Namadi Sambo

Namadi Sambo: Time to Change Gear (I)

Ishaq Alhassan Qauranmata

The sky is darkening like a stain; Something is going to fall like rain, And it won't be flowers. W. H. Auden (1907 - 1973

His Excellency, the executive Governor of Kaduna state, Architect Mohammed Namadi Sambo can afford to walk with his head held high because his single minded determination has paid off. He has just hosted a very successful Kada 2009 tournament. And this was in spite of sustained attempts, internal and external, deliberate and semi-accidental, either to sabotage the games or at least discredit their outcome.

As is usual in government circles, both those who contributed to the success and those who nearly sabotaged the governor’s efforts, either because of their greed or divided loyalty or both have easily joined the back slapping game, congratulating themselves for ‘a job well done’.

Kada 2009 has already become part of history and, as with all epochal events; it has left behind it a trail of very sweet taste for some and very sour taste for others. For the ordinary man on Kaduna streets, Kada was a confirmation of Namadi Sambo’s claim to running a Talakawa government.

The Festival brought unprecedented gains for many low income earners such as Achaba boys, Taxi and commercial bus drivers, food, water and Newspaper vendors, second hand clothes dealers, artisans, jesters, praise singers, ad infinitum. One Bazanfare was seen jumping up and down like a lunatic, shouting “Wanga Namadi Allah shi ma Uwaye nai albarka, inkau sun rasu shi gamasu da manzon rahama” (this Namadi may Allah bless his parents and if they are late, may they meet the prophet of mercy SAW).

This does not include restaurants, boutiques, gift shops, Hotels (who jerked-up their rates by between 150- 300%) and other such big-time concerns that smiled away to the Banks in those two weeks.

Kada 2009, as noted earlier, also left sour taste for many, especially sport lovers who are yet to come to terms with the sharp contrast between the very poor outing by Team Kaduna and the state’s spectacular success in the provision of Olympic standard equipments for the games.

However, the most important lesson of Kada 2009 is that it brought into sharp focus the generally held (if quietly whispered) belief that many of the members of Governor Sambo’s cabinet are working at cross-purposes with the government. For instance:

Despite huge expenditure incurred, the LOC made so much noise about the state’s readiness to host the event but failed to make any head way in the provision of the needed facilities. This eventually resulted in postponing the tournament from November last year to this February, an issue that generated undue bad press for the government.

It took the personal intervention of his Excellency who practically moved his offices to the sporting venues, converted himself to a site supervisor of sorts (through daily inspection visits), held weekly meetings with contractors, revoked contracts awarded to incompetent contractors (for selfish reasons) and re-awarded same to those with the competence to handle them. But for these efforts, the state would be hiding its face in shame today and in all these, the only visible assistance his Excellency got was from the due process office.

Secondly, one would have thought that while his Excellency was spending sleepless nights doing what they failed to do, the LOC/sports ministry will complement his efforts by attending to the training and other needs of Team Kaduna. Unfortunately that was not to be as the only stories one hears were of allowances denied and training needs not provided. The situation was so bad that the female football team which won the state one of its gold medals actually suffered a walkover once because there was no transport to convey the team to Police College!

If anyone expected officials to offer excuses for the resultant poor initial outing by the state contingent or initiate measures to reverse the trend, he was utterly disappointed. In response to reporters’ questions regarding Team Kaduna’s poor performance, the Hon. Commissioner of Sports reportedly retorted “we are not hosting to win”.

And if any confirmation was needed for that position, it was provided during the finals of the male Basket Ball tournament in which Kaduna got one of its few gold medals. To the utter dismay of all present, not a single official from either the sports ministry or the LOC was around to present the medal to the triumphant Kaduna boys. Fortunately Ambassador Sule Buba, the only government official who came to cheer up the team rose to the occasion and quickly stepped forward as “representative” of the governor.

As if all these were not bad enough, some powerful persons in government ordered the demolition of a school situated around Murtala square, ostensibly to make way for the games even though there was no evidence that the school building could interfere with the event in anyway. It was probably divine intervention that drew his Excellency’s attention to the blunder at the eleventh hour. The governor’s order stopping the demolition came when Bulldozers were already stationed at the school gate, ready to commence action.

That action, had it been carried out, would have had a double-edged-sword impact on the Namadi administration. One: it would have rubbished the government’s stated resolve to uplift the standard of education. Two: the school is privately operated by heads of federal establishments in Kaduna most of whom are non-indigenes. In today’s sharply fragmented Nigeria, the furor such a demolition would have generated would probably have led to boycotts of the sporting event by their home states.

Perhaps as confirmation that some people had more important motives than “winning”, the Hon. Commissioner of Information told Journalists that an Outrageous sum of one hundred million naira was spent on publicity alone. In an effort to show how professional they were, he told a bewildered populace that his committee spent #16,000,000.00 to place adverts on CNN and #3,000,000.00 on a UK based TV station.

I have spoken to several elite friends on the matter but till date I have not come across one who was opportune to witness any advert on CNN about Kada, nor could I find one who is familiar with the obscure UK TV station. When I said this to a friend, he retorted in apparent annoyance, “Suppose we know of the TV and have watched the CNN adverts, so what…. (He insulted me!) Just so what? Nineteen million naira to advertise a local event in foreign media? For what?” I referred him to the Hon. Commissioner.

However, it is not just at the Kada games that government officials undermine the Namadi administration both through commission and omission. It is an open secret that while items on his Excellency’s eleven-point agenda in which he is personally involved are recording success, those he delegates are at best wobbling along. For instance;

Even his Excellency’s most ardent critic cannot help but admit the remarkable improvement in the security situation of the state. Unfortunately, local government Chairmen who should complement this laudable achievement in their respective areas appear to have other ideas of their own. These same Chairmen who, barely two years ago wasted enormous public resources cris-crossing the length and breadth of this nation with the unsellable commodity of Makarfi for president, are today struggling to out do one another in erecting street sign-boards ostensibly in support of Namadi 2011, ala no permanent friends.

Similarly, a review of the rail transport service will not only reveal its success but also a mind truly concerned with uplifting the living standard of the Talaka. A few days ago I gave lift to a friend who, like me lives in Zaria and works in Kaduna. I used to pick him up at the Dan Magaji flyover at least twice a week but I haven’t seen him in weeks so I asked whether he went on leave. He told me that before the arrival of the Namadi train he used to spend #340 to get to work and the same amount to return. Since his meager salary could not contain that, he flags lift from friends who are opportune to own a car.

With the advent of Namadi train, my friend told me, he pays #15 from his home to the railway station and for #50 he gets dropped within fifty yards of his office. In short Namadi train helps him save #550 daily. What he didn’t say was that the train also saves him his pride as he no longer needs to stand by the roadside flagging a lift.

In those areas where his Excellency delegated authority however, the story is different. For example, in an effort to kill two birds with one stone; provide employment opportunities and reduce the menace associated with Achaba, the state government ordered buses and taxis. The idea was to train a number of the Achaba boys as well as a section of the unemployed and lease the vehicles to them. Unfortunately, many Achaba boys whose names were purported to have been “written down” as potential beneficiaries of the scheme have been pointing accusing fingers at those saddled with the responsibility of handling the programme. There are accusations that some “people have turned the whole thing into an avenue to favor friends, family members and close political associates” or even use fronts to facilitate personal allocations at the expense of the real target group.

But by general consensus, the worst scenario so far is in the education sector. Motivated by a desire to make education available to the poor, governor Sambo entrusted the sector to ‘elders’ who are believed to have ‘lots of experience’ in the sector. But they took advantage of his trust and sold him the dummy of free uniform in order to feather their nests.

The truth about education in Kaduna, as in much of the North is that less than two thirds of the school-age children in the state whom governor Namadi promised “free, compulsory and qualitative education” can be accommodated in the available primary and secondary schools. Most of those opportune to have some semblance of a roof over their heads, sit on bare floors. These available schools exist without portable drinking water, without toilets and without teaching aids. Worse still, there is only a mockery of science education in most of our schools as laboratories are not available. Where they are available they are mostly empty and dilapidated buildings without re-agents and without qualified science teachers.

More importantly, teachers in both primary and secondary schools are living in penury. Many of their entitlements are either delayed or all together denied. Opportunities for re-training for them are very few and hence prone to nepotism. And this list is nowhere near exhaustive. It is rather obvious even to those wise old men that free uniform is the least of the education sector problems, assuming it could be classified as one.

The deception however is far from over; they are lately beating their chest claiming the state came second at the NECO exams, through their efforts. The truth however is that NECO is regarded as below WAEC standard by most tertiary institutions. Moreover, most of the “passes” being glorified are in the humanities due to poor Science practical in our schools. With the current federal government’s 70-30 admission policy in favor of Science and Technology based courses, most of those “successful” candidates were unable to secure placement anywhere.

An assistant director in the state ministry of education sums up what he calls “the reality” of education in Kaduna state thus, “Some of those entrusted with revamping education simply took advantage of his Excellency’s good intensions and rehabilitated themselves such that those who, two years ago could hardly feed their families are today buying off neighbors’ houses, converting them into talk-of-the-town mansions for their teenage children, in total disregard for public opinion. For now, that is the only visible improvement in the education sector”.