Discourse 237 The Yuguda Revolution II

Friday Discourse 237
The Yuguda Revolution (2)
In the first part of this article, we discussed the challenges before the governor-elect of Bauchi State, Malam Isa Yuguda, who is often simply referred to in the state as Malam or Yuguda. We mentioned the challenge of containing the menace of irate youths who are hell bent to share the booty of government with him or else they would turn against him as they did to his predecessor. We also mentioned the issue of employment which he, or his handlers during the campaign, promised the hundreds of thousands of idle youths in the State. Succeeding in this will undoubtedly solve a lot of social problems. But achieving it to the extent of getting even 100,000 jobs in a poverty ridden state like Bauchi is one of the most difficult challenges before the former banker. This category of youths, in addition to the irate ones, is also waiting for him to deliver on his promise. Then we mentioned his promise to drop the practice dubbed “Bauchi Formula” by restoring an additional 60% to the salaries of civil servants. We gave the statistics of the State’s income and advised him to be courageous and keep his promise; though doing so will cut deep into the coffers of government to the extent it will reduce the capacity of the administration to execute capital projects.
Today, we will address other challenges, largely concerning him and the people he will work with. First is the delivery on the promise that he will run a transparent government without breaching the trust of the electorate. This, as a goal, is the essence of good governance. He has repeatedly asserted this promise and one can say without any fear of contradiction that it was the main article of his manifesto. Even after the election, Malam continued to assert that he would not be like his predecessor, Mu’azu, whom he casts to the masses and the media as someone who has breached the trust of his people. “Our brotherhood remains, and so does our friendship”, Yuguda told Voice of America Hausa Service last week on his relationship with his old friend and predecessor, Muazu, “but the difference between us is in upholding public trust.” Mu’azu, on his part, listens to such sermons with a lot of reservations. Knowing his former close friend very well, Mu’azu was once reported saying, after learning that Yuguda is now addressed as malam, “In Isa malam ne, to wallahi ni liman ne.” That is, “If Isa claims to be a malam, then I am an Imam.” Literally, Mu’azu was saying that he is personally at a higher moral pedestal than his successor. On who is morally better, we the public must keep our lips sealed. The two know each other better.
Yet, every citizen of Bauchi state, including Mu’azu, must wish and support Malam to succeed. We must not tolerate failure at all. There are many instances in history where leaders shed their past and attain a high moral standing immediately after their ascent to the throne. We pray that Malam will do exactly that. And to do this he must know that he needs two things – one, taming his selfish desire and that of his followers, and, two, the support and understanding of people. A society characterized by poverty and kleptomania is prone to selfish pressures from various segments and institutions.
He must not be, neither must we allow him to be, a lesser “malam” than Mu’azu. Doing so will end him in a disaster. “If Malam will fail to deliver justice to us, we will ensure that he fails the next elections, just as we ensured the failure of Mu’azu through “a kasa a tsare”, a youth leader in Bauchi said on a BBC Hausa Service parley last week.
Isa might make up his mind and render himself a servant to his people. But he carries an excess luggage that will prevent him from running a transparent government unless he rids himself of its weight. It is our duty to point this out to him. This luggage is no other than many of those presently surrounding him. There are many among his followers with the good intention to assist him deliver, but there are also many whom we know very well are just there to deliver public funds into their pockets. They have been dumped by “liman” Mu’azu for the same purpose before; and, now, riding on the ignorance of Malam regarding their character, these wolves are parading themselves as the sheep devoured by Mu’azu. Malam must know how to handle this garbage. As a politician he must not dismiss them for they will constitute an opposition against him, but he must not entrust them with any public responsibility either. If he does so, he will fail woefully, and “a kasa a tsare” will be waiting for him.
I am surprised to find out that even among civil servants there is the insidious perception that Malam will allow people the free hand to use their offices corruptly. Part of our trust before Malam – we the common people at the receiving end – is that he must guard our wealth from these wolves that are now rejoicing in anticipation of the forthcoming feast. If he does not watch them, or block all their pilfering channels, his personal piety will not shield him from the wrath of the electorate.
This leads us to one of the pressures that these groups are exerting on Malam right now. They want to use Malam to avenge their fall out with Mu’azu, while, wallahi, they were the very people who, before, supported Mu’azu’s every wrong, granted his every wish, rationalized every mistake he committed and collaborated with him against any opposing view. They are calling for a probe. Well, if Malam will abide them, please let the probe be thorough and, I am sure, they will find themselves behind bars along with Mu’azu. Malam does not need a list of these people. I assure him that within six months into his tenure, he will discover them and water will, naturally, find its level.
There is another category of people who would like Malam to belittle every achievement of Mu’azu and undo his every legacy, no matter how noble it is, simply because such legacies are not in their interest. I have heard some wide mouths, for example, speaking about the abrogation of the Special Schools project. I know them very well, one of them a unionist, and the other an Emir, both of whom could get their children admitted into the schools through the back door. It is sheer envy and jealousy. They are riding on the wind of change to press for the scrapping of the only viable secondary schools in the state. They want a flat world where both the lazy and the hardworking will be treated equally.
Yuguda is not mad, by all standards. As he will come to learn, the Special Schools were formed by the Mu’azu administration not despite the other secondary schools, but because of them, since their condition was and is still far short of the national standard. No administration, no matter how hardworking, can instantly bring the standard of the now over 180 secondary schools in the state to such a high standard of secondary education is not about classrooms and books alone, which anybody can provide; it is also about nurturing a successful primary education that will provide the competent candidates for secondary education and getting the qualified and dedicated teachers to teach them.
So once Yuguda is able to raise the standard of students and facilities in other secondary schools to those of the Special Schools, he can scrap the latter, for their raison d’être is defeated. But unless he could achieve that, abrogating the Special Schools will only turn him into a laughing stock. On the contrary, I enjoin Yuguda to support the schools and fund them more than Mu’azu was doing recently. More importantly, they need his political backing to continue to treat all children as equal during admission: they must pass the Board’s entrance examination before they are admitted, regardless of whether they are wards of a unionist, an emir or even the governor. Mu’azu did so; Yuguda must not be a lesser Malam.
Regarding the legacies of the past administration, Malam must not rely on hearsay. The usual thing to do is to conduct a ministerial briefing where different organs of government are called to inform the State’s Executive Council of their activities. They state their rationale, list their successes, mention their failures, give reasons behind the failures and advise the Governor on what do, in their view, in order to move forward. Having heard from the horse’s mouth, the Governor can use his independent judgment to make up his mind. He then discards the garbage of his predecessor and upholds his good works. By so doing, Malam will be imitating Moses. When he was summoned to Sinai and was to spend forty nights there, he called his brother, Aaron, appointed him as his deputy and gave him two terms of reference, saying, “Oh Aaron, deputize for me among my people, and reform, and do not follow the path of those who destroy.” Listening to petty minds that only want to destroy is the surest road map to failure.
The last challenge before Yuguda is that which concerns the public and its contribution to the administration. His success or failure will also be determined by the amount of support and understanding he receives from both the elite and the common man. Right now, people are expecting him to do the impossible especially on creating jobs to all our youths overnight, exterminating poverty, and running a corrupt free government. Except in the public service, which is already saturated with staff beyond the carrying capacity of the government, there are no ways anyone can create jobs overnight for hundreds of thousands of youths. Yuguda may do so, ultimately, when allowed the time – between now and eight years, perhaps. Meaningful jobs that will provide employment to thousands need at least two years of establishment, while, I agree, there are some few ideas that could provide jobs to some few.
Likewise, nobody – no matter how rich, and no government – no matter how egalitarian and resourceful, can run on liberal principles and exterminate poverty completely. The expectation of the lazy commoner who refuse to work hard and earn a living is therefore a mere utopia. Even God did not choose to do so. In His wisdom, the economic hierarchy of a free society is inevitable. The Most High said, “And we raised some of them above others in degrees of wealth) such that a portion of them will hire labor from the other.” The communist tried it and failed.
The current pervasive envy, which is characteristic of poverty-ridden societies and which was maximally exploited to canvass for votes during the last elections, is also unfounded. Someone, after witnessing the defeat of the PDP at a polling station in Azare two weeks ago returned home saying, “Ba gara da aka kada su ba. Haka kawai, su na shiga mota da AC suna wa mutane kallon banza.” That is, “It is better that they (the ruling PDP in the State) are defeated. For no sake, they ride air-conditioned cars and look down upon us.” I wish Malam’s commissioners would be humble enough to ride donkeys, as Malam Aminu Kano once promised, or old 404 pick-ups not cars with AC. And when his council will one day visit Azare, they can spend a month enjoying the comfort of their donkeys before they arrive! Envy. Envy. Nothing else.
Finally, public servants in the State who supported Yuguda must be ready to sacrifice their kleptomaniac tendencies for our common good. If, however, they decide to keep them, then, their hero will woefully fail, largely as a result of their undoing.
The elite in Bauchi, therefore, have the responsibility of helping the new governor dispel this mountain of unfounded expectations. This is their civic responsibility. The common man doesn’t know what government is. All that he knows are the promises of manna that he heard, rightly or wrongly, during the campaign. Once he does not see it on his table as early as six months, he will start to grumble, then begin to call Malam names, and, finally, stage an intifada against him. And the revolt will not stop at Malam; it will also claim the lives, property and convenience of any body riding an air-conditioned car.
These two articles were precisely written for this purpose. They are intended to remind both Malam and the public on their mutual responsibility. If he and his followers listen, it will be fine for all of us; if he turns back arrogantly against my piece of advice, oho, “a kasa a tsare” will be waiting for him.
The editor just informed me that there were some rejoinders to my last article. I am yet to read them, if I will ever be opportune to do so. I write not for the world to rejoin, but I will be proud if an hour of my pen occupies the nights of some little minds. They can say what they wish at their level. “I compose a poet,” al- Mutanabbi once said, “and the world is obliged to spend the night disputing over its source and meaning.” However, if there is one person who will be happy with these articles, I am sure he will be Malam Isa Yuguda himself. The throne is there waiting for him. I wish him success.

Discourse 235 The Yuguda Revolution

Friday Discourse (235)
The Yuguda Revolution (1)

The last elections in Bauchi are described by many as a revolution. In many ways they were. The general belief is that people were determined for change. So they stood up and enforced their constitutional rights. They protected their votes and determined the outcome of the last gubernatorial elections. People with insight into the forces that came into play may not wholly agree with it. I think the truth was that there was a convergence of interests, between the people and the PDP in Abuja to humble the incumbent governor, Mu’azu, who is seen by many as power drunk and who might have stepped on many toes up there. The strategy adopted by the Federal Government to humiliate the incumbent was to include Bauchi among the states that will enjoy free and fair elections. And, behold, the people had their way in a spectacular manner. A kasa a tsare (vote and protect), Buhari’s popular dogma for protecting votes, worked marvelously here. In fact, they added a third article, a raka (and escort), to the dogma.
Immediately the opposition ANPP candidate, Malam Isa Yuguda, was announced the winner of the gubernatorial elections, the whole State went jubilant. In every town and village, youths carried their jubilations to the streets. And in many places, they even crossed the line of sanity. Instead of becoming contented with victory, they went further and attacked, wherever possible, the houses, persons and dignity of anyone who supported Nadada, the PDP contestant in the gubernatorial race. Once you support Nadada, you were automatically judged as azzalumi (tyrant), whether you belong to the PDP or not, and qualified for personal attack and humiliation. On the other hand, once you are a supporter of the triumphant malam (the acronym of Yuguda!), you are instantly considered a saint. It is this unfortunate development, which has its antecedents in the manner in which the ANPP mobilized the masses and carried out its campaign, that made elders greet the Bauchi revolution with deep apprehension. And now that the dust is settling, the state is gripped with the fear that, like its sister state, Gombe, Bauchi will very likely live under the nuisance of these rampaging youths for the next four years at least, unless Malam finds a way to contain them.
I do not see any fault in people yearning for change because it is human. I remember coming across a poem in Ana, the autobiography of Abbas Mahmud al-Aqqad. It says, “Man longs for winter during summer, but when the winter comes he detests it. Man is never satisfied with one condition, woe unto man, the ingrate.” And I have been a proponent of free and fair elections that will bring about meaningful development to people, for peace can only be guaranteed when power is accessed by people’s consent, rather than rigging elections which generates nothing but apathy and ill feeling. Perhaps, if the 2003 elections and the last PDP primaries in the state were free and fair, the PDP would not have suffered a humiliating fate during the last elections. People do concede that the incumbent governor, Mu’azu did perform, especially in the area of urban and rural infrastructure, but it was his overbearing influence which they protested against. A “NO” vote for the PDP was, therefore, in their calculation, a vote against Mu’azu, not against Nadada, my candidate, that is considered widely a quiet and amiable person who only happened to be in the wrong place, at the wrong time.
The purpose of this writing is not to narrate the past, but to look forward by alerting the governor-elect to the challenges facing him and the consequences of failure. I live in the village; l have heard and seen a lot from the common man since the elections. I’ve come to Bauchi twice and gauged the mindset of the people there. My honest conclusion is that Yuguda must listen; otherwise, he will suffer a fate worse than his predecessor’s. I have written a lot about Bauchi in the past, but it did not find a listening ear. This is the consequence. Yuguda and his supporters must not dismiss this as the rhetoric of someone whose candidate has lost. No. Today, he is faced with challenges and hopes higher than those faced by Mu’azu in 1999; and though deception could be used to gain popular support and to acquire power, only truth can sustain it. Both Yuguda and we, his subjects to be, must face the truth.
First, Yuguda must contain the nuisance of the irate youths he used during his campaigns. They have got accustomed to weapons, blood and uncouth language. No personality is too high for them to demean, and no crime is too great for their commitment. I have extensively dwelt on this last year when I wrote Goje, Yuguda and Mu’azu are Guilty, if my readers will remember. None of the trio listened. The security agents, who contributed to this sad development by turning a blind eye to the growing violence, and, in some cases, even aiding it, stand guilty too. I was shocked when I watched on NTA Bauchi how the Yuguda campaign train entered Sade and Darazo towns. The crowd was 90% made of youths carrying sticks and dangerous knives. One of them, who became a favorite of the camera, was brandishing a gun! On NTA! A civilian, carrying a gun, in public and aired on national television! What else could be more dangerous? In the run up to the elections, residents of the old city of Bauchi have also witnessed the unprecedented escalation of violence to the extent that many fled their homes and sought abode elsewhere. And so on. These are the youths who mobilized others to go about burning houses and molesting people in towns and villages.
Yuguda must find a way of disarming these youths. They will definitely like to determine the course of his government and, if he yields to their whims, he will find part ways with all reasonable people in the society; there will be no peace. And should he try to peg them down to their correct social status, then, they the lion will turn round to prey on its master, as al-Mutanabbi once said. It is a catch 22. That is exactly what happened to Goje in Gombe. He chose to allow them retain their influence. The youth leader is the de facto deputy governor and that state is the most politically violent states in the Northeast. Bauchi may plunge into the same pit, unless Yuguda displays an administrative dexterity more than Goje. Malam and his commissioners will be visited by these youths for extortion; if they do not oblige, there will be a night visit in which they will be robbed of what they withheld during the day.
This leads to the second problem. Finding them jobs would have been the best option. But Bauchi is a poor state with no industries to employ the army of over a million redundant youths. Part of Yuguda’s strategy during the campaign was to promise every youth employment. Or so the youths claim. And they seriously believe that he can do so, from the way they speak. I wonder how any person can think this is possible. The youths are not employable, at all, to begin with, and they don’t want to farm. Then how can they be employed? There is nothing that the Mu’azu administration didn’t try to satiate them in the past eight years. He bought many of them motorcycles for Okada. They sold them and refused to pay back the loans. He established skill acquisition centers, trained thousands of them, and gave them tools to use in the trade they learnt. They sold the tools. He abandoned them, and they decamped to Yuguda. Yuguda said, “Sit here with me. Mu’azu is a tyrant. He denied you employment. I will create jobs for all of you. I will bring industries to Bauchi.” The youths claim that Yuguda is rich and he will establish companies for them. I wonder how this tall ambition would be fulfilled.
The third is the expectation of the ordinary man. One of them in our village was heard saying, “shi ke nan, tun da malam ya ci, da mu da fatara mun raba gari har abada.” That is, “since malam has won, we are done with poverty, forever.” I consider this to be very dangerous. How do they expect Yuguda to do what God in His wisdom refused to do. This, coming from adults, is injustice to Yuguda for it is an expectation nobody can meet. Though the utterances of Yuguda during the campaign might have aided this idea, he must find a way of disparaging it from the minds of the masses. People must know that as an individual, man creates his own wealth, through a sequence of five variables: his skills, ideas, opportunity, hard work and prudence. There is no other way to sustainable wealth. Yuguda can only provide the peaceful environment and, possibly, the limited opportunity, for the wealth creation. Nothing more.
The fourth segment of challenge to Yuguda is the “Bauchi Formula,” the campaign promise to increase salaries of public servants by 60%. He even circulated, before the elections, the salary structure that reflects that increase, effective from June this year. And the strategy paid off very well. The civil servants joined the fray and canvassed votes for malam like never before. Now, they have delivered. It is Yuguda’s turn to deliver. How he will go about it and still match his predecessor in projects remains a myth. On the one hand, there are just no funds to actuate this promise if he intends to match the performance of his predecessor. On the other, the workers, as they did to Mu’azu, will not allow malam to retrench a single staff. By the time he implements the salary structure, 56.5% of the State’s allocation will go to salaries and allowances. I wish my state is as rich as the Niger Delta states, because our workers definitely require a better take home.
Presently, salaries and allowances in Bauchi State gulps N603million out of the average figure of N1.7billion that the state receives as monthly allocation. Adding 60% will raise the figure to N960million. Other recurrent expenditure of the state is up to N300million. If Yuguda will increase the staff roll in his attempt to find more jobs, this total recurrent expenditure will reach N1.5billion. Then what will the remaining N200million do?
Let us not forget that Yuguda is inheriting many capital projects whose beneficiary communities will be eager to see completed. And to be fair to him, he will not be there just to complete Mu’azu’s projects; he must initiate his own, given the debt he owes his party members who have been thoroughly ravaged by the Sahara of opposition politics for the past eight years. Yuguda himself needs to recoup, without profit, since he is a malam, the over N2billion he is said to have invested in his campaign. And do not forget the army of youths and party supporters who will come to demand their share… He has also promised to rehabilitate hospitals and equip them, repair all schools and employ more teachers, build an airport, and so on.
Yuguda should not renege on this promise. He should fulfill it because the workers were the backbone of his support. He can rely on excess crude to execute his capital projects. Spending over 80% on recurrent expenditure will circulate more money in the state, better than paying contractors. That means I will sell more yoghurt. I pray that Malam does not share the fate of Hashidu, who spent resources on rehabilitating people and lost his bid for a second term. Should the masses condemn Yuguda on this account one day, the civil servants and I will then rise to his defense.
There are other challenges to the governor elect which we will discuss next week before we conclude the article, God willing. Meanwhile, let’s join the masses to celebrate in the revolution.