Alhaji (DR) Ahmadu Adamu Muazu: Our Distinguished Alumnus

By

Jonathan Ishaku

This weekend (December 17, 2005) in Akure, Alhaji Ahmadu Adamu Muazu, a distinguished alumnus of the Gindiri Boys’ Secondary School and the Executive Governor of Bauchi State, will add another feather to his already well adorned cap. He is being conferred an honorary Doctorate degree by the Federal University of Technology, Akure, (FUTA). This is his fifth in the line of honorary doctorate degrees from Nigerian universities. In his kitty he already has a Doctor of Science from the University of Uyo (UNIUYO), Doctor of Technology from Abubakar Tafawa Balewa University (ATBU), Bauchi, Doctor of Governance from the Igbenidion University, Okada, and Doctor of Science from the University of Maiduguri (UNIMAID).

Success they say has many siblings while failure is an orphan. Only a few can point to a loser and admit acquaintance. I wonder how many people will come forward to proclaim their kinship with Chief D.S.P. Alamieyesiegha, the recently impeached governor of Bayelsa State. Even that fellow Terry Wayas, the man who reportedly supplied the money for his bail in London, will not be feeling too comfortable with the mention of that name. He will not be the first to do a vault face on his friend; Peter in the scriptures did the same when the Master was arrested. As he warmed himself furtively by the fireside at the scene of the arrest a young girl looked intently upon his face and spurted: ‘this man was also with him.’ Peter, the outspoken defender of the Master, momentarily lost his balance, and retorted, in fulfillment of the Lord’s prophesy: ‘Woman, I know him not.’

But a winner is everybody’s friend. “Do you know that we were neighbours with so and so?” “Oh, he is my father’s brother’s sister’s son. I know him very well.” “Ah, we even shared a toilet together when we were living in the same compound in Ajegunle!” Yes, from the weird to the profane, success has many acquaintances.

I am doing nothing new therefore to celebrate a fellow alumnus of the BSS, Gindiri. And it is not only his acquisition of honorary degrees that I am celebrating. Ahmadu Muazu does not need any of the honorary degrees to define his intellectual accomplishments. He was a straight “A” scholar while in school. Some of my recollections of him in Gindiri was that of the gangling Fulani boy who seemed to collect all the prizes for all the subjects on Speech Prize Giving Day. With due respect to his equally gifted classmates, a very unruly bunch if you ask me (I was a year their senior so I preserve my right to judge!), Ahmed seemed to shine on such occasions. The set of ‘76 recorded the third best results (after the class of ’75, of which they were mortally envious) in the history of the school. People like Ahmadu had a smooth sail to the university. At the School of Basic Studies, he recorded ‘AAB’ assuring him a wide choice of academic courses at the Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria. He settled for Quantity Survey and graduated with a ‘Second Upper’. He went back to ABU and took a Masters in Construction Management before proceeding to the University of Birmingham for yet another Masters in his chosen field. If Ahmadu Muazu had put his mind to bearing the title of “Dr.” he could have easily acquired one academically given that he had proven his scholarly mettle.

So Ahmed’s honorary doctorates are not intended to compensate some deficiencies as is often the case with most of Nigeria’s public figures. Neither are they vain, for which one would have lined up with the critics of such awards, but they come from genuine intentions by the awarding institutions to give honour to whom honour is due. A mistake some of us critics often commit is to criticize without bothering to make a case by case distinction. In a nation given to general cynicism about government policies, with more of it directed against public officers, it is important to recognize and give plaudits to selfless public service if only as a way of rebuilding confidence in our public institutions and as incentives to others to do well for their own people. Governor Ahmadu’s honors would have been sterile were it not backed up by concrete achievements on the grounds. If ever there was a recipient worthy of the honor among Nigeria’s public officers, there are few better candidates than Governor Ahmadu; his accomplishments on the ground speak volumes.

Governor Ahmadu is repeating a trend in Bauchi State that has made us proud as members of Gindiri Old Students Association (GOSA). In the late sixties and early seventies, another member of GOSA, Mr. Joseph Gomwalk, had transformed the then backward Benue Plateau State to the envy of all and sundry. Gomwalk’s name has become something of an legend in the present Plateau State; virtually all important landmarks have been named, posthumously, after him as a mark of honor – the nine-storey offices of the Plateau publishing company, the double carriage way along the police headquarters, and the magnificent state secretariat. Not long ago some students of the University of Jos went on a peaceful demonstration demanding that the university be named after him. Interestingly, virtually all of the undergraduates in the university were born after the death of Gomwalk but that is how his legacy has endured!

What Governor Ahmadu has done in Bauchi State in the last six and half years is equally monumental and worthy indeed of celebrating. This writer happens to be reasonably acquainted with the development of Bauchi over a long period. For over thirty years I have traversed the expanse of Bauchi as I made several to and fro trips from Maiduguri, where I  grew up, to other parts of the country. Although Bauchi town was initially, albeit briefly, if I recall well, the capital of the former North Eastern State when the military regime of Yakubu Gowon created the 12-state structure, for the most part of its life it remained peripheral and semi-urban. It remained substantially unchanged even on becoming an autonomous state in 1976.

But things started to change for Bauchi State in 1999 when Ahmadu Adamu Muazu became the Executive Governor. After Prof. Jerry Gana, then Minister of Information, leading a team of media executives drawn from a broad section of the Nigerian media concluded their tour of states of the federation in 2001; Governor Ahmadu emerged from their assessment as the top winner of the prize for rural development and the second best Governor in the overall rating. During Gana’s tour I had published a long criticism of the whole exercise in some national newspapers and on some websites, so I did not take much notice of its awards. I was therefore not prepared for what I confronted in 2003 during my first trip to Bauchi State since the coming to power of Governor Ahmadu. Right from the boundary town of Tilde Fulani, I drove the one hour to Bauchi in a state of surrealism; I could not believe the evidence before me  - the transformation ( that is the only word to use)  of the Bauchi countryside was simply unbelievable. Electric poles weaved through the countryside shrubs bringing to long forsaken villagers what had long been the prerogatives of the urban dwellers – electric light. As we drove through villages, now and again, you catch the glimpses of playful children splashing around in water at the numerous borehole pumps that dot the rural landscape.

When we finally arrived Bauchi, I could scarcely recognize this town I have passed through hundreds of times. The township road network was a beauty to behold; we are not talking of tarring in the Nigerian sense where emergency contractors merely empty drums of tar of uneven pathways in the name of tarring. Here, in the city, the affair is conducted by no less the expert of Nigerian civil works itself. Julius Berger, the German construction firm which is closely associated with the transformation of Abuja from a “bush” to a world class city, was in charge of the job here. The roads especially the ones along the GRA which I cruised to and fro my hotel and the university, where I had a business to conduct, were of double coat surfacing with asphalt overlay and well-articulated gutters, the type you see only in Abuja highbrow areas. This day the former President of Namibia, Comrade (Dr.) Sam Nujoma, was in town to commission the GRA road network. 

Talking of personages who have honoured Governor Ahmadu with their presence to commission one project or the other, the list is inexhaustible. There is hardly any one, of any clout, who has not been invited to Bauchi to commission one landmark project or the other. Does one have to mention, too, President Olusegun Obasanjo whose praise of the Governor has been unceasing since his Presidential visit to Bauchi? Flattery does not come easy to the President but he calls the Governor “ my son”. 

Long serving military Head of State, General Yakubu Gowon was in Bauchi State to commission the Misau Rural electrification project. Other former Nigerian leaders who have visited Bauchi State to commission one project or the other include General Muhammed Buhari, General Ibrahim Babangida, Chief Ernest Shonekan, and General Adulsalam Abubakar.

Other dignitaries to the state include foreign ambassadors, visiting heads of State, United Nations, World Bank chieftains and Principal Officers of the National Assembly. In fact recently the Senate President and the Senate Deputy President, Chief Ken Nnamani and Alhaji Ibrahim Mantu were in the State to commission the Jibrin Aminu Model Primary School, Bauchi.

Such is the extent to which success can attract even the high and mighty; in fact it can be infectious. I am reliably informed that many of his colleagues have secretly sent scouts to understudy him with a view of replicating his success in their own states. Imitation, the saying goes, is the highest form of flattery. Indeed, flattery or not, Governor Ahmadu has set a standard that it is worth of emulation.

These are no mean achievements: In the educational sector, Ahmadu has increased primary school enrolment from 438,350 to 1.3 million within six years. The number of students produced from all the secondary schools in Bauchi State in 1999 that passed out with five credits was 279 but in 2005 the number rose to beyond 9,000. In the health sector, another area of his priority, budgetary allocation rose from 106 million Naira in 1999 to 3.4 billion Naira in 2005. Consequently, the Specialist Hospital in Bauchi and the General Hospitals in Gamawa, Alkeleri,Misau,Ningi have been rehabilitated and equipped. New hospitals have been opened in Burra, Boto, Azare, Itas Giade, Dass, Damdam, Warji and Bagoro with a comprehensive health clinic at Udubo.

In the area of rural development Governor Ahmadu has connected 800 towns and villages in the state to the national grid from a mere 50 in 1999. Also 3,000 communities are now enjoying water from boreholes. The Governor also committed a whopping 377 million Naira to the turn around maintenance of the Bauchi water treatment plant at the end of which the town would boast as the only town in Nigeria where water is not hawked in jerrycans on the street by water vendors. The plant which hitherto supplied one million gallons per day now supplies 10 million gallons.

In the area of tourism, for long a mere potential in the state, the industry is now vigorously being repositioned as an income earner. Soon the Government expects to take over the famous Yakari Games Reserves from the Federal Government. The process has begun with the passing of the amendment to the National Parks Service Decree by the two chambers of the National Assembly. The amendment to this decree itself owes much to the confidence the national legislators have in the ability of the Governor to breathe new life into this world-class park. 

The short of it is that this governor has done us proud. But not only in his physical achievements; he is also a man that has lives up to our motto of “For light and Truth.” Although the training in Gindiri emphasized the academic, students were rigorously grilled on moral and spiritual rectitude. It is no news that Gindiri schools were charted along the path of the Christian faith but in the spirit of tolerance students of other faith were also admitted. So it was that the young Ahmadu, a Fulani Muslim boy was not only admitted but given a warm embraced by the Christian staff and fellow students. This virtue of religious tolerance is what Governor Ahmadu has applied with great success in the governance of his multi-ethnic and multi-religious state.

Bauchi has had its fair share of ethno-religious restiveness in the past. I once wrote an article in the early nineties titled “The Three Adamus of Bauchi State.” It was during the time of the ethno-religious violence which engulfed Bauchi state, spreading from a disagreement between some people in the Tafawa Balewa town. My article stemmed from a report of the crisis in the CITIZEN magazine written by my professional colleague, Malam Adamu Adamu. The other two Adamus referred to were the then Commissioner of Information and the deceased Dr. Adamu Bukata. I do not wish to recall this sad chapter in our history but only to acknowledge, in contrast, that Governor Ahmadu has succeeded in building bridges of understanding among his people that the State, indeed the nation, was saved the spectacle of another bloodletting so much so that in the events of the 2001/2004 Jos/Yelwa crisis, the state provided a “safe haven” for internally displaced persons (IDPs) from Plateau state.  

Still speaking of character, I recently read an account of how Governor Ahmadu does the ordinary as an ordinary person. He drives out on his own and sometimes treks around the town. He bends down to pick trash around his office. He serves out plates to guests at dinners, etc. To these I muttered to myself, this is the GOSA spirit; the spirit of humility. People often lament that the GOSA spirit is the undoing of the alumni in public office; that while others would be enriching themselves and flaunting all the appurtenances of offices, the GOSA member, in contrast, would be austere and humble. They say GOSA members would not “chop” and would not allow others to “chop.” His humility and sense of humanity reminds me of my hero of blessed memory, Malam Aminu Kano. That was what people said about Malam Animu, they said if was to be elected President, his sense of social justice, would one day drive him to carry a placard to demonstrate against himself!

The bane of our society is that those who cannot appreciate the sacrifices our leaders make to give selfless service in a society where greed and avarice are the order of the day engage in all acts of chicanery to belittle or to blackmail. Governor Ahmadu acknowledged the same to some journalists when recently said “ the biggest irony is that even if you lay gold and diamond on this road, a lot of people would still think you are playing some stupid tricks, that you are not doing it out of the fear of God and the love of the people. They would still insinuate you are stealing part of their money despite the good work... But I still believe that [it] is part of the price of leadership.”

It took not less than a colleague of his from another state, to verbalize the leadership potentials of Governor Ahmadu beyond his Bauchi gubernatorial offices when he urged him to seek for the ultimate office in the land in order to replicate his achievements on a national scale. His sentiments are widely shared by all who have witnessed the transformation of Bauchi State, not only by GOSA members. One is convinced that at the appropriate time Nigerians will speak in like manner and demand for leaders with track record and humane character.          

Mr. Ishaku is a veteran journalist based in Jos, Plateau State. Email: jishaku2@yahoo.co.uk