BY SIMON REEF MUSA
Dear Mallam,
In about eight days, Saturday May 29 will mark your sixth year in office. It will also be the mid-term of your second and final tenure as governor of Kaduna State. Under your watch, citizens have witnessed many actions of your government in these years, with the bad overwhelming the good.
Not a few of us thought your emergence as governor would bring progress for our state. In a period we thought it was the midnight of our woes, you seized the moment and made us believe in you as someone with the capacity to walk us through our dark valleys of despair. I recall your walk from the Command Secondary School Junction, drawing a tumultuous crowd through the city to somewhere beyond Kawo, with many chanting for tomorrow. Those who joined in the walk at the end of the day embraced the faith that, at least, the dawn of a new day was about breaking at our feet.
Your promise of ‘Let’s Make Kaduna Great Again’ made us scream for joy. We told whoever that cared to listen that you who had demolished many homes in Abuja to reclaim the abused master plan was coming to salvage us from our collective misery. Though a member of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) that was appointed as boss of the Bureau for Public Enterprises (BPE) and Minister of the FCT, we supported you as those possessed with demonic influence.
Though we knew you had been a part of that old gang of the PDP that promised to hold power for 60 years, we were just too glad to bid them farewell from the corridor of power. We even told some of our friends that Kaduna was simply a prologue to your emergence for higher national service after the tenure of President Muhammadu Buhari.
You spoke tough and made us believe in your choice of words of a reformist that was in a haste to change the rot and hopelessness that had engulfed us. Even when those who knew you reminded us that the Senate had deemed you unfit to hold public office, we dismissed their fears.
Less than a year later, the honeymoon ended. The monster of insecurity that had defeated President Goodluck Jonathan in 2015 resurged in frightening spectre. Birnin Gwari and the southern part of Kaduna were turned into flowing rivers of blood as criminals, bandits and killer herdsmen unleashed a reign of terror never witnessed in the area. We watched in horror and inexplicable fear as bandits decimated communities and killed innocent people whose only offence was being citizens of a country that has been abandoned by the government.
Your Excellency, though I have had cause to understand the issues trailing the glaring inadequacies of your government, I am not disposed to blame your aides and advisers. I have come to realise that you are too intelligent to be misled. Therefore, you are to be entirely blamed for whatever wrong decisions your government has taken for the state. The last five years have been a travail of a sort for many people. Not only have you made a mess of what democracy stands for, your resort to churning out policies that are anti-people has become legendary.
More than any government, your administration has deployed state power to visit sheer wickedness on helpless workers. Not only have thousands of public workers lost their jobs, the prospects for severance benefits for them are dimming by the day. It is on this basis that the Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC) embarked on a 5-day warning strike to oppose the continued denigration of the workers. We cannot continue to pretend that we live in a democracy with policies of government that should be tailored towards the protection of workers’ rights being violated with impunity.
Lest I forget Your Excellency, the fulcrum of democracy is founded on the right of the people and the defence of human rights. You are elected not as the chief executive officer of Kaduna State Government but as the governor of Kaduna State. You swore to defend the rights of state citizens and ensure their welfare. Governance has never been for profit but for the welfare of the overall people.
If you can’t provide welfare of workers in a state, I doubt if you can provide for the welfare of millions of citizens in our state. All that NLC is asking for is that you pay sacked workers their severance benefits. Some of them had been sacked since 2017 and some were forced to retire in 2016. That your government has not paid them demonstrates the violation of their rights as citizens who gave their last full measure in the service of the fatherland.
Your Excellency, a government that is without empathy cannot be trusted to provide leadership. From the footprints of your leadership that has thrown citizens into uncertain straits, the hope for better days amounts to hoping for flowing streams in deserts. Your administration has shown to be absolutely unconcerned and cannot be trusted to stand by the rights of the people.
If you had demonstrated equal concern in battling bandits and brigands as you did fighting the warning strike embarked by organised labour, Kaduna state would have fared better by now. Having left citizens to their devices, our communities have been decimated and democracy means so little for those whose lives have been exposed to the smoking guns of outlaws.
The manner with which you have treated citizens of Kaduna State is making the APC an unpopular platform that should not be trusted in future elections. Your Excellency knows that to deny someone of his job and at the same time deprived them of severance benefits constitute a gross act of injustice. I can categorically assert that if today you can assure these hapless workers of severance benefits, you will find no one will be willing to work for the Kaduna State Government.
Your reign as governor has removed hope in many citizens. Your promise to ensure that all children of the poor get access to quality education at no cost has been defeated with the increase in school fees. Fees for medical services have been increased and your administration has not created a conducive environment for business to strive.
Under your watch, Kaduna state has been turned into a quarantine for investment as outlaws are now in control of large swathes of ungoverned spaces. All the promises of greatness for our beloved state are now mirages. You have two years to upturn the darkness and pains your administration has caused citizens.
I wish you to turn a new leaf and do the right thing as your government has become the winter of our hope. May we never have someone like you again as governor in Kaduna State!
Sincerely yours,
Simon
