PEOPLE AND POLITICS

By Mohammed Haruna

A word for Kure

It is called the Power State, not on account of the fact that it has produced two military heads of state and possibly the single biggest concentration of retired senior military officers, but on account of the fact that it hosts all three hydroelectric plants in the country. I am of course talking about Niger State whose youthful governor is Engineer Abdulkadir Kure.

Five years ago he looked like a most unlikely material for the political leadership of the state. A technocrat all his life, he left his last job as a civil servant in rather cloudy circumstances. This was as a director in the Federal Capital Development Authority (FCDA) Abuja. Some said he was, for all practical purposes, sacked by Lt-General Jerry Hussaini, the then powerful minister of Abuja, over allegations of mismanagement and misappropriations in his department. Others said the minister sacked him because he was an Islamic activist at a time when so-called Islamic fundamentalism had been put on the defensive both in Nigeria and abroad.

Whatever the reasons for his premature departure from FCDA, Kure certainly cut the image of the religious type due probably to his education in the Islamiya-type Sheikh Sabbah College Kaduna (generously donated by the King of Kuwait to the late Sardauna), which later became Sardauna Memorial College, and also due to the fact that he did indeed donate his time and resources – which were enormous by any standard – generously to Islamic causes.

Logically speaking a technocrat with religious tendencies is a most unlikely person to succeed as a politician. But then the case of Kure was a paradox of sorts. The rump of the Establishment in the state thought what the state needed as one of the most well-endowed and yet one of the poorest states in the country, was not one of these wily politicians but someone who will do right by the state no matter whose steps he had to step on. In other words someone who was more of a manager than a politician. By common consent Kure fit the bill, precisely because he lacked the qualities for being a dyed-in-the-wool politician. And so he was drafted to contest the state’s governorship on the ticket of PDP in 1999 in a state with a very long history of conservatism.

In the last five years it would seem the state Establishment got more than it bargained for in its choice of Kure as a stubborn technocrat and a religious “zealot” of sorts. The probably apocryphal story is often told of how his uncle, Alhaji Abdullahi Kure, a former secretary of the defunct North-West State comprising today’s Sokoto, Kebbi, Zamfara and Niger States, told a delegation of PDP politicians who visited him to inform him of, and seek his support for, its choice of Kure to pick the party’s governorship ticket that he can only pray and hope that the delegation will not rue the day they made their choice. “Manya” (Kure’s nickname at home), his uncle reported told the delegation, “is a very stubborn chap, the kind of stubbornness which is hardly a virtue in politics. But since you have made your choice, I can only wish you luck.”

Kure, true to his uncle’s prediction, has proved a stubborn person as governor. Unfortunately the stubbornness has been less in pursuit of the greatest good for the greatest number of Nigerlites than in the pursuit of what seems best for himself plus a narrow band of his friends, relations and confidants. Niger State under Kure, it would seem, is like Nigeria under President Obasanjo, writ small.

As a Nigerlite myself, I have been pained by the failure of Kure to fulfill his enormous potential as an apparently God-fearing Muslim. A friend of mine who lives in Bida, my hometown, and who until recently was one of Kure’s most diehard grassroots supporters, told me that the two main reasons why he and his friends supported Kure initially and worked for his electoral victory, were his religious mindedness and the impression they had that he left FCDA rich enough to eschew self-aggrandizement. Kure, he said, had disappointed his grassroots supporters on both count which was why they stood aside to watch ANPP win Bida Local Government in last month’s elections, by a landslide. Kure’s PDP may have retained its hold on most of the local governments in the state in last months elections, but it is valid to argue that Bida’s disaffection with Kure was hardly restricted to it.

The stories of massive mismanagement and corruption under Kure are legion. These stories, like similar stories elsewhere, may be grossly exaggerated , but certainly there is a mismatch between, on the one hand, the resources that have accrued to the state from the Federation Account and other sources and, on the other hand, what are on the ground. In this, Niger State is probably no better or worse than most states in the country. Typically the roads in the state, especially the important highway between Minna and Bida, the states second largest city and the capital of Nupeland, the state’s most populous region, remain absolutely deplorable; hospitals remain without drugs; civil servants work for months without pay; and pensioners remain for many more months without their pensions. And so on and so fourth.

However, while all this is going on, a few of the governor’s friends, relations and political aides are busy buying up some of the choicest assets of the state at give-away prices under the pretext of privatization and monetization. Those who are not busy ripping off the state are busy building huge private estates, some of them on public land. To quote the memorable words of the editorial of the New Nigerian of June 29 1974 which condemned the extravagance and waste of our oil fortunes of the early ‘70s by the authorities, there is today in the state, as elsewhere in the country “the soulless opulence of the few in evil contrast to crushing poverty of the many. There is unimaginable corruption and disastrously wrong allocation of resources.”

If Kure reads this piece, chances are he will dismiss me as an arm-chair critic as he has done on the few occasions I have met him or written about my home-state. Kure would, in a way, be quite right since I have never had the courage to join the rough and tumble of politics. But then even arm-chair criticism has its uses for politicians, especially when such criticisms are well-intentioned, as I want to believe mine is. Besides, criticisms similar to mine has been made by Nigerlites who are not mere arm-chair critics, people who indeed have been in politics long before Kure entered secondary school.

It was a reflection of the level of disaffection with Kure’s first four years as governor that there was near unanimity among the state’s elite last year that he should not be given a second term. The most important Nigerlite to break with this near unanimity was General Ibrahim Babangida, who apparently regarded Kure’s unalloyed loyalty, in the context of his (Babangida’s) love-hate relationship with Abuja, as more important than Kure’s performance.

Fortunately for Kure, but unfortunately for the state, Babangida’s opinion as the former self-styled military president of Nigeria and probably the wiliest military politician in the country’s history, weighs more in the politics of the state than those of its other political leaders put together. Thus it was that Kure won his second term not only in the face of stiff opposition from the overwhelming number of the state’s elite but also in the face of the apparent determination of Abuja to humiliate Babangida in his home state by funding the governorship candidate of PRP, of all parties.

Since Kure’s victory for the second time, he has demonstrated even more stubbornness than before, instead of acknowledging his past mistakes. Indeed on one occasion he gathered the state’s resident big shots who opposed his second term and told them off one by one.

However, the most recent manifestation of his stubbornness were his complete falling out with the more principled of his closest friends and political aides including Alhaji Dahiru Awaisu, erstwhile Secretary of his government and Alhaji Aminu Baba Alhaji, who is now the Secretary of the State’s PRP. Both live in Minna, the state’s capital.

It is extremely sad that Kure will allow politics to alienate him from these two friends so much so that he would apparently think nothing of having them detained for no better reason than a dubious suspicion that they had a hand in the political violence which followed the last local government elections in far away Kontagora.

Even more saddening than this falling out of friends over politics is a law enacted recently by the State’s House of Assembly, most probably at the behest of the governor. This was the law removing the capital of Kontagora Local Government from Kontagora to some obscure town. Clearly this piece of political chicanery that violates the constitution was an attempt to punish the people of Kontagora for their violent protest against the reversal of the result of the election in Kontagora in which the PRP was initially declared the winner against the incumbent PDP.

Kure no doubt has the support of Babangida. But he needs much more than that if he wants history to be kind to him. When he started out five years ago people expected much of him because of his religiousness and because he was untainted by politics in the negative sense of the word. So far he has not fulfilled the people’s expectations. It is not too late for him to do so. All he has to do is listen to the cries of the disaffected and disillusioned ordinary people of Niger State more than he has been listening to his courtiers who invariably tell him only what he wants to hear.

_____________________

WRITE-BACK

On Umar, Fani-Kayode and OBJ

Sir,

Quite brilliantly put! I have fed voraciously on a diet of your writings for some time. This serving by far satiates me in carefully painting a response to the disappointing display and insult perpetuated by a mind that ought to know better!

May Allah continue to rouse you to share your thoughts in safety, as we aim to repair and return our nation to a path more responsive to the needs of all her people as one!

Andrew Sisan Otolorin Sagay.

Irvine, California

_____________________

Sir.

I had just finished reading your article. I must admit, it is downright funny, if not ridiculous.

I am very much inclined to believe that a man of your education…I'm assuming...will know that it will take more than 10 good years to put that country, Nigeria, back to normalcy!!. You, of all people, should know that.

I can't stand OBJ, but one has to be objective. To be frank with you, I do not expect anything from the Northerners. They made the mess that any president, be it OBJ or anybody else, will have to deal with. You should know that also. I always think that you are better than that.

As for Umar, Pleaseeeeeeeeeeee !!!!!!, it's over for him and his kins. I pray that these people do not come back to hurt us NIGERIANS, any more. AMEN!!!!!!.

God bless,

Julius Abey...USA

_____________________

Printer’s Devil?

Sir,

It is a treat and a pleasure to read your contributions on the Gamji website. They are truly scholarly and well researched. I just want to point out some errors in your last two contributions, which I assume are typos! In your "Anglo-American war on Iraq" article you wrote "doggy dossier" instead of "dodgy dossier". Indeed, the word dodgy is a local British slang for unreliable or risky.

In your "Bush, the Rambler" article you wrote the US VP's name as "Dick Chenny" rarher than Dick Chenney. I would not have bothered to point out these typos but for the very high quality of your articles. Please cross check your spellings in future articles and keep up the very good work.

Sam Okoye

Retired Professor of Astrophysics.