Towards a New Kebbi AgendaByAbdullahi Usman“The significant problems we face cannot be solved by the same level of thinking that created them”. -Albert EinsteinOver the course of the greater part of the last six years or so, one has reluctantly assumed the multiple roles of a political and economic policy analyst, public affairs commentator and social critic all rolled into one. What initially started as a mere pastime towards the end of 2001, has now assumed the status of a strong passion, with many unintended consequences; so much so that people now consider it your personal obligation to rise up to the occasion and pen down something whenever the situation so demands. The main objective of such interventions is basically to bring specific issues into public consciousness and, in the process, hopefully get them addressed by those responsible for resolving them. This is typically achieved in one of two ways: by either pricking the conscience of the people they are directed at or, where that is not possible, causing them some level of embarrassment that is sufficient enough to force them to have a rethink. Either way, the main objective of addressing the issue would have been realized. A perfect example of this was the April 16, 2005 article titled: “Somebody, Please Stop Okoya!”, in which the immense suffering caused innocent road users by a wedding party at Chief Razaq Okoya’s expansive compound along the Lekki - Epe Expressway was highlighted and condemned. This critique, which preceded my very good friend, Dr. Rueben Abati’s follow-up article the following day, succeeded in embarrassing the Okoyas to the extent that the father of the bride and younger brother of Chief Okoya had to buy space in the national dailies and tender an unreserved public apology over a period of one week. Although the Okoya family has continued to hold many of their usual parties afterwards, no such public nuisance has ever been recorded since that unfortunate incident. Whereas the over 40 articles one has written so far have tended to cover topical issues in both the local and international arena, majority of them have been dedicated to addressing specific issues affecting my native Kebbi State. This focus on my state is, in fact, not by coincidence, but a distinctly deliberate attempt to achieve the twin objectives of correcting the misinformation and falsehood emanating from key officials of the immediate past government and also challenging some aspects of its ill-conceived policies and actions. Examples of such ill-advised decisions, which betrayed a clear lack of the necessary thought process, include: the 2002 attempt to buy an official aircraft at a time everyone was extolling the virtues of privatization; the ridiculous N251 million expenditure on traditional rulers in 2003 in the form of the official limousines bought for them at a total cost of N111 million and another N35m given to each of them for maintenance allowance and palace renovation and, more recently; the strange decision to sell the state’s Liaison Office in Lagos under very controversial circumstances. The primary motivation for this particular essay was driven purely by the need to address some salient issues affecting our beloved state in the light of certain realities that have manifested so early in the life of the new government, which tend to suggest that nothing has changed. For example, the familiar refrain of most candidates interested in inheriting the mantle of leadership from incumbents belonging to the same political parties to the effect that they would not betray their predecessors if elected into office, has become something of a mantra for our current Chief Executive. This began right from his nomination and election campaign tours, through to his eventual declaration as the Governor-Elect and, even now as the duly sworn-in Governor of the state. The immediate import of this singular statement, to many of my compatriots who believe that a lot of unwholesome activities were perpetrated during the last administration is, rightly or wrongly, that none of such activities will ever be revisited even where there is a compelling need to do so. That, to me, is precisely where the biggest danger lies, especially in view of everything we have witnessed as a people during the last eight years of our democratic experiment. If that refrain is predicated upon some political or personal debt of gratitude he owes his predecessor, our new helmsman must realize - and quickly so - that he owes an even bigger obligation to provide good governance and address the misery confronting majority of the hapless citizens within his state. This can, indeed, only be achieved via a carefully worked out twin-strategy of building on the successes of the past government in the few areas where it recorded them, and reviewing some of its policies and actions whenever and wherever that is necessary. There is simply no other way because when he was inaugurated as Governor on May 29, 2007, it was the interest of the entire citizens that he swore to defend and protect and no one else! Indeed, many of our compatriots had hoped that the 2007 elections would provide a perfect opportunity to do away with what they viewed as the old political order and enthrone an entirely new one that would offer us a better chance of meeting the collective yearnings and aspirations of our people. This hope was, however, dealt a mortal blow when a certain Chief Olusegun Obasanjo from far away Ogun State, decided that it was his singular responsibility as the undisputed ‘National Leader’ and BOT Chairman of his party to interfere in the politics of my state and determine on our behalf who our leaders and representatives should be. And so, without due regard to the peculiarities of the issues confronting us, he invited some elements within the then ruling ANPP government to join the PDP opposition under a lopsided arrangement that offered them the chance to produce the Governor, 2 of the 3 Senatorial seats, 5 of 8 House of Representatives members and 15 of the 24 State legislators. This, of course, was informed by Obasanjo’s undisguised obsession with stopping the possible emergence of General Buhari as President at all costs. A similar arrangement was repeated in nearby Sokoto State and, without prejudice to the legal battles that will be fought at the election tribunals, the rest, as they say, is history. Suffice is to say that Obasanjo is now resting quietly and attending to his poultry in his expansive Otta farms, having achieved his primary objective of cutting his perennial adversary to size. Kebbi State, on other hand, has unwittingly been saddled with a complicated scenario of having to endure with more of the same treatment; a situation that could easily culminate into a possible 16-year unbroken romance with a political tendency that may, for all intents and purposes, stifle our ability to realize our full potential as a people. And, believe me, a 16-year mess will take more than a generation to reverse, and it is such a Herculean task that may not even be accomplished in our lifetime! For instance, the same individual fingered in many of the unwholesome activities that characterized the last administration is already said to be very close to the new government; so much so that he can reportedly be found in the office of the new helmsman at any and all times. It is even speculated that he, in fact, wields more power and influence now than he did when his sibling held sway as the Chief Executive for 8 years. This, of course, may be a bit of an exaggeration but the point remains that this stark illiterate is still very much around and that fact alone should be a source of concern to all of us in view of all the things associated with him in the past. Only recently, he was reported to have slapped another prominent uneducated member of their inner caucus for daring to suggest the name of a former ally that fell out with them politically for ministerial nomination. This led to a fisticuff that landed him in a hospital after he fainted from the blows he reportedly received, although his camp was quick to deny that this ever happened. These, my fellow compatriots, are the kind of people making important decisions on our behalf, and in a state that boasts of a healthy proportion of educated population. A popular refrain goes thus: “show me your friends and I will tell you who you are!” We must collectively rise up to the challenge and reject these people, lest we end up having a repeat of the messy Anambra scenario in which Dr. Chris Ngige was bizarrely manhandled and abducted by Chris Uba over some unfulfilled promises made prior to his now illegal enthronement as the governor of that state. If our memory serves us right, this same character was largely responsible for the massive impoverishment of the state’s civil servants via his reprehensible practice of supplying everything under the sun to them on credit and, thereafter, debiting them at source to meet their debilitating monthly repayment obligations. Under such an arrangement, items as varied as motorcycles, sewing machines, mobile phone handsets, items of clothing, bags of rice, Sallah rams and even petrol were sold at exorbitant prices that left majority of the workforce in the junior cadre with little or nothing to support their daily existence at the end of the month. As a result, many workers were enmeshed in agonizing debt traps that left them with no option but to sink deeper into more debts, thereby assuming the unenviable status of ‘turun bashi’; the proverbial Hausa perpetual debtor. The fact that these Sallah rams were often distributed at a time when civil servants’ wages were curiously withheld left few people in doubt as to whether these acts did not have the official blessing and endorsement of the government. Should the new government offer this individual the necessary support to continue in his ways, it will only be lending strong credence to the general belief that in Nigeria, “the more things change, the more they remain the same!”. Another major source of concern is the quality of nominations into the State Executive Council, which revealed a number of strange names that may eventually add no value to the administration. A popular Hausa adage goes thus: “Kyakkyawar safiya daga maraicenta ake gani”, which literally means that a bright morning usually reveals itself from the preceding evening. At the risk of pre-empting the government’s final decision regarding these key cabinet appointments, some of the nominations left one wondering about the quality of deliberations and decisions that will likely emerge from an Exco dominated by such people. This, I believe, is an area that must be comprehensively addressed if we are to make any progress going forward, and the PDP elite within the state must demonstrate to all of us that theirs will not be the familiar stuff we were fed with during the tenancy of the largely semi-illiterate ANPP political class of 1999 to 2007. The new Governor must, as a matter of urgency, carry out a critical review of the educational policies of the past government that tended to lay more emphasis on erecting structural edifices than the arguably more important matter of the quality of teachers and teaching aids available in those schools. This policy has not worked in the past as demonstrated by our dismal showing in the 2005 University Matriculation Examinations (UME), which placed Kebbi State in the 33rd position, with a mere 3,062 applications or 0.34% of the 913,862 applications received nationwide. Another pointer to this is our number one rating in the Exam Malpractice Index (EMI) with a 51.29 EMI score in 2004, suggesting that 51 out of every 100 students that sat for the 2004 WAEC and NECO examinations were involved in one form of exam malpractice or another! As one had pointed out in an October 20, 2005 write-up titled “Kebbi’s Medals of Shame!”, this calls for an immediate declaration of a State of Emergency within the educational sector if the state is to ever regain its pre-eminent position among the three states that made up the old Sokoto State. Finally, His Excellency must strive to achieve the equitable distribution of the proverbial “democracy dividends” across the entire length and breadth of our famed Land of Equity (even while ensuring that he accords the state capital its deserved pride of place as the undisputed home for all), by consciously resisting the delectable temptation of concentrating key development initiatives in his own area. He must also be fully prepared for the challenges of leadership by taking the occasional criticisms that may be directed at his administration in good faith, and regarding them as nothing more than an attempt by concerned stakeholders in the Kebbi project to place the mirror before him with a view to giving him the opportunity to change his ways in the likely event that he does not like the image he is confronted with. Abdullahi Usman (June 16, 2007) |