Should Kwankwaso seek to ‘correct’ right policies?
Written by Aliu Ibrahim Aliu Friday, 24 June 2011 00:00
After last month’s general elections, Nigerians expect to see improvements in their living conditions. Such sentiments are strong in states where there are upsets in the political balance, as in Kano. Among the governors that were sworn in recently, Kano’s is peculiar, a predilection that could graduate into negative territory, unless the new government sets out to build on efforts of his predecessors, a tall order some might say, given his antecedents.
Kano is the only state in the federation that witnessed the return of a governor that was overwhelmingly rejected by the electorate in 2003 and in 2007 when he sought to continue after the end of his first tenure. In 2007, Malam Ibrahim Shekarau was re-elected to a second term, the first in the history of Kano politics.
In March this year, the primary election at which Kwankwaso emerged the flag-bearer, was annulled by his own party, over alleged “rigging and corruption” that characterized it. The party adopted and fielded him for the governorship election only after its failed attempts to conduct fresh primary amidst time constraints, because the election was just a month away. All these are in addition to the state government’s white paper that still hangs on him till date.
By way of omission or commission, the man with the above profile was declared winner of the keenly contested governorship election in the state. It is therefore not of too much surprise that for less than a month, the governor took over the mantle of leadership position of the state, he seems bent on destructive and revenge mission, desperately in hurry to make caricature of the well-fortified achievements of his predecessor, to the chagrin of Kano people.
Few days before he was sworn-in, he constituted transition committee whose main motive and function was to embark on fault-finding mission that will pave way for blackmail of Malam Shekarau. Truly, the members of the transition committee came up with what the governor required of its members. It concocted cock-and-bull stories about hotel bills, pension, and workers’ strength and imagined debts, but was silent over the billions of naira left in the state government coffers by the same government it chose to vilify on the pages of newspapers. Incidentally, the governor’s party men, PDP are set to be part of the major beneficiaries of the so-called hotel bills, due to the considerate nature of the immediate past government towards the opposition parties in the state.
As soon as the new governor got his ‘mandate’, he was quoted to have said that he knew the number of the civil servants on his payroll as at 2003 before he failed to get re-elected, even though no one can pretend against the increased populations of the state between May 2003 and May 2011 that also led to the increase in the state’s workforce. It is no doubt however that the ongoing personnel audit in the civil service is just aimed at doing away with those that are targeted not to be in the good books of the new administration, and to further strangulate the number of state workforce, thereby reducing the number of workers and creating unemployment out of the already saturated workforce of the most populous pyramid state in the north. This was part of the old practice of the governor that set him on coalition path with state civil service during his first coming in 1999 to 2003.
No one can deny the importance of ICT in the new millennium goal. This is why the Shekarau administration thought it wise to put to use the old Kano State Investment Property building built by the late first Civilian Governor of the State, Alhaji Abubakar Mohammed Rimi, by converting it into ICT Park. Hitherto, for more than twenty years, all governments that came thereafter, including that of the new governor did nothing to put the edifice to good use. Funny enough, a week to the exit of the present government in 2003, it whitewashed the building and named it after Ado Bayero. It was left to the Shekarau administration to renovate the building into an ICT park for use. It is sad to hear that the governor, perhaps out of his personal wish to portray every project of the administration he succeeded as bad an target of a threatened probe, changed the ICT Park into what has been described as “Mega School”.
The desperation with which the genuinely-allocated lands to the good people of Kano were revoked by Governor Kwankwaso, without recourse to due process is not only worrisome but also smacks of vengefulness.
It is often said that “first impression is the last impression.” We have a clue now as to the kind of leadership to expect from this new government. But it’s not late to hope that the government will change for good in the interest of the people of Kano. Already, there are indications that the people miss the stability and genteelness that Malam Shekarau represented.
Aliu wrote from Kano
It is often said that “first impression is the last impression.” We have a clue now as to the kind of leadership to expect from this new government. But it’s not late to hope that the government will change for good in the interest of the people of Kano. Already, there are indications that the people miss the stability and genteelness that Malam Shekarau represented.
Aliu wrote from Kano
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