BY SIMON REEF MUSA
Dear Mallam,
Your Excellency, let me congratulate you for turning 63 last week in a nation where the life expectancy is less than 53 years. Looking back through the years, there’s no doubt that the Almighty God has been gracious and blessed you with abundant good health. There’s no doubt that your intelligence and cleverness have served you too well.
When members of the National Assembly barred you from the electoral contest, we laughed at them to scorn, knowing that they never forgave your bold attempt at exposing them in the bribe-for-ministerial confirmation saga.
By the time in 2019 we resolved to throw your government in the dustbin of history, we soon discovered that overthrowing an incumbent government was never a walk in the park. Nothing was spared in the magic book to ensure your re-election, even when we waited for nearly a week for the final result announcing your victory.
Less than four months to the end of your second and final tenure as one of the most hated governors in Kaduna, many wished we never had you. The seeds of disunity and vile hatred on account of religious and ethnic divides as planted and watered by your government remain a sword of Damocles. Nearly eight years in power, Your Excellency never lived true to your promise as contained in your inaugural speech of May 29, 2015.
Remember your words on May 29, 2015: “For far too long, our country has been a place where hope goes to die, where the future has been stolen from our children, where our leaders have commandeered our resources largely for their own personal enjoyment, and where grinding poverty has become a fact of daily life for nearly all our people. Our state is no exception. Kaduna State is in a difficult situation. As soon as we have all the facts in coming weeks, we shall lay bare to you just how deep a hole we have dug ourselves in the past several years. But this much we already know.
“Our finances are a shamble. Kaduna is the second most indebted state in our country. Our state is staggering under the weight of billions of naira in debt and other liabilities. As we all know, merely by walking the streets or seeing our neighbors every day, the state of our state is abysmal. Our schools and hospitals, our roads and bridges, our villages, towns and cities, all are markers of backwardness. Too many of our children are hungry and in rags and in the street. Our society is divided along religious and ethnic lines. Worse still, our state cannot stand on its own feet. We have become a state of beggars, a condition of dependency that is an affront to our dignity and our humanity.
“The fact is that today Kaduna State cannot meet its obligations without handouts from the federal government. We cannot comfortably pay the salaries of our teachers and nurses and civil servants. And after struggling to pay salaries, we can do little else. We cannot fix the schools, help our farmers, repair our roads, or treat the sick. We have arrived at a dead end. The patient is sick, and it needs radical therapy”.
Nearly eight years after, demolished structures; long faces of sacked or voluntarily retired thousands of public workers; revolting murders of defenceless citizens and mindless destruction of their communities; over $400 million, including the $350 million from the World Bank, have made Kaduna State the second most indebted state in Nigeria, cast despairing clouds of hopelessness over the state.
When recently you rallied some of your colleague governors to institute legal fireworks over the new naira redesign, many Nigerians, including yours sincerely, were pushed to question the rationality behind your new found love for the poor. How could a governor whose performance has become a template for cruelly dealing with the poor be claiming to speak for the less privileged?
Your promise to ensure children of the poor get access to quality education has been grossly violated by nearly 1000 percent increase in tuition fees in Kaduna State tertiary schools. Mallam, your pledge for enhanced medical care for the poor has been accompanied by an increase in securing hospital appointment cards and medical treatments. When you complained about the high foreign loan profile of the state at inauguration in 2015, we thought you were sincere. We never knew you were plotting to unleash yet another burden of a $350 million World Bank loan. When Senators Suleiman Hunkuyi and Shehu Sani stood against your inordinate urge to secure the loan, you ensured they never came back.
Under your watch, Kaduna State has been turned into a fiefdom, with members of the Kaduna State House of Assembly becoming worshippers on the altar of the State. Your government has caused the balkanization of chiefdoms in the southern part, and sacking of village and district heads throughout the state, thus eliminating the traditional structures that once worked for the common security of our State. The recent appointment of new district heads in Zazzau Emirate, while splitting the Adara Chiefdom into two against court’s orders is only in line with your disposition of respecting only court orders acceptable by you, while treating others with contempt.
You have not treated citizens of Kaduna State equally as you are quick to visit Zone 1 and parts of Zone 2 anytime they are attacked by criminal groups. It is on record that you visited Giwa and other areas in Zone 1 to commiserate with them over attacks and publicly apologised over the government’s incapacity to secure them. You have refrained from visiting areas located in the South to apologise over attacks you carefully describe as ethnic crisis. Any leader who discriminates against his fellow citizens can’t be true to the oath of office he swore to protect.
Thousands of sacked and retired workers are yet to be paid their gratuities as far back as six years ago. Others continue to stubbornly cling to the forlorn hope that someday they shall be paid their entitlements. Incessant verification of state workers and pensioners are now recurring features of the government. Despite all these endless dehumanising acts of indignities let loose on sacked and retired workers, irregular payment of salaries and pensions remain a constant trait of your administration.
In refuting allegations of your administration as being anti-poor, you have recalled instances where you call for the elimination of bandits and kidnappers. This call was half-hearted as your government never embarked on far-reaching measures to engage stakeholders in a bid to combat these criminal elements whose trail has left bloodshed and decimation of communities in various parts of the state. Apart from adopting a grandstanding posture in dealing with these criminals, your government also threatened arrest and prosecution of those paying ransom for the release of their kidnapped relations.
Your Excellency, you said lecturers of the Kaduna State University (KASU) were not involved in the strike called by the Academic Staff Union of Universities (ASUU). If that is true, why were they not paid salaries for nearly four months the strike lasted? As I write this piece, irregular payment of salaries cuts across schools and parastatals in the state. Democracy in Kaduna has been turned into a scorching weapon of oppression and subjugation. Sadly, those who should speak up have chosen to remain silent.
After nearly eight years of your Administration, Kaduna citizens are walking through curves of excruciating regrets. Your promised new dawn has been turned into a blood hole of damnation. Your record of nearly eight years in power is a dampener for the re-election of the APC. When you recently said it was a joke that your successor would be worse than you in carrying out demolitions and other anti-people policies, I guess Your Excellency was coming to terms with what your government stands for.
While I am not favourably disposed to write off the chances of Senator Uba Sani succeeding you, one thing is clear: Anyone who succeeds you should not be envied as the mess to be cleared is daunting. With the loan repayment for the foreign loans due to commence in June 2023, I wonder what shall be left of the monthly Federation Allocation to meet other state needs.
The poor under your government have seen his fortunes slip down to the worst level. If your unconcealed brilliance brought these calamities upon our dear state, then, we should go for an illiterate but empathic leader. Your continued opposition of the new naira design is not for the poor but for your interests. Though assailed by this naira crunch, the poor believe the exercise is for the overall good of the nation.
Mallam, we are tired of your double-speak and playing the spin master in public discourse. Your intelligence in always aligning with views for the defence of the poor is not enough to veil your government’s anti-poor disposition. Our citizens are now wiser and can’t be fooled. Your message only has meaning to those that have benefitted from the collective misfortunes caused by the state government. Though you accused people of religious bigotry; you displayed yours proudly on your chest. The quest for justice has become strange to you, and it is only after the termination of your government that can we earnestly commence efforts in returning Kaduna State to its pre-2015 status.
Kaduna State can’t wait to bid farewell to your government. As the governor, you must take responsibility for all that is wrong under your watch. Having witnessed the unprecedented weaponisation of poverty and religious bigotry as effective strategies in rendering citizens permanently divided, your government is destined to be as villainous as the sufferings it has unleashed on sorrowful citizens.
Your Excellency, you may have crushed the poor for the time being, but be assured that the poor will always outlive their oppressors. May Kaduna State never have a governor like you! May God never allow you near the corridor of power!
Sincerely yours,
Simon
