100 days of walking with MA Abubakar , By Ali M Ali

Time flies. Rapidly, especially when you are constantly engaged mentally and physically. Time just whizzes. And this is even more so when you are walking with a goal getter like Mohammed Abdullahi Abubakar, Governor of Bauchi state. It is a whirlwind. The word “impossible” doesn’t exist in his dictionary. Once he sets his mind to a goal, there is no stopping. May be his training as a lawyer made him both a dreamer and a realist. He dreams of a competitive Bauchi that is ranked among the best in the country. He is real enough to invest in education as the surest bet to achieve the dream.
His election as the 5th civilian chief executive of the state, against daunting odds, testifies to his “can do” spirit. Odds don’t scare him. They inspire him. He was the underdog in a race some considered exclusively theirs. The underrated. He was like a political midget in a combat designed for giants. The faint hearted will scamper to safety at the sight of a scaring scenario like that. Not MA, as he is fondly called by admirers and distractors alike. And he has both in disproportionate quantity.
Stiff challenges, I have come to appreciate walking with this unassuming leader these past 100 days, are the tonic that galvanize him to life and action. He walks his talk. He keeps his promises. He calls when he says he will-unfailingly. He communicates. He delivers, the impatient may say nay.
His strategy is simple-always. He confronts challenges headlong with the single mindedness of changing the narrative. He doesn’t circumvent them. He incinerates them.
His sojourn into the not so cosy chambers of power where political decisions are hammered on the anvil of necessity again, testify. The depressing state of affairs in Bauchi state was the cry for help he hearkened to. All the indicators pointed at an imminent shipwreck. Workers were owed a backlog of salaries. Public sector education in the throes of death. Though the state is agrarian, agriculture has suffered great neglect in the past. And even more worrisome, was the heightened insecurity in the state caused, in the main, by a devastating insurgency, and to a lesser extent, poor governance at all levels. This was the legacy bequeath MA 30 months ago.
Before now, he was the top dog in his own law chambers, flourishing, by all accounts, with offices in key state capitals. An accomplished legal luminary, attained maturity early. At 34, he was commissioner for justice and attorney general. Excellent manager of men and materials. Widely exposed and travelled. At various times, he was resident electoral commissioner of INEC and later national commissioner in charge of legal service. The list is long.
“So why jettison all these and join politics?” I pointedly asked him, before I was appointed advisor on media and strategy.
“I wanted to serve and salvage the situation. I wanted to give back what my state has given me,” he said frankly, with no airs.
For the 100 days we have been walking together, I have seen how much service the man has rendered.
His austere lifestyle, testify. No fancy motorcade. All the vehicles in his very austere convoy are inherited and old. Trips to Abuja are either by road or scheduled flights in neighboring Gombe state, 150 kms away. And certainly no fancy hotel accommodation in Abuja for all personal aides including those in cabinet position. He sleeps in his personal residence located not in “choice” neighborhood of Maitama or Asokoro.
MA had since “disrobed”. He exchanged his wig, gown and dog collar for a mechanic’s overalls and got down and dirty in the huge workshop that is Bauchi. If it were a car, the first thing he did, to my mind, was to stop the massive oil leak and fuel consumption. There was huge hemorrhage. It manifested in a humongous workforce-92,000- and even a more humongous wage bill-a staggering N5.1 bnmonthly. That takes all of the state’s FAAC allocation, which hardly goes beyond N5bn.
Stopping the leaks served notice that it was not going to be business as usual. Scavengers of the status quo, expectedly, were incensed. Since then, they have been running from pillar to post, running their mouths, bellyaching.
No minute is wasted. Every second matters. It is always a whirlwind with MA. No dull moment. These past 100 days have been action packed. The man is always in ‘over drive’ fixing the sea of problems, anxious to reposition the state, desirous of making it more competitive.
In the first 100 days of his leadership, he set the tone of his administration. He cleared the backlog of salaries. Labor was ecstatic. It hailed him. Today Bauchi is one of the few states that pay salaries unfailingly every month. Beyond labour, accolades and recognition poured in these past three months. One was an honorary doctorate degree by a foreign university based in Benin Republic.
With thrift bordering on ‘tight fistedness’, MA is reforming all sectors and renewing urban and rural communities. Over 400 kilometers of roads are being constructed or rehabilitated across the state. For two consecutive years’ budget, education takes the lion’s share of 20%, 6% shy as recommended by the UN. This wise investment has seen the rise of the percentage of passes in WAEC and NECO from a dismal 3% in 2015 to 27% in 2017. Over 10,000 classrooms constructed and rehabilitated, a similar number of classrooms furniture supplied. The state fertilizer blending company, hitherto comatose, resuscitated and given life. Ditto the state run furniture coy. This year’s farming season saw farmers from neighboring states trooping to Bauchi to buy cheap fertilizer. His reforms extend to housing, rural water supply and improved security.
Bauchi is now relatively peaceful. Insurgents have lost their potent.. Thanks to the counter insurgency administrators and the government of the state. Improving IGR has seen the state hidden treasure as a tourist heaven,Yankari Game Reserve given a new lease of life.
MA is deep. Intellectually profound and a powerful communicator. He could hold his audience spellbound by his oratory in the audience’s given language. I have seen him address an exultant bunch of grateful Bauchi state students who converged on Government House in appreciation of changing their fortunes. Amid thunderous applause, he spoke their language.
Two interactions lately told me a lot about the man. He reads every line in any correspondence to him. In matters of funds, he scrutinizes every word. And if he is not convinced, he tarries and queries. There the whirlwind stops. Still these past 100 days were like a whirlwind.

Ali is an aide to Governor Abubakar

Plateau`s Pandora`s box , By Kene Obiezu
For people to whom peace had become a staple for generations, the greater parts of the last two decades has been especially sour; full of pain and even regret for many a Plateau indigene. The bloody events that have become recurrent over the last two decades especially, have got a people lamenting their famed sense of hospitality and questioning the humanity of those they welcomed many years ago in the spirit of hospitality..
It is all as a result of the carnage the mindless carnage visited on innocent men and women, children and infants. It is as a result of the mindless destruction of property and the slow but sure decimation of livelihood of a people famed for their production of food, rivaled only by few sections of the country.
Plateau State is beautiful; almost ethereal. Its clement weather especially cherished by foreigners is a fixture in Nigerian lore. The jewel in its crown would seem to be the variety and quality of its food especially its fruits, vegetables and tubers. But its concentration of ethnic groups would deserve fitting mention anywhere as a sterling example of unity in diversity. However, the last time the “Home of peace and tourism” knew genuine peace, or the steady influx of tourists and investments is a matter of distant memory, and the steady decline has nothing to do with nature`s wrath or wear. Plateau`s pain is man-made and sorely to blame is the constant ethno-religious crises which constantly conflagrate parts of the state, reducing lives and livelihoods to dust.
At the dawn of the current millennium, precisely in 2001, Jos, the mainstay of Plateau State and its capital city was caught in a vicious 10-day crisis between Christians and Muslims. When the dust settled, about 1000 people lay dead; a further 50,000 civilians were displaced; and no one could count the cost to property. At that point the hitherto fragile and much frayed ethno-social fabric was effectively shredded. Sixteen years later, the price is still being paid in a currency of blood. It is fervently hoped that the costs will cease someday.
At the centre of crises was the simmering tension between Christians who are the majority in the state and Muslims who constitute a fraction of the population. The immediate spark for the crises was an appointment which was deemed out of touch with the religious reality of Plateau State.
No one can rewrite history and no one should try because history provides an invaluable guide without which the future and even the present cannot be properly navigated. Things could have been done differently about Plateau State from the highest quarters. The opportunity remains open, though it is a rapidly closing one. In the aftermath of the crises, an inquiry was perfunctorily instituted. Till this day, its findings and conclusions gather dust somewhere while parts of Plateau State continue to experience occasional eruptions of violence. Again, things could have been done differently.
Today, Plateau State is always in the news for unpalatable reasons. Where marauding Fulani herdsmen leave off slaughtering and intimidating helpless farmers and trampling their farms, other forces take over, perhaps, emboldened by the fact that the wheels of justice have ground painfully slow in Plateau State.
As usual, it is the poorest people that fall victim and are slaughtered with reckless abandon just as in neighbouring Kaduna State; just as in neighbouring Benue State and just as in neighbouring Nasarawa State.
It is easy and even lazy to blame religion for this problem as a growing army of cynics are doing. The reason is no rocket science. All over the world, religion provides a soft target in the face of despicable crimes committed against people. In spite of its usually unequivocal and unambiguous admonitions in support of peace and peaceful co-existence, criminals find behind its ever-open curtains a convenient mask for crimes. The law has been complicity slow to help, weakened by the dithering and dereliction of those who enforce it.
It is from history that Nigeria must learn to protect its most vulnerable lot by singling out and punishing severely all those who hide behind religion or politics to perpetrate iniquitous crimes in states. Religion and politics if they must exist together must be as inseparable as they can be and must be used as instruments to further peaceful co-existence and progress. The long arm of the law must be unsparing in punishing all those who deploy religion and politics for nefarious purposes.
A society without justice is comparable to a walking corpse: It is only a matter of time before it falls with a thud. For peace to return and remain in Plateau State, and all other states in the throes of ethno-religious crises, all ethnic foot soldiers and religious fanatics responsible for the current unrest must be identified and punished no matter how highly placed. We are used to instituting inquiries and impugning their findings and reports especially when parochial interests are threatened. Things must change in this wise. A country without accountability is a country sold for nothing.
A country without security is an unsustainable project; a country without a justice that is swift and retributive is as good as dead. For now, it is the prayer and song of all Plateau indigenes and all people of conscience and goodwill that the killings stop and genuine peace return to the Home of Peace and Tourism. The good people of Plateau State are tired of the peace of the graveyard.

Obiezu wrote from Abuja

 

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