Ammar Yola
3 November 2008
opinion
So much has been written and said about the decision of the Kano State Government to centralise the purchase and distribution of official vehicles to district heads.
Centralised is the word because, unlike in the past when individual local government authorities embarked on vehicular purchases for their deserving officials without co-ordinating, this time around, the state government cooperated with the local governments to harmonise the purchases.
In many ways, this new approach meets with the high ethical standards for which the Ibrahim Shekarau administration has made its mark. Such purchases are subjected to thorough due diligence and competitive tender. In the end, government makes the purchase influenced by professional advice.
It is a system that has served the government so well in terms of due process, safeguarding against overpricing or not getting the best value for money. In the past, local governments had made their direct purchases with varying degrees of success.
As Malam himself noted in a recent clarification interview on the same subject matter, some council officials, sometimes unknowingly, bought second hand vehicles which they refurbished and passed on for new ones. This is not an avenue to indict anybody but government felt time had come to synchronise the purchase system and reduce incidents of fraud.
The second peg of the argument from critics of the exercise borders on the appropriateness or otherwise of it. It is like the administration's detractors were presented with a gift of dry gunpowder on dry grass to ignite fireworks against a Governor they wrote off as politically dead on the eve of his historic re-election but who rode back to power on a wave of pulsating public approval.
A columnist with the Leadership newspaper, Abba Mahmoud, described the gesture as "The Squandering of Goodwill in Kano" and proceeded to reel out real and imaginary woes besetting Kano's socio-economic sector and concluded that Malam was doing nothing besides travelling to Saudi Arabia rather than stay home to govern the state.
You can excuse this columnist for being carried away by what theater critics describe as "the intensity of the plot". An actor and an actress performing an engaging romantic scene can actually become so involved in their act that they transfer their stage emotions into the realm of actuality but when the ovation dies and they take a reality check, they will discover that they had been consumed by the intensity of a plot whose audience has since left.
Preceding that opinion, he had written, the week before, about the performance of governors under the banner: "Assessing the Governors", where his sweeping, light-hearted, fact-free review of the performance of governors, some of whom he had never toured their states to crosscheck his rumours against reality, presented him as more of a humorist than someone to be taken seriously on such a complicated subject matter as governance.
For example, from his exalted ivory tower somewhere in the outer space, he described Akwa Ibom's Governor Godswill Akpabio as "one of the worst governors in this dispensation" without as much as offering his captive readers exemplery benchmarks for assessing the man's performance beyond gossips picked from beer parlours patronised chiefly by people who, like me, have not been to Mr. Akpabio's state since he came to power.
I do not know how people like Abba Mahmoud get their facts or crosscheck their data but I am aware that each time you encounter enlightened Akwa Ibom indigenes, they are full of praises for Akpabio and when you see the said Governor at meetings with his people on national television, the halls are filled to capacity, the audiences are appreciative and gaily attired, no visible signs of deep discontent, or, perhaps, the cameras which were present there may be manipulated and only Malam Abba, from a safe house in Abuja or somewhere up North here, can see clearer and decipher the mis-governance of the state, something residents of the state do not see.
Who is going to inform our opinionated columnist that Malam's travels to Saudi Arabia are never personal, even though as a practising Muslim, he has the right and means to visit the Holy Land and perform his obligations? The accusation that Malam is "always travelling to Saudi Arabia and foreign countries as if he has no work to do" is borne out of ignorance of the duties and reponsibilities of a governor and a distressing lethargy about finding out what the travels were meant to achieve. Malam has never made personal trips abroad, not even to Saudi Arabia.
Sitting at home behind a desk does not signpost hard work on the part of a governor. The bureaucracy works well and does not need the governor's daily workforce which can run the state without the governor breathing down their neck. All Malam's trips abroad were either sponsored by the Federal Government, the host countries, development partners or in the instance where the state is sponsoring his delegation, it is to seek cooperation or investment opportunities abroad but even at that, this is only after preliminary groundwork by experts had clearly and profoundly established a frame work for bilateral cooperation, waiting for the governor and his delegation to give it the official stamp of aurhotity.
Malam recently returned from Saudi Arabia. He was on his annual vacation and was at liberty to travel to anywhere, including going to perform the Lesser Hajj (Umrah). But this Saudi trips will never be personal, Malam is too duty conscious to sit back while opportunities to knock at the doors of investors abound. It is worth repeating here that the Islamic Development Bank (IDB), based in Jeddah, through the assistance of the Government of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, is sponsoring several development initiatives that will revive Kano's ailing economic sector and create new jobs for our people.
Such projects are in rice production, mass housing and independent power project. Naturally, a lot of people do not take notice when projects of such magnitude are being negotiated. They wait for the commissioning day and celebrate the result but one would expect a columnist to dig deeper for information on a matter of public concern before commenting on it.
I am aware that, in several countries, including developing ones with a culture of serious journalism, columnists keep research teams which dig into facts and figures on any issue from the breakfast habits of First Ladies to Municipal Coroner's Laws from which their principals draw factual and coherent opinions. Must Nigerian readers suffer vacuous columnists and opinionated cheeleaders gladly without a struggle?
It was the IDB connection that warranted Malam's two well-publicised trips to Malaysia. Presently, technical experts from the highly successfully Malaysian firm, MARDITECH, are domiciled in Kano where they are leading a revolution in paddy rice production.
The Shekarau administration is implementing two pilot schemes-the 200-hectares farm in Kadawa and the five hectares farm in Watari, under the supervision of the Malaysians. Training under this scheme are 50,000 Kano youths who will tomorrow become productive farmers and upon whose shoulders Nigeria will become not only self-reliant in rice production but will become an important exporter of the commodity.
It was under the auspices of IDB that the young Kano farmers are receiving training on land preparations, grading, levelling, harrowing and nursery with extended expertise in rice breeding and rice agronomy, farm mechanism, water management and general knowledge on agricultural economics.
This shows an administration that has and ably pursues a developmental roadmap and not one that squanders its goodwill as Mahmood carelessly alleged. He may not also be aware that a Malaysian investor is committing millions of dollars into constructing 20,000 houses under the administration's Mass Housing and Environment Scheme, a strategic initiative aimed not just at building more futuristic homes for Kano's rapidly expanding urban population but constructing totally new towns, equipped with modern infrastructure.
Mr. Yola, a commentator on national issues, writes from Kano City, Kano.
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