Babangida

Babangida, the People’s Carpenter

Maikudi Abubakar Zukogi

Dr. Muazu Babangida Aliyu, the self styled Chief Servant of Niger State is a carpenter of sorts. Like the carpenter, he is skilled in the use of the hammer, nails, chisel and the like. For Babangida, like the carpenter, no wall is too strong that does not cave in to his tough piercing nail. And like the carpenter, it is easy for him to extract each nail however deep it penetrates into the wall. Therefore, for Mua’zu Babangida Aliyu, henceforth MBA, as with the carpenter, the task of hammering and extracting nails has become a regular and routine exercise. And just like the carpenter hit the nail hard on the head to firm up a piece of furniture or roof, MBA also hit the nail on the head to get his message across. Whether or not this innate capacity to hit the nail on the head informed his decision to be different from his colleague governors is still to be established. I’m strongly of the opinion that his background as a Public Policy expert and rich public service experience may have influenced his desire to inaugurate a difference in the art of governance. Climbing down from the high pedestal of the Excellency nomenclature which removes the leader from the people, MBA chooses the Chief Servant tag which rightly and unobtrusively takes governance right to the door step of the people. It is thus late in the day for any governor to dream of taking up this tag because MBA may have registered it as a trademark and obtained a patent for it from the Corporate Affairs Commission.

Characteristic of MBA not to refuse to hit the nail on the head even if on the edge, he told the nation that he, first and foremost, and then governors collectively but conditionally agreed to the costly idea of removing subsidy on petrol. However, he is not lucky this time to take the credit of being the first to disclose this valuable piece of information but he said the truth all the same. Earlier on, the Finance Minister, when pressed hard, disclosed that the idea of removing the subsidy was the brainchild of the state governors, who like the Oliver Twist, needed more money they can get to provide democracy dividends to their people. Like the excess crude proceed, the governors (or is it the states?) will also take a slice of what is to accrue from this painful enterprise. And so, even as the Chief Servant appears to be on the edge, he did not shy away from being the good carpenter that he was by hitting the nail on the head. Never before did we find MBA to be so edgy and struggling hard to articulate himself than the Friday January 13, 2012 NTA News anchored by Mohammed Kudu Abubakar. Of course, he had every reason to be edgy because two days earlier youths protesting the removal of fuel subsidy occupied Minna, the state capital, smoking him out to god knows where. This is unprecedented in the history of the state paradoxically labelled the Power State. Isn’t it paradoxical that you have a power state where the people are so powerless? And to think that power derives from the people; the people that MBA loved so much he accepted to be their servant. How ungrateful can the people be to want to pay back a man who has sacrificed so much for them in this seemingly uncultured way? It is natural that the Chief Servant will be upset, but I think no sacrifice will be too much to take by the servant of the people, knowing full well that his reward is not of here but of there where scrolls of performance will be laid bare and appropriate reward issued to those deserving of them. Moreover, as a Public Policy expert that he is, the supposedly unfortunate incidence should serve as a feedback from the people that all is or not well with the goings on in the state.

It is refreshing therefore to note that MBA is fully prepared to receive his own slice of the fuel subsidy windfall. This will be enough to renovate some fast decaying schools and get carpenters to hit nails on some chairs and tables. May be the much cited Area Development Fund can be restored after it was unceremoniously suspended when it was barely a year to give people more functional boreholes. Mark you, water is a scarce commodity in most areas of the state, including, and painfully, Minna, the state capital. There are a lot of patchworks to be done on major roads in the state, and if we have surplus to conclude the abandoned ten kilometre roads for each local government. Here in this case, the good people of Hajiya Lolo road in Bida will sure heave a sigh of relief from months of grappling with dust if the road is tarred. What is more; I will suggest that MBA forget about eradicating poverty because there is so much poverty in the state that it will be like spitting in an ocean to channel this much needed fund in that direction where no public procurement procedure can be tendered and verified. If he hasn’t before now been doing anything about eradicating or alleviating the state’s endemic poverty, he will do well not to sink this precious fund. Instead, the civil servants will joyfully be content to receive the long awaited N18000 minimum wage promised them should the subsidy on fuel be removed. Now is the period to redeem the promise to these patient servants. And may be, if it will now be possible, and I think it is, to allow the local councils to take control of their monthly subvention from the Federation Account. Of course we know how much each of them is given, at least on paper. I was told that the last Council Chairman of Bida, Engineer Sharu Mohammed, had restricted access to only seven months of his monthly subvention, and yet did wonderfully well. He probably could do even more if he had more funds at his disposal.

To be fair to MBA, he came bubbling with energy and brilliant ideas but he lost them midway. How else will you describe a man who went to discover or reclaim Zuma rock for Niger state except to say that he is innovative and full of ideas? Unfortunately, however, Niger state is fast missing out in the map of economically competitive states, and is unlikely to smell the fangled (3. 2020) spot. Not when it hasn’t been able to demonstrate in action the little it gets from the Federation account. Not when it hasn’t been able to tap on the enormous potential its proximity to the Federal Capital provides. Not when five years down the line the Chief Servant is still more a work in progress than the unstoppable messiah that he was when he first made his entry. And so, when a leader raised the hope of the people and couldn’t show them in concrete terms what he promises, they are almost certainly going to be devastated. And the people of Niger state were devastated beyond words. The fuel subsidy protest was an avenue for the people to let out their anger. It is unfortunate that they didn’t express their anger and outrage peacefully but resorted to violence and destruction of public properties that are in short supply. Posterity still beckons the Chief Servant to be truly the Chief Servant.