In a desperate attempt to present a good picture of the administration of Governor Aminu Waziri Tambuwal to the visiting presidential candidate of the All Progressives Congress, APC, Alhaji Bola Ahmed Tinubu, to Sokoto on February 9, 2023, one Dahiru Maishanu, in a restricted circulated open letter, embarked on a shameless image laundering propaganda, for the outgoing governor
In a piece titled “Open letter to the Jagaban”, Maishanu tried to call Tinubu’s attention to Tambuwal’s projects in different parts of the state, as testimony of his achievements for the two-term tenure that he has spent as governor of the state. He tried to do a good job of his propaganda, through meticulous listing of those projects, which, he said, line the routes from the Sultan Abubakar International Airport up to the Sokoto metropolis.
This may be seen as a lobbying tactics to some extent for a dream political position which he allegedly used in deceiving former Governor Aliyu Magatakarda Wamakko in 2007. Anyway, we would like to request him to show evidence of some of the projects he mentioned like the University of Education he claimed inside the Shehu Shagari College of Education because the last time we checked it only existed on paper. Again, he made mention of a certain health institution that BUA Cement CEO gave out N2bn for. We want evidence that the government built it “solo”, as he boasted.
However, because he was only out for propaganda and image laundering for those who commissioned him to do the job, he completely ignored the very important aspect of accountability with the application of public resources to those projects. For obvious reasons, Maishanu would not want the august visitor to know that most of those projects are more of white elephant projects that do not really take into account the immediate socio-economic needs of the people of Sokoto state.
The august visitor must wonder at the huge costs for the states that these projects were embarked upon by Governor Tambuwal, at a time that the state had been overwhelmed by abject poverty, that has placed the state on the map as the poorest state in Nigeria. Wow!
Therefore, the propaganda stunt should be seen for what it is, a mere deception and crafty attempt to hide the alleged odious stench that the Tambuwal administration is covered in. We have a duty to expose the excesses of the Tambuwal administration, which is seen as the worst administration in the history of Sokoto state. We urge our august visitor not to be carried away by those projects, as they are mere white elephant projects.
Back to Maishanu, who we have not forgotten how Wamakko lifted him from a mere hassler to the prestigious position of a state commissioner for information and was for years the mouthpiece of the Wamakko administration. Based on the trust and confidence Wamakko had on him, he created a new ministry of solid minerals and made him the pioneer chief executive of that sensitive place.
How quickly people forget good deeds because as information commissioner Wamakko gave huge amount of money within the range of N500 million for the resuscitation of the state owned newspaper company, publishers of The Path Weekly Newspaper but the sub-standard printing machines procured were nothing but waste products from the Netherlands. Again, both Rima Radio and Rima Television were near collapse when he moved to the solid minerals ministry.
Lest we forget, Maishanu was picked by Wamakko because he believed in his intellectual prowess but his stay at the information ministry rendered government media toothless because the commissioner was busy partying rather than helping to develop the state.
Maishanu is an ingrate because the same Governor Tambuwal he is dining and wining with today was part of the Bafarawa Boys he was always accusing, abusing and insulting in 2006. So, nothing stops him from taking Tambuwal to the cleaners when the “party is over very soon”. Before Wamakko appointed him a commissioner, the name Dahiru Maishanu was as ordinary as that of anyone from his village. He came to the limelight in 2006 when he wrote about two or so articles attacking then Governor Bafarawa and because the electorate were eager to vote that administration out, anything negative on that administration was a soothing balm.
Therefore, the sponsored attack on the man who brought him from the hassles of a roaming freelancer, dressed and made him what he has become today is not new because people like him are always greedy and greedy people never go to equity with clean hands but hands soiled with dirt.
The chronicle of projects he listed are laughable because how many of these “supposedly projects” have been viable and would be viable after Tambuwal’s journey to a bad ending with huge amount at his disposal but nothing much to show?
Facts are sacred and so no amount of propaganda can erase the indelible marks Wamakko has left behind as a two-term proactive governor. We need not remind Maishanu and his sponsors that the state university which he claimed was completed and equipped by Tambuwal was a full fledged institution which had graduated students before Wamakko handed over state affairs to Tambuwal in 2015. Tambuwal added only one physical structure since 2015. And for the records, Tinubu was among the personalities who graced the commissioning ceremony by former head of state, Abdulsalami Abubakar, and even President Muhammadu Buhari was there on the occasion.
Maybe he forgot to mention the Kasarawa Conference Centre or a deliberate omission in order not to give credit to whom it is due? The two fly-overs Tambuwal wasted state resources on could have waited for other pressing needs such as tables, desks, chairs and other useful educational instructional materials. But sadly mismanagement overshadowed the immediate needs of students in the state who daily sit on the floor in overcrowded classrooms and in the end cannot sit for the examination of their lives, WAEC. How does Maishanu feel when Sokoto state is the ONLY state in the country without WAEC candidates in 2022 as a result of government’s recklessness?
There are so many sins and crimes surrounding this administration Maishanu is busy defending forgetting that the ladder you use in climbing a tree should not be thrown away because you will surely need it when you want to get down. Wamakko is a tree with many branches and no matter how hard you throw stones to bring it down, like the iroko, it would still be standing. Tinubu knows the value of Wamakko more than Maishanu can imagine. In fact, Tinubu once said it in Sokoto that in 2015, he made just one call to Wamakko for Tambuwal to be anointed as APC gubernatorial candidate and so it became. So with or without an open letter, the Jagaban Borgu and Jagaban Sakkwato are forever political allies that neither a Tambuwal nor a Maishanu can come between them. The bond is beyond the comprehension of political neophyte like a commissioner turned to a mere letter writer.
Muhammad writes from Abuja
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