Can The Dream-Team Overcome Adamawa’s Ogre?

By

Abdulrazaque Bello-Barkindo

razbell73@hotmail.com

 

 

The people who will be representing Adamawa State at the forth-coming PDP National Convention have finally emerged from the ward and local government congresses. Those who made the list include Mohammed Hassan Turaki, Yola North; Saidu Ahmed, Yola South; Senator Abubakar Girei, Girei; Ibrahim Kirim, Song; Brig. Gen. Aliyu Kama, Hong; Usman Bukar, Mubi North; Ahmed Bazawang, Mubi South; General Buba Marwa  Michika; Colonel  Mohammed Mana, Maiha and Barrister A.A. Gulak, Madagali.

Others are Maigari Wakili Boya, Fufore; Medan Teneke, Demsa; Colonel Honest Stephen, Numan; Pascal Bafyau, Lamurde; General Abdullahi Shelleng, Shelleng; Admiral Murtala Nyako, Mayo Belwa;. Alhaji Bamanga Tukur, Jada; Polycap Kaigama, Ganye and Faruk Jauro for Toungo. Two local governments, Guyuk and Gombi have yet to announce their delegates.

 

For a state with the above team Adamawa is blessed. Keenly watched or guided and supported by academic giants like Professors Iya Abubakar, Bala Takaya and Jubril Aminu, and backed by dogged political fighters like Adamu Modibbo and Joel Madaki from the political trenches, contemplating any alternative representation is either unfair or an abuse of potential. The above team is by all standards a dream team for any constituency, state or country. It boasts of former and current presidential candidates, ex-governors, hard-working Senators, shrewd businessmen, accomplished academicians, gritty unionists, compassionate and civilized retired men of the armed forces and seasoned administrators; people of colossal credibility, depth of knowledge and varied experiences. There is hardly any state that can match Adamawa in terms of quality, with this kind of representation because any state that presents this team to any gathering in any circumstances must be said to be abundantly endowed and therefore dressed for success. Known nationwide as the Marwa-Atiku faction of Adamawa PDP, the team has had to snatch the state PDP from the leprous clutches of the Boni-Atiku faction which since 1999 has been nothing but an ill wind to the State.

 

For the avoidance of doubt it is imperative to mention that the latter faction has been in power but hardly shown that it is in government. This reason alone makes Adamawa people to be breathing a sigh of relief and saying that the era of schablong politics, spiced with lies, confusion, “bagatelisation”, political gangsterism, social and economic crimes sanctioned by the state, political cronyism, abuse of state apparatus for the advancement of the inordinate ambitions of a selfish few has come to its terminal.

 

There is justification for this assumption. In the last six years, Adamawa people were turned to Rastafarians without a Jah. Hope, which, took to its heels with the coming of, and sudden departure to the national arena of Atiku, had remained perpetually in flight from the State. Essential government responsibilities became personalised and provided only when these individuals had momentary business to do in the state or other occasions involving members of their families. The governor who, from all indication is a political neophyte and overzealous yes-man high-jacked the PDP machinery and deployed it only for the advancement of the tunnel minded cause of his principal.

 

For the remaining Adamawa population, it was years of captivity or “house-arrest.” For the last half-a-dozen years, the locusts looted, pilfered, molested, maimed and killed. Public service became personal service. This was so much so that the Finance Commissioner and the SSG who were not covered by the now obnoxious legislative contraption called immunity clause, were picked-up by the EFCC to cut down the misconduct of the most predatory government in human history. Electoral processes were turned into whimsical bazaars and where the people had their say, forces of coercion ensured that they were denied their way. Judicial processes were undermined with rough and ready language. Judges were threatened with bodily assault by Adamawa’s “high and mighty”. In the circumstances of the last six years, to describe Adamawa as a jungle would be more literal than metaphorical.

 

It is a miracle that people have not returned to “Stone age” methods of existence. God continues to bless the poor people of Adamawa state and shower them with his infinite mercies because they are suffering beyond measure. Indeed, homes began to stand for nothing in Adamawa because water, housing and roads, the essential responsibilities of the state government were substituted and short-changed. The state continues to drift from its nationally acclaimed factory of qualitative human capital. Resources which were meant for basic foundation education that milled the likes of Professors Lamurde, Sa’ad Abubakar, Aleyideino, Dr Poidon, Kamale, not to talk of Iya, Takaya and Aminu, were pinched and ploughed into a laughable contraption known as ABTI. The traditional institutions were not left alone. Royal fathers were either forced into unwilling and hedonistic matrimonial arrangements. Others were blackmailed, lied against by government, accused of anti-social behaviour in the nights and deposed and sent into exile in the mornings to pave way for government’s “yes-men”.

 

Considering the circumstances that paved the way for Nigeria’s democratic dispensation of the last six years, Adamawa State cannot be said to have broken itself free from the devil’s table. Adamawa continues to be very much in the news but for all the wrong reasons. Its negative personalities are so rotten that they dominate the scene and overshadow the achievements of Obasabjo’s “Golden Retriever” Nuhu Ribadu who ordinarily should be lining-up among Adamawa’s prominent sons. While many less endowed states took giant strides forward, Adamawa lost ground and back-slid to be compared to the comical days of Sale Michika. In fact, Mr Michika began to whet and propel his political appetite to return to Dou Girei because the government of the day has recorded more lapses than his own. While Adamawa indigenes at home and in the Diaspora continue to watch developments with keen interest, to the extent of expressing relief at the calculated defeat of the reigning pests, there is a lurking fear of that ogre that hands them victory, and allows them to reap what they did not sow.

 

This is why the question that promotes the triumph of mediocrity over genuine concern for the people is inescapable. Will this dream team overcome its members’ desire for self promotion and finally bury the ogre that has dogged Adamawa State since the Gongola days to pave way for good governance? This is like the Shakespearean “to be or not to be” question that must be confronted. The first leg has been accomplished with a resounding thrashing of 19-2. In fact it has never been any serious problem. In sporting parlance we call it a love game against Boni-Atiku (ha-ha!). It is handing over of the baton that always proves problematic. We know that an exquisite library is the creation of sophisticated taste. Our people all have the genuine desire to give Adamawa the best. And then the ogre stares them in the face like a curse. If the delegates to the coming PDP national convention were to spit a word each, Nigeria would be educated beyond its wildest dreams. But often these teams eventually disintegrate to give way to the group that has come to be synonymous with misadventure. In 1979, a similar situation gave Abubakar Barde, then a colourless Education Secretary, the key to the state’s treasury. When Mr Michika emerged from his shack of second-hand cars to overwhelm the state with his “Tokunbo” administration and the nation with “Tokunbo” logic (remember his treatise on why his children are the most “reliable” to execute government contracts), it was because the new breed in the SDP, led by Boss Mustapha defied logic to force Lawrence Ngbale, Numan and others to vote for Michika and Lynn Nathan in protest. Atiku Abubakar’s calamity deserves no replication here and neither does Boni Haruna’s disaster. Adamawa State has the human and material resources to be a heaven and a Mecca, for itself and for Nigeria but only if its brainpower does not cook up an un-necessary war of political attrition that always throws its beef to the dogs.