Gombe 2007: The Hurdles Against An Overbearing Governor

By

Garba Shehu

agshehu@yahoo.com

 

 

The journey for the creation of Gombe State has been a Herculean task of sort. Even though the former Gombe Zone is more qualified for the independent struggle, the Gombawas had to face a more connected Katagum Zone whom were also looking for a State from the same Bauchi State with an influential Secretary of the Federal Military Government as the arrow head of the movement. Undeterred as they had resolved to be, the Gombe Elites formed a powerful committee which worked tirelessly toward the actualisation of this noble objective and as fate would have it, the Government of the Late General Sani Abacha on 1st October 1996 assented to the creation of a Gombe State and the rest is now history.

 

But of recently, the vision of the people of Gombe to have a peaceful and hospitable State is in jeopardy. Ever since the emergence of Alhaji Muhammed Danjuma Goje as the helmsman of Gombe affairs things were not the same again in the state. The governor seems to be at war with almost everyone out there both the high and low. He started first by sacking more than 800 numbers of staff from the State’s Water Corporations. This happens within his first 100 days in office way back in the year 2003. As it is now, no fewer than 3000 staff were either demoted, retrenched or out-rightly sacked from the state civil service, all without any cogent reason other than politics.

 

Even the front runners of the Gombe State Creation Movement otherwise known as the Gombe Elders, were not spared. The Former Governor Alhaji Abubakar Hashidu, who was the Secretary of the movement, has his house demolished all in an effort by the agent of the Government to humiliate him and forced him out of the town. To achieve this, Goje has to initiate a non-existing road that pass through the center of Hashidu’s house in order to get the flimsy excuse of a “development initiative”. If it is a development indeed, the Governor could do well by finishing the much desired dualisation of the central township road project initiated by Hashidu in 2003.

 

Ambassador Yerima Abdullahi, who was the Chairman of the State Creation Movement, is now the subject of abuse in the state-owned media by Goje and his cronies. His house too, is to be demolished as bulldozers has already started surveying the area notwithstanding the fact that there is a well-tarred motorable road around, all the State Government officials can say is that it is a dual carriage-way they are constructing there. The said road construction project only comes up when the Ambassador was appointed Linkman of the PDP re-registration exercise in Gombe State, a development that didn’t go down well with the Governor who has to run down to Abuja and switched-off what remains of his loyalty from his traditional political master and benefactor to the power that be there in order to get the party re-registration exercise in the state cancelled and be given to him.

 

Before it even comes to this level, the late renowned philanthropist Alhaji Baba Manu ABM has also been the subject of abuse in the Goje-controlled state media even after his death. Alhaji Baba Manu who since in the 1970s was building and maintaining schools, all over the state with his private funds could not be accorded the desired respect he deserve. The late ABM stirred the hornet nest when, as an elder statesman, confronted the Governor on certain issues particularly relating to the sanctity of the traditional institutions, which Goje didn’t waste time in interfering and intimidating them up to the point of dethroning, demoting and even arresting some of them like the Emirs of Yamaltu, Akko, Pindiga, Nafada, Bajoga, etc. The highly respected ABM was thus declared an enemy and a persona non-grata to the state government for daring to intervene even in such a situation where it was generally believed that the Governor was wrong.

 

Alhaji Murtala Aliyu, who contested along with Goje in the 2003 PDP Governorship primaries, has also gotten his own share of Goje’s intimidation. In a desperate move to get something dirty out of him, Murtala Aliyu was asked to refund certain some of money being amount he received for the house he sells to the then State Government somewhere back in the year 2001. Alhaji Murtala has responded instantly and dared the State Government to handover his house back as he is ever ready to refund what is required of him of the money. The said house was bought up from Murtala Aliyu at the instance of the Hashidu‘s Government after pleading with him (Murtala) to sell the house in view of its strategic location and also to enable the Government use the property as a Presidential Guest House.

 

In a recent interview with the media, the calm Minister of Youth and Inter-Governmental Affairs, Alhaji Musa Mohammed has explained how he escaped attack from Goje-sponsored mob popularly known as the Yankalare, while they are discharging their assigned responsibility of re-registration exercise of their party in the state. The Minister explained that the State Government was particularly not happy with his re-registration team having refused to succumb to the pressures from the Governor to submit their selves to his whims and caprices.

 

Alhaji Ibrahim Dankwambo was also attacked immediately he was appointed the Accountant-General of the Federation by the state-sponsored terrorist Yankalare. Though, Dankwambo unlike other appointees of the former Hashidu’s administration was allowed to reign as the Accountant-General of the state against all odds, perhaps because of his enormous connection within the finance sector in the federation. But still nonetheless, the power that be in Gombe feel threatened, the acceleration of an “outsider” to one of the highest public finance office in the land.

 

Even the thoroughbred technocrat and the Senior Special Assistant to the President on the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), Hajiya Amina Ibrahim has to take her own share of the Goje’s vengeance cake. Mrs. Ibrahim, whom even the UN Secretary General Mr. Kofi Annan acknowledges her developmental ingenuity and appointed her as the Taskforce Coordinator of the UN MDG Goal 3 (Education and Gender Equality), could not escape from Goje’s vendetta as her Hotel Management Consultancy firm which rehabilitated, refurbished and managed the hitherto dilapidated Gombe State Hotel into a world-class standard hotel was sacked for no any reason better than being that she co-founded the Afri-Projects Consortium along with Murtala Aliyu and others, in which case anybody that has anything to do with people like him must be dealt with decisively.

 

The list of victims of Goje’s misrule could go on and on without an end but one of the beautiful features of democracy as a system of governance is that there is always the day of reckoning –that is the Election Day. On that day the Gombawas would come out en masse to vote out a Government that preaches the scripture of vendetta and did not have an atom of respect on its leaders who had laboured so hard to see the development of Gombe Project a reality.