpose for everyone to be on this earth.
And if I have been getting this kind of push, and everybody’s asking me to come out and vie for this position, there has to be something more than that. So what I did was I went into prayers and I had to seek God’s permission and if this is what He wants, He should direct me and let’s cut this long story short, here I am. I did all the things that I thought I should do and here I am.
You have so many peoples – Niger state is a melting point of many, many traditions. If I am to look at the list of language groups, over thirty language groups in Niger State alone, including the Yoruba group, so that means that you have a very big responsibility of trying to weld all these peoples together, how are you going to go about that?
For me, I think that the universal language of life is kindness. It’s kindness and responsibility and trying to bring everybody together, unifying them with that essential value of kindness; being kind, the social justice – potential social justice, as one of your very fundamental values; having an inclusive government, like making sure that everybody is well represented because I feel that the greatness of any company, the greatness of any nation, or any community is through diversity. The reason why America is where they are right now is that it’s a melting point for every kind of language, ethnicity and everything. The entire world’s ethnicities, you have the melting point in the United States, and they have utilised everybody’s value and codified it into what it is today – into a constitution that includes everybody.
So it is the same mentality I’m thinking of for Niger State; when you ensure that everybody is well represented, and everybody has a seat on the table, everybody bringing their intellect, diversity of knowledge, their ethnicity, their value system, their culture, their tradition, and all the intellect that they have on creativity. I’m putting it all together, I think Niger State will begin to work.
Right now, we do not have enough of that diversity sitting at the table representing everybody, not enough gender, there’s no gender balance. We currently have one female legislator in the State House of Assembly. So how can a state move forward without the diversity of these kinds of people? As you said, we have like thirty ethnicities in Niger State but the major ones are Gwari, Nupe and Hausa. Those are the ones that are recognisable. Everyone knows, but when you know that these people all deserve a seat at the table, that they have representatives everywhere, and you can bring them along and they can liberate — like there is a Zone A, Zone B, and Zone C — and you ensure that these Zone A, Zone B, and Zone C represent certain groups of people, that all of them are on the seat, that you utilize the energies from each of these zones, I believe we’ll go very far and get the Niger of our dreams.
What you’re talking about suggests that there is a contract that you want to enter into for the people…
Yes
And is it going to be a formal contract? Or what kind of nature will this contract take?
Because I think that Section 14 Subsection 2b of the Constitution talks about the responsibility of governance, which is taking care of the welfare of the people. That’s the social contract that has been signed by any government, wherever it is, at whatever level. As a result, the social contract should be something that can be translated and mean something to every human being, every citizen in Niger State. It is not as if we are going to reinvent the wheel. We will not simply put oil in the wheel to make it work; that oil is the will to make it work, as well as doing what is right and making people understand that it is our collective responsibility to make Niger State work. Making them take ownership, which is simple and something we’ve been doing for years, is one of the things we’ve been doing, talking to youths about responsibility and everyone understanding that we’re all stakeholders. And when you make people understand that they are stakeholders, they are going to do more, they’re going to give off themselves without expecting anything.
I think that what has been the bane of our lives in Nigeria is that everybody does not understand the deeper tones of service; people do not understand that service is not about ‘what is in it for me?’ Service is all about what more can I do for another person or for my community for us to get it right. Not for me, not for my children, but for my children’s children and the children’s children of my neighbour.
One of the things that may come out from your aspiration is the fact that you are just coming from the outside into public service. They may query your lack of experience in public service. What would you say to that?
One of the things that intrigues me about this kind of question is, I ask most people: what is public service? What is the meaning of public service? What does service mean at all? So what does public service mean? Public service is about serving humanity, isn’t it? That is the work I’ve been doing all my life – like over 15 years, that’s what I’ve been doing. And I’ve been married for 29 years if that should be another credential because being in a marriage is a service to humanity. That’s how I see it.
I think that all those people that claim experience and all of that, the ones that had been in public service, how much have they contributed to the growth of these communities? Me, I think that the certification for you to be in governance does not have to be with your public service experience, it has more to be with your compassionate leadership. If you are compassionate enough and care enough for your people, I feel that that is enough credentials for you to want to do more.
What you are looking forward to is having access to the instrument of power. I don’t see power as something to own, I see power as an instrument to be utilised for the greater good.
Okay, so there are two things which stand out in terms of the aspiration; one is that you are a woman and the other is that you have the situation of this multiplicity of ethnicities in Niger State. So let us take it one by one, the biases that you have in Niger State, are they really an issue that needs addressing or do you feel that maybe it is something that well over time the people get to adapt and get to accept one another?
The biases amongst the people; just like in Nigeria, I think there are two sets of people in Niger State; we have the elites, and we have the people at the grassroots who have been neglected for so many years. So, I don’t think there’s any serious bias against each other for me, because we have a company in Niger State that we’ve been running for about 12 years now, which pushes me to go into Niger, and I believe we’ve employed over 50 people. Right now, we have over 50 people in our employment, and we have a family degree in Niger State, so I understand that there are two levels of people in Niger; the ones that have been oppressed for so many years and the elites.
I don’t see any disenchantment between them because most of them work together. Even this issue about religion and all those things that people talk about, I feel it’s just because of the social injustices that have been meted upon them. When you remove that muzzle of injustice out of the equation…a lot of people when we went, when we did our needs assessment, all of the things we’ve been hearing – the permutations and the pains that we’ve been hearing is some set of people have been oppressing them and they were not talking about this ethnicity or this religion has been oppressing them. Yes, they talked about they do not have enough Christians in the cabinet sitting at the table but that wasn’t even as strong as the fact that they have been oppressed by certain people.
Those were the permutations and palpitations we’ve been getting from the people that have been oppressed like some sets of people are taking everything they want to go and look for, or whatever they want to go and do, some sets of people have been taking it over and taking it away from them. A lot of people feel oppressed and they are tired. They feel like…
Is it economically oppressed or…
Economically. they feel as if some sets of people are just taking over everything that they need like they do not have the freedom to even attain or get some things that they need for themselves. And you could see the level of poverty in Niger State right now, it is staggering. You could see all the social amenities that need to be there like roads, infrastructure, schools and all of those things, you don’t see them, especially roads, roads, you can go into. Last week, we were in Niger, and it took the grace of God for us to be able to navigate through the villages that we went to.
It’s really pathetic and it’s painful that for the past – Niger State was created in 1976, that’s like 46 years ago, and up till now, Niger State still has the issues of roads. I don’t even think that any elected official has gone around Niger State, the way it should be for them to even feel the pain of the people, to understand the issues, for them to be able to say okay, these are the issues, let’s find solutions to them. I don’t know if they have cared enough to understand that these are the things that these people are going through other than these people are telling us that they only come – those ones that want their votes, they only come after four years when they want their votes, and after getting their votes, they leave them in that state and then come back and still ask them again for the same vote.
So this time around when we went there, they were telling us that they have already made up their minds that they are not going to vote for anybody. They have their PVCs but they’re not going to vote and we had to tell them that we are trying to change the narrative and they should be able to, we connected with them. So I don’t know if there are people who go there to see these people at all and it is really sad sir, it is very sad. I don’t think there’s any problem with them living together because the people we met—we met Muslims and Christians living in the same community, they’re different ethnicities, and we even met Igbos who live among them and have already adopted them as their own family. You won’t see that there are any discrepancies amongst them because they were standing there as one voice when they were talking to us that day.
Your situation as a woman, is this also a social issue, whether the women in Niger State are also discriminated against?
I mentioned a few years ago that I don’t think (given the circumstances) I’d run for governor because there was a story attributed to Prophet Muhammad (PBUH) about a woman who led (there was no such thing as governor or president back then) and the community was doomed. So that was the idea that people have been bandying around, but then I had to do a lot of research on that. There has been a consensus agreement among some Ulama who sat down and said that what he meant was that there was a state at that time that was to be led by a lady (presumed to be a princess of Persia) who happened to be somewhat destructive or something, and he predicted that every state was going to be destroyed. He did not say the exact ending because the Ulama were saying, “Did he say, this state?” Or did he say, “any state”? because they are two different things.
If he said any state that is being governed by a woman will be doomed, that’s another different sentence but he said that this state that was being governed by that woman was going to be doomed, and it happened, that prophecy came to pass.
So, in this time and age, where things and knowledge have advanced and women have shown their capacity, according to the Ulama, women need to be at the decision-making table for them to be well represented. They even cited the Quran where God, in His infinite mercy, talked about the equality of men and women, according to this ulama and the Quran. And the Ulama were saying that if God has declared that a man and a woman are equal, why would you deprive a woman of making her contribution to the growth and development of society?
The first thing we did when we won the primaries, the first thing my team members did was to go and seek the permission of some of the female clerics and get their endorsement, some of the female clerics and of the Ulama to seek their permission and their support and their endorsement, and so far we did not have much problem, all they were saying was ‘may God put His blessings; may God help in whatever it is.’
The other challenge I see for Niger State, and not just Niger State, but for the majority of governments in the north, is security. We have the threat—Boko Haram and ISWAP have been here for a while now; there is another group that appears to be running a rampage around the northwest of the country, particularly Zamfara and Sokoto states, and I noticed some disturbance in Niger State. When you get to be governor, how are you going to be able to address this problem of security? I know that they say the governor is the number one security person, that’s the chief security officer of the state. So how are you going to be able to address the issue of insecurity in Niger State?
People have asked me this question, and I think that one of the biggest questions that are on the minds of a lot of people is that I’m female, and men have not been able to combat the issues of insecurity. And I told one person that even if a man is combating insecurity issues, he is not the one who will go there himself; all he has to do is put a system and a process in place, as well as all the security infrastructure, to ensure that these things are checked.
Another thing I say when it comes to the issue of security is that whatever I am going to say now, I wouldn’t say I know exactly what is going on or what is happening right now…
The issue of insecurity began in Niger State seven years ago, which means that since the establishment of this government, Niger State has been one of the most peaceful states in Nigeria. And then this all started seven years ago, when it became a hotspot for insecurity. If you look at all the literature that has been written online on insecurity, and I also know that there are some aspects of Shiroro that had been overtaken by Boko Haram.
So, while I don’t have a complete picture of what is going on, I know and believe that it is not rocket science to find solutions to problems like these, and I know that with the current digitisation and all of the digital and internet lessons that we have, as well as all of the technology that we have, I know that we can always find a solution. Mostly, everything is about intentionality, political will, and determination to eradicate and take care of your people.
I know that there’s always a way out of it and I know that we’ll find that way, and we already have it highlighted in our manifesto, but it’s not something that I can easily express in any media like that. So we wouldn’t want people to checkmate our ideologies or the kind of security architecture that we’re trying to put in place. So yeah, I wouldn’t say that much about it but what I know is there’s always a solution to every problem and we will know how we will checkmate that.
You mentioned the problem of infrastructure, which is a concern. It is not just a Niger problem; it’s a problem all over the country. And you have infrastructure problems, especially where you have budgeting problems and a problem of allocation. Of course, you know that most of our resources are being spent right now on servicing debt instead of dealing with the issue of repairing or maintaining the existing infrastructure and then building on it to create more infrastructure for economic development. So let’s talk about this infrastructure thing, do you have a specific plan that would address the infrastructure problems in Niger State?
I’m not going to say too much about that, but I’m going to give you an insight into what we’re planning. The first thing we’re going to do is see how we can strengthen the GIS system in the state, having a complete understanding of the cadastral zones in the state, and having the entire state in, at least, our computer systems. We know that, and we’re also ensuring that we upgrade and strengthen the architectural GIS system in the state because I know that right now, I didn’t even know that they had one, so we did a little research and found out that they have a GIS system, but we need an upgraded version of it, and then we’ll take it from them.
So, once you’ve identified the areas with infrastructural flaws and everything else, you’ll be able to plan. Escrow cannot be used to plan. You need to plan with everyone in mind and then take it bit by bit. But before you do that, you have to also address the economic issue and see how you can raise the GDP of the state and see how the idea can be generated—internally generated revenue, how you can do that. You have to look at the economic aspects of it—how to generate enough revenue to take care of the infrastructure, how to also collaborate and partner with people, maybe investors, and see how you can upgrade the infrastructural defects and needs of the state.
These are the things that we’re looking at. We are looking at commerce, trade, and tourism, which are three of the biggest things in the world. Some countries rely solely on tourism for survival, including Egypt and a number of other countries. If we have 10% of the entire land mass of Nigeria, what we plan to do is ensure that we have a new city and that new city will be the one in which we will invest in tourism and see how we can upgrade the infrastructure. You know the dams are federal property, but of course, since they are situated in our towns, we will find ways to see how we can also gain and generate revenues from these assets that we have in our state and see how we can have an understanding with the federal government to see how we can generate revenue from all of these things.
We have agriculture; we have the gold and the gemstones in Niger State, which have different usages. We can plan for many things. We can upgrade so many – we already have shea butter in Niger State. We are the third-largest growing shea butter community in the whole world. Even Ghana comes to Niger State to take our shea butter then go back and labels it ‘Ghana Shea butter’. The majority of them are from Niger State.
So what am I saying is for us to upgrade our IGR, IGR can help us to nurture all the infrastructural needs that we need, especially in education. And again, it is a win-win for us, because when you’re able to tap into all of these resources that we have in the state, even the human resources and even accessing ICT and all of that, we’ll be able to generate enough. We don’t even have to borrow money. There are so many ways to go about it. There are so many ways to ask investors to come in. All they need is just assurance of security and all of that which I’ve already mentioned that we will find a way around.
So, I know that it is with intentionality. Look at Kaduna state, despite all the insecurity issues, look at how far they’ve gone. I think Kaduna now has the third or the second largest GDP in Nigeria. I don’t have all the data. It was over 200billion I think they talked about. I also know that Bornu, which is one of the hotspots for insecurity, is doing very well. So, what stops Niger State from doing well, there’s nothing that can stop us.
I know it’s all about political will and intentionality like we talked about earlier.
You have always looked at your state even from the time you were a child, you will always have this picture of a field of roses, I do not know whether you had those kinds of pictures as a child, but you have this grand picture of how your place should be, the kind of structures you expect to see in your place, the kind of high quality of people that you will have in your state, and so on and so forth. Do you have such a big picture right now of Niger State?
I’ll share a picture that one of my graphics persons, just shortly before this interview, sent me – the picture that I’ve been thinking of, the Niger dream I’ve had. In May, I was amongst the finalists for a coaching and mentoring award for women of stature in Dubai. I met with a lot of people in Dubai and one of the ladies that was one of the brains behind the museum, the new museum in Dubai, we were speaking with her and I told her that Insha’Allah we would work together. At that time, I didn’t really know that it was going to be for Niger, but I am seeing that a state like Dubai that had been a desert with nothing, and being transformed and being one of the best spots in the world that everyone wants to visit, what stops Niger from being like that? That is my dream.
So, we’ve been talking about the new Niger and I think the new Niger is possible. I know that prosperity is one of the defining principles that change the entire narrative of a community or estate. So, if we’re intentional about developing all the 25 local government areas in Niger state and mapping out all the places and ensuring that the issues of education, the factor of education, the factor of health – having health centres and good hospitals, and the factor of commerce and trade, and agriculture are being developed in each of these local government areas. What else can post prosperity other than these things? One of the things we didn’t get right (I think) in Nigeria and even in Niger State is because we have failed, we have abandoned human resources at these grassroots. We have abandoned the potential of our local government areas. We have not developed each one of them.
These are the things that China has done; China ensured that every family in all the grassroots areas are doing something. Do you understand what I’m saying? Each family is developing and increasing the GDP of their own family. At that level, when you are able to empower every family system in this grassroots, making sure that everybody is trading in one thing or the other, and having up-takers to bring these things to the state and even to the entire country; don’t you think that prosperity will be the order of the day for us in Niger state?
Empowering every family system and ensuring that there’s the UN rule of having one doctor to 600 people, ensuring that every local government has a health centre that is functional with staff who are efficient, with all the environmental issues being taken care of, and ensuring that everybody is being taken care of, prosperity will become the order of the day. Making sure that all the public schools are well-equipped. It is not rocket science to fix our schools. And you cannot tell me that there are no allocations for education.
What we’re trying to do, what is very important to me is education. I feel that aside from security, which is very, very urgent, I feel education should take prominence because you see, if you take care of education, you take care of security too indirectly.
When every child at the grassroots, at the local government area is going to school and is well engaged, who will come and draft them into banditry and kidnapping? Nobody. They will be too intelligent to even allow themselves to be drafted into those kinds of things. And if every family is well taken care of and empowered, and has enough money to take care of – have their farms well mechanised and all of that, would anybody even think of going into crime? Nobody. Because that would also eradicate poverty completely.
From what you have just related to me that there are three major cardinal points that you’re going to pursue; one is security, the other is education, I can also hear tourism, so are there other cardinal points…
Let me tell you, my cardinal points are seven which has the acronym SERVICE. S is for security, E is for education, R is for Rural Inclusion and Agriculture, V is for Vital Health, I is for Industrialisation, which also includes the 14th Industrial Revolution, then C is commerce and Trade plus Tourism, then E is E-governance
APGA, you are running against the PDP and you are running against APC. Those are the two parties that I see that are prominent in Niger State, how are you going to take over the State House? I know that where it is easiest to push your ideas is where you have control of the State House of Assembly and perhaps at the local level, where you have control of each of the local government offices. So how are you going to go about pushing your agenda in this present construct? Are you going to take over the House of Assembly too? Is that the plan of APGA in Niger state?
You do know that APGA is even in the House of Reps? We also had like about two councillors who are now vying for positions in the State House of Assembly. So I cannot go in there by myself. What we’re doing is we are carrying everybody along. We cannot survive and achieve a lot without carrying all the State House of Assembly along.
I’m not going there as a lone governor, I’m going there with my team and my team are already blazing the way, they’re doing their work, and they are doing their homework at the grassroots
So, in the end, you are going to take over the House of Assembly?
Yes, that’s our plan.
Thank you so much for this time.
