Crowns

Crowns, Thorns And Makarfi

Mahmud Jega

Many things swirled around Alhaji Ahmed Makarfi as he celebrated his 48^th birthday last week. He was struggling to maintain an enviable gubernatorial record, there was the tragic death of his right-hand man, there were the darkening clouds of 2007, and there are some controversies around some of his policies, his political intentions, and his newly completed personal house. Here’s a peep into the complex workings of a governor’s mind.

He himself threw no birthday bash, but on Sunday last week, when Kaduna State Governor Alhaji Ahmed Mohamed Makarfi clocked 48, there were many messages of congratulations on the radio, on television and in the newspapers. Since he himself did not speak publicly on it, it was those who saw him on that day who reported his feelings. The governor said his life has been one well spent. It wasn’t easy in the beginning, he said, but with Allah’s bountiful mercies and with his own struggle and hard work, he had accomplished more in the service of the people in 48 years than many people are opportune to do in 100.

Talking about Allah’s mercies, exactly a week to the birthday, Alhaji Ahmed Makarfi and the administration he heads had been thrown into turmoil following the death of Alhaji Umaru Balarabe Kubau. He had been the Commissioner for Works, Housing and Transport throughout the Makarfi era, and more than that, he was the governor’s technocratic right-hand man and a pillar of the administration.

Early in the morning that day, Kubau was with the governor, and they discussed many official and non-official matters. [In view of the importance it later acquired, we shall explore this subject again shortly]. Kubau then left for his hometown to see his mother, and four hours later, the governor received a phone call. He was told that Kubau had an accident just outside Kaduna and that it was bad. Makarfi immediately reached for the phone and began making arrangements for better medical care, but another call soon came in and told the governor not to bother; Kubau had died. For Makarfi, it was only the confirmation of an uneasy feeling he had an hour earlier when he unsuccessfully tried to have a siesta.

Over the next few days, Kaduna State ’s governance came to a standstill as thousands flocked to Kubau’s house at Malali to condole his family and the governor, who led the mourners. What was Kubau like to the government? Governor Makarfi said he was extremely hardworking, very reliable, and always looking out for ways to work out the best for Kaduna State . This was no empty statement. Kubau’s legendary technocratic expertise had been attested to by a previous ruler, Brigadier Lawal Jafaru Isa, and Governor Makarfi cited cases to prove the latter assertion. Kubau, he said, helped to evolve the state government’s policy of paying contractors per specific measurement of work. In other words, payment is made only for the exact work done, which helps to make savings. Such savings are then either returned to the treasury, or the government asks the contractor to execute additional work to cover the savings made.

For example, the governor told visitors, when the state government dualised Zaria city roads, Kubau’s dogged implementation of the policy ensured a lot of savings, which were then ploughed back to do the circular road, to provide street lights, and to repair the road from Danmagaji to Kofar Doka. Similarly, the policy made savings from the dualisation of Kaduna Refinery road, which was ploughed back to make the road from Peugeot Automobile to link with the Bye-pass road and also to erect streetlights on it. All from the savings, and these are only two examples.

Many city political types spoke of the departed Kubau not as a technocratic mainstay of a dynamic regime, but as a “business associate” of the governor. It was a charge that Makarfi scoffed at. After their exit from the military –era state cabinet and prior to their return to power as politicians, he had said, both Kubau and himself were businessmen, but of parallel lines of trade. Kubau, a trained architect, went into construction, while Makarfi, a trained accountant, was into investment, finance, and consultancy. They were however socially very close and again jammed in politics.

What were the two men discussing hours before Kubau’s tragic accident? At a cabinet remembrance session last week, the governor said he asked Kubau whether some of their strategies in the epic road rehabilitation programme didn’t need reexamination, but Kubau analysed it carefully and concluded that it was all on the right track. Part of the record of the cabinet session shown on television that night also showed the governor telling a story about how, on that day, he talked to Kubau about the latter’s personal financial problems and advised him to sort them out. It all sounded very strange because talk around town was that Kubau was a wealthy man. What was the governor actually trying to say?

As far as could be gleaned from sources familiar with the situation, Kubau’s return to government in 1999 kind of wrecked his once flourishing construction firm. The firm felt his absence; then it took a bank loan to do a Federal road project, which was not paid for years, and then the man who took charge of the company in Kubau’s absence died in a car crash. The Commissioner’s private firm was a wreck, and he never told Makarfi about it until the governor found out. That was what he urged him to put aright, but alas, there was no time.

On the day that Kubau died, on Sunday evening, the government hurriedly declared the following day, Monday, as a public holiday in his honour. Many people criticized this action, with some saying no such holidays were declared when a commissioner and a state assembly member died previously, or even when former state governor Alhaji Dabo Lere died. When senior officials however prevailed on the governor to declare the holiday, they advanced many reasons. They said, for example, that Kubau’s death was disaster because it was sudden, not due to a protracted illness, and also that he was a key element in the government’s most smashing success, namely its infrastructural development projects. Besides, one official said, it was only bowing to reality, because government work was bound to collapse anyway the next day as people surged to pay condolences to the family. Which, come to think of it, was what happened, only that some people were not happy that banks had to close as well.

The Commissioner for Works and Transport died at a time when the Makarfi administration has embarked upon an ambitious road rehabilitation programme. All over Kaduna , Zaria and the major towns and deep into the rural recesses, whole old roads are being ripped up by earthmoving graders and are being rebuilt. And it isn’t over until it is over; Governor Makarfi has expressed his desire to rebuild Kaduna city’s old and worn-out Jos and Kontagora roads. He was also at Mando, Rigasa and Sabo, where he expressed his intention to rebuild many more roads there.

The Kaduna State government had learnt some extremely useful lessons in the last 5 years of its frenetic road reconstruction. To some visiting officials and engineers, Makarfi had said that most of Kaduna State ’s rural roads ought to be taken over by the Federal Government because they are in reality interstate roads, given the state’s geographic centrality. Heavy trucks regularly ferry goods on the state’s rural roads, ripping them up in the process. Last year, the governor said the state must build rural roads that can accommodate trucks if they are to last long. It quickly added to the cost of building them, but the government erected protective barriers on some of them, allowing 15 to 20 ton trucks to pass but locking out 40 to 60 tonners.

Awarding the road contracts is a rigorous process, despite popular suspicions that they are closed affairs for cronies and officials. At least 5 firms bid for each road; technical teams check their rates and correct any miscalculations. The tenders’ board negotiates with the bidders to reduce their quotations, and all these information is made available to the Executive Council when it considers the bids. Only that, contracts are not necessarily awarded to the lowest bidder, because the lowest bidder’s overall history and technical capacity may not guarantee a good work.

Road building apart, the state government has in the past year given out thousands of motorcycles to various officials on loan. The scheme may be popular with the recipients but not with others, who feel Kaduna is already awash with very dangerous riders. The Makarfi regime however sees it as a key element of its anti-poverty programme. Last year, 12,000 motorcycles were given to teachers all over the state. Several more thousand cycles then went to junior civil servants, and recently, the governor was on television giving out more cycles to local government officials, all shared on the basis of local governments’ equality. There are still 2,000 motorcycles cooling their wheels at the Sir Kashim Ibrahim House, which are soon to be shared to NGOs and non-government people.

Perhaps more conspicuous than even the motorcycles is the new Kaduna State University . A month ago, it got a chancellor, pro-chancellor, vice chancellor, registrar and bursar, and two weeks ago, the government voted money to relocate a girls’ secondary school in Kaduna to make room for the university. Where’s it all going? Alhaji Ahmed Makarfi has said that Kaduna State ’s varsity should soon catch up with and surpass other state universities. In fact, he wants to rub shoulders with old Federal varsities within a few years, and he has already evolved some innovative measures to achieve that. For example, the state government wants to build lecture halls, theatres, laboratories and a library very quickly, to find well-qualified teachers and to provide an attractive welfare scheme. It however intends to leave the building of hostels on the campus to the private sector, properly regulated to prevent fleecing of hapless students.

Energetic road works, fast riding motorcycles and a brand new university may be very conspicuous, but they are not even the cornerstone programmes of the Makarfi second term, according to key officials. Although the governor relishes his popular title of Limamin raya karkara da birane, he told officials at the beginning of his second term that it was time to move on to another crucial area, that of “developing the human factor”. Education, health and agriculture are the declared priority sectors this time. The key elements of the programme are quite well integrated. They include this year’s abundant supply of fertilizer and machinery to farmers’ cooperatives at agreed conditions, the hiring of 1,000 secondary school teachers this year and another 1,000 next year, as s the hiring very soon of 1,000 health workers, including doctors, nurses and ward attendants to man the rebuilt hospitals. Makarfi has pledged to set aside N1 billion next year to build primary school classrooms, and he has asked the local government councils to prepare to recruit thousands of additional primary school teachers next year. In addition, the state government has instituted a micro credit scheme for small traders and cottage industries. Taken together, these programmes should greatly affect people’s lives in Kaduna State .

And they are not the only ones. The creation of Development Areas by the Makarfi regime may have been an accident occasioned by the failure to satisfy the constitutional provision for creating new local governments but in retrospect, it looks like a good accident. Many of the areas making up a DA never had up to N100,000’s worth of project by their respective local governments in 4 years, the governor recently complained, but this year, every month, each DA gets N1 million from state grant alone to undertake a small capital project. This may be a borehole, a sanitation project, a small culvert or a classroom repair, but these are usually matters that greatly concern a community and they no longer have to go to the state or even local government headquarters to seek help. Some of the Das have been very successful, and have repaired up to 7 primary schools in the last three months. They have got a pool account from which they draw their funds and they are already started on second quarter projects.

For a man who is driving this robust state of governmental affairs, Governor Ahmed Makarfi is probably still savouring the bitter taste of last year’s charge by PDP chieftain Alhaji Umaru Gana, who said N60 billion poured into state coffers in 4 years and that the governor had nothing to show for it. Even as the brickbats flew, Alhaji Ahmed Makarfi privately groaned about the attitude of a Nigerian man, saying a cynical Nigerian man may ignore a beautiful road that leads right up to his own doorstep and accept the charge that money is unaccounted for. The Kaduna State government actually made more money in 4 years than Gana claimed regularly published details of its receipts and expenditure in the Auditor General’s report, which was tabled at the state assembly and openly debated. The fuss puzzled and bewildered the governor.

Alhaji Ahmed Makarfi may have viewed the Gana affair as a small media footnote, but he must still be learning lessons from the Hunkuyi affair. Alhaji Sulaiman Hunkuyi was Makarfi’s Commissioner for Finance, very close personal friend and Director General of his reelection campaign outfit who suddenly bolted and mounted a challenge for the PDP nomination. When he failed there, he crossed over to ANPP, picked its ticket and reaped a lot of votes from the Buhari whirlwind. He couldn’t unseat Makarfi, though.

PDP chieftains in the state were at first puzzled, then alarmed when they saw Hunkuyi paying occasional visits to Makarfi after the polls. They didn’t like it one bit; especially when it was rumoured that Hunkuyi had apologized and was on his way back to the party. A senior politician said when they accosted the governor for an explanation, he said he had forgiven everyone for whatever he did during the last polls. When he thought that sounded like a blanket approval of political treachery, Makarfi reportedly corrected himself and said, “I forgive everyone for what he has already done, but not for what you may do in the future. That one, we must wait and see what you do first”. The governor’s “forgiveness” notwithstanding, party leaders say Hunkuyi must reconcile with them before he can rejoin the party, must re-register at the ward level, and must not make any preconditions, for none could be granted.

The case of Alhaji Yusuf Hamisu Abubakar, better known as Mairago, was a different kettle of fish. This wasn’t political treachery because he wasn’t close to Makarfi, only that it was widely assumed that Vice President Atiku Abubakar sponsored the challenge as part of strategic 2007 calculations. Though Mairago never quit the public service or openly declared, his sea of campaign posters, not to mention the hundreds of rams he shared, greatly unsettled the governor’s reelection team even before the Hunkuyi desertion. At the last minute, the Vice President stepped in and “reconciled” the two men. What were the terms of the deal? None, if senior officials close to Makarfi are to be believed, because the governor refused to make any promises at the peace talks and, strangely, the Vice President agreed with him that no such assurances to Mairago were required. It may have been part of the deal but, strangely, Makarfi does not concede even in private that Atiku was behind the Mairago campaign. He waived away the unanimous conclusion of his entire campaign team by saying Atiku may not control the actions of people around him anymore than the governor himself controls all the actions of people around him.

Another swirling issue is the matter of the governor’s personal house. Alhaji Ahmed Makarfi had lived in a modest home on Sokoto road before he became governor. Since 1999, he has lived inside the Sir Kashim Ibrahim House but three months ago, he moved out into a house he built on Jabi Road . To charges that he had gone to leave in a mansion, Makarfi told politicians that his house had nowhere near the number of bedrooms he was leaving behind in the Sir Kashim house. The new house reportedly has a library, a gym and several reception areas, but not so many bedrooms. Why then did the governor move into it when he still has three years to live in Sir Kashim House? According to a personal friend, he moved because he wanted his family to begin a gradual separation from state protocol. Not that their life could be entirely protocol-free at this stage, but it is freer than at the government house, somewhat.

Anyway, as 2007 steadily approaches, a matter more important than Makarfi’s personal house is what he does in the gubernatorial and presidential election contests of that year. Which are now shaping up. All the friends and close political associates professed ignorance as to his likely course of action, beyond what he himself said. Which was that, let a level playing field be created for all aspirants to try selling themselves to the electorate. When the time is ripe [at both state and Federal level], he said he can’t fold his arms, but it would then be apparent where the people’s inclinations are and also which candidates have brought peace and development to the state and country. He would then consult appropriately with his associates and they would take a stand, but not now.

Well before that time comes, there would be many interesting stories to tell from the mind of Alhaji Ahmed Makarfi, often with the help of a sorcerer’s stone.