By Dahiru Hassan Kera
Inevitably, the rural areas, farms and villages should form the pivot of a state or nation’s strategic development focus. This is because they form the core of a society’s formation and structure as all societies emerged from a rural and essentially agrarian setting.
In fact, the emergence of towns and cities grew from the exigencies of rural to urban migration in search of jobs, business opportunities and relatedly an escape route from crushing poverty and cultural and even religious emasculation by entrenched traditional or religious elite as the case may be.
This has led to overcrowding and the growth of slums and shanties in cities and towns due to the massive influx of youths, widows, displaced farmers and other indigent persons leading to pressure on healthcare, power, water and other physical infrastructure in the urban centres.
Clearly, successive administrations both at the state and federal levels have not mapped out a clear and decisive strategy towards tackling the challenges posed by the rural-urban migration scenario; they have instead treated the symptoms while turning a blind eye to the root cause which is the near or total absence of infrastructure in the rural areas leading many a citizen to migrate in search of greener pasture or to escape the debilitating absence of state intervention or facilities. This situation has only accentuated the desperate poverty levels currently prevailing in those rural centres.
Therefore, any credible effort aimed at checking rural – urban migration trends must holistically tackle the cause as well as the symptoms thus dealing an effective blow on the negative trend while providing succour for the teeming rural dwellers who form the major core of the population in any state or federation. To this end, the resourceful Governor of Gombe state, Alhaji Ibrahim Dankwambo, Talba Gombe’s regime has from inception recognized the need for concerted action aimed at establishing, rehabilitating and reconstructing new or dilapidated infrastructure in the affected rural communities since development is intertwined. It can be seen that, the governor’s massive and purposeful intervention in the area of road construction has boosted the socio-economic indices of the rural areas as most of the roads constructed have connected and opened hitherto impenetrable rural settlements thus enabling the free flow of food, goods, people and services from one community to the other.
Therefore, if the citizens are able to move their goods, especially farm and animal produce to their customers, then there would be no need for anybody to think of relocating to the cities when he can easily send the goods to the customer either physically or through a middleman. Thus, when a farmer can easily market his produce and earn profitable income, then the incentive to remain in the rural community and continue farming is greater than moving to the cities and adding to the already burdensome pressure on facilities and infrastructure there.
Also, the educational and health interventions by the Dankwambo administration has impacted positively on the rural areas as most of their schools and hospitals are wearing a new look; newly constructed classrooms, hospitals, health and maternity centres have reduced the motive for people migrating to the cities and towns in search of better medical care or improved education for their wards.
Besides, the ubiquitous establishment of pipe borne water as well as water boreholes in most of the rural communities has improved the quality of life there obviating a situation where the rural folk have to travel tens of kilometers in search of water for domestic use.
As an added feather to his already well festooned cap of achievements and accomplishments in the rural environment, a dedicated Dankwambo has embarked on a massive electrification scheme targeted at the rural communities in order to ensure that they all enjoy uninterrupted power supply all year round rather than depending on kerosene lamps, candle light, generators and even moonlight for visibility. The Dankwambo regime has a target of capturing all the rural communities with electric power supply by the year 2016 and at present over 70% of the target has been met as the installation of transformers, laying of transmission lines and erection of electric poles continue at a frenetic and breathtaking pace.
For instance, some of the projects undertaken by the Talban Gombe administration include: electrification of Barunde East, Fashingo, and Shuwari; purchase of 50 units of transformers of various capacities and distribution of same to various communities to boost power supply and distribution; electrification of Garin Zambuk, purchase another 55 sets of transformers, which had been distributed to communities across the state and electrification of Dumbe village, among other interventions.
With this massive and fortuitous rural electrification programme currently going on in the state, it is only a matter of time before the whole of rural Gombe becomes power compliant thereby rendering the rural-urban drift unnecessary and inauspicious and eventually reversing the trend while ensuring a more habitable, prosperous and economically vibrant rural economy in the Jewel of the Savannah.
Kera wrote from Gombe
