The feeble people of
Katsina are today under the sway of an
unprecedented phenomenon called Ibrahim
Shema. Despite all that brought him in
2007, optimists kept hope on him. The
governor’s style is based on twin
foundations. First he surrounds himself
and places key posts in the hands of
ignoramus fawns. Secondly, he is
dangerously dead mute to the voice of
enlightened criticism and takes it
personal with anybody who dare subject
his prodigal political adventure to
scrutiny. In pursuing this line of
action he was always bound someday to
jump into a pool far beyond his depth.
Unfortunately, the provincials around
him, instead of urging, like good
advisers, restraint, tolerance and
civility, cheer their boss into his
waterloo. It is a classic comedy of the
village Headmaster in a village council.
When the Late Yar’adua bulldozed him to
the government house as his predecessor
in 2007, despite all reservations on the
process that brought him, many regarded
him as a promising young man. He was
young, educated, suave and charming.
Similarly, until recently many people
took him serious. The Governor has
cleverly used every occasion to mobilize
the audience to shower praises on him
and mounted a massive media campaign to
cozen him. This charade doesn’t stop at
the otiose National honors apportioned
to even felons in this country, but was
carried off Nigeria’s shore; in the
faraway Niamey of Niger Republic for
another postiche National honors award
from that country. All the massive media
propaganda mounted for this parody over
the years to neaten him has now been
proven to be hollow, baseless and
without any foundation. And are
reflections of the kind of Excellences’
we have in the theatre of governance.
And the result is the paradox of our
times, transformation in stasis,
reformation without motion, democracy
without fairness that led to having;
honorables without honor, Excellency
without excellence. These are the true
hallmarks of our contemporary politics
in Katsina state.
If availability of
resources is such a power full
instrument of transformation, then the
governor can count himself as the
luckiest in the history of this state.
With N3.4 billion monthly and a salary
of N1.2 billion and overheads of N1.5
billion, Shema still have N1.9 billion
left to toy with. With N6.2 billion
collected every month and a population
of 6,483,429, Shema received a total of
N1, 017 (one thousand and seventeen
naira) for each and every man woman and
child in Katsina
which he had solely sworn to use for
their security and welfare. There are no
indications in terms of their living
conditions that you have used these
billions of naira as you have sworn to
do, your Excellency. For four
years, from 2007 to 29 may 2011 the huge
billions each of the 34 local
governments received can only be
imagined! Chairmen who were paupers at
the time they assumed office had become
super rich capable of hiring thugs to
rig elections while the majority of our
Katsinawa wallow in abject poverty. As
if what these chairmen did with the
public wealth while in office was not
enough, the governor found it
unnecessary to even ask for record
sheets and instead simply re-cycle them
as sole administrators to do his bidding
on a ‘rainy day’. Two reasons were
advanced by the Governor as responsible
for that. One was that as an incumbent,
it is a PDP tradition that such
individuals whenever on stake for
re-election or re nomination are
accorded that PDP solidarity. I don’t
question that and I believe it is in
order. The second merit which of course
is the main demerit in this case was the
fact that these people were on these
posts on the PDP ticket at a time when
the party was not only bastardized but
completely militarized in disregard to
the yearnings and aspirations of Katsina
people. No doubt that despite the claim
that some people make about the size of
the PDP, It is one group that was
throughout their reign ran like a cult.
It was a story of massive emasculation
and disrespect for all the rules of
political party and democracy. That was
the time when the party was referred to
as the garrison. It was run directly
from Late Yar’adua’s government house
and Obasanjo’s presidential villa and
any opposition that emerged from no
matter what quarter was squarely dealt
with using all forms of oppression and
intimidation, and Shema as the Vice
Chairman of the party in North West as
at then, was the henchman to wheel the
axe. Any opposition that emerged from no
matter what quarter was squarely dealt
with using all forms of oppression and
intimidation.
Lawal Kaita and late Iro
Danmusa, the two most eldest politicians
of the state were not spared in that
ordeal. They were lucky because they
controlled tremendous political
influence. Many other lesser mortals
were similarly dealt with in greater
proportion by the party. When Shema
eventually triumph as the chosen one,
four years later he pounced on justice
and decency. Highly rated contestants
like Lamis Dikko were stigmatized in
most cases the opportunity to run for
that stage managed PDP primary
elections on a fair ground in their
respective constituencies because they
pose a tremendous threat to the anointed
PDP aspirants. The result of all that
gave rise to what we witnessed on that
morning of January 7th. Let’s
leave that for another day.
Back to the fold, Three
Hundred and Fourteen Million, Nine
Hundred and Fifty Six Thousand Naira
(N314, 956, 100) was said to have been
released as payment for the 2010 WASSCE,
NECO, NABTEB and other examinations for
final year students in secondary schools
across the state. A total of 51,961
students who that sat for the various
examinations in 2010 were claimed to
have benefited from the gesture, which
is part of the state governments so
called free education program introduced
in 2007. This brings the total number of
final year secondary school students
that benefited from the payment of
examination fees since 2007 to 149,262,
during which the government has spent
over N755.35 million on the payment of
the examination fees. For the 2010
examination fees, the state government
claimed to have paid Two hundred and
thirty three million, one hundred and
sixteen thousand, seven hundred and
thirty naira (N233,116,730) while the
balance of N81 million was contributed
by the 34 local government councils in
the state. It would be recalled that
N141.95 million was paid out in 2008 for
the 41,176 candidates that sat for WAEC,
NECO, SIS, NABTEB, Labour Trade Test and
other examinations and N298.47 million
for the 56,126 candidates in 2009.
Having claimed to have done this much,
On 28 December 2011, the National Drug
Law Enforcement Agency (NDLEA) in
Katsina State reported to have arrested
340 persons for different drug-related
offences in the outgoing year, 58 of
those arrested (most if not all youths
that are supposed to be in university)
were convicted by the courts and jailed.
Contrastingly, from the available
literature since the creation of the
state in 1987 to date, only one
candidate from Katsina has ever
qualified for admission into Queen’s
College – Yaba Lagos in 2004/2005
session (one Fagbuyi Seun with Exam
Number 168761FH from Tinubu Methodist
Primary School, Lagos Island, Lagos
state) and that record has still not
been altered. The
level of parasitism on the part of those
who ruled and are still rulers of
Katsina state since inception is
far-reaching. For funds allocated and
formally assigned for educational
development are systematically stolen by
a highly organised education industry
mafia, to the extent that the people of
Katsina are among the most educationally
backward in the country. The level of
backwardness cannot be covered-up with
the evasive tactic of calling Katsina
“educationally disadvantaged-state.”
There is no question of any disadvantage
as the budget and spending of the state
in educational sector makes clear.
The Governor’s handlers growling
and howling on public accountability is
laughable. In a way there is nothing
controversial about the need to ensure
public accountability. The need for it
is widely accepted not only in Katsina
but Nigeria in general. The powerful
clique of friends he hired from
metropolis surrounding him, with clearly
fascist and super elite tendencies in
the state bureaucracy who only pay a
grudging lip service to this and only
keep quiet because the conception of
‘public’ in Katsina at present is so
fuzzy. But in spite of this super
elitism and the fuzziness, the need to
ensure that leadership is genuinely
accountable to the public is widely
accepted.
This prevalent attitude
of disdain for systematic theoretical
analysis is partly justified because
statements of social, political and
economic theories and analyses have been
used, and are still used to impress and
overawe the educationally plundered
people of Katsina with long and obscure
words and expressions, in order to
demonstrate superior knowledge. The
attitude is also partly justified
because of the copyist orientation of
most Nigerian intellectual life with its
emphasis on and awe for book formulae
and quotations and no concern for the
concrete analyses of concrete conditions
and dialectical relationship between
theory and practice. But much as these
obvious weaknesses of Nigerian
intellectual life provide some
justifications for this attitude, they
are not its cause. The attitude of
disdain and contempt for theoretical
analyses and formulations is caused by a
fundamental weakness. It arises,
paradoxically, not because of the
absence of theory, but because of the
domination of one theoretical
perspective, one way of perceiving the
nature of society, economy and political
system in Nigeria. This particular way
of looking at things is so pervasive
that it is unquestioned. It is regarded
as something given, almost natural; in
short, as common sense. And what is
cherished and preserved of these
abstractions is not even their meaning
and relevance to our specific
circumstances, but their form and
ability to repeat them mechanically and
smoothly, without concern for their
meaning and substance. This capacity for
mindless repetition of placing
appearance above substance is what Shema
and his ‘polished technocrats’ always
extolled and worshipped as ‘exposure and
experience’.
I do share the sentiments
of the pundits that those retained to
fly the PDP flags from the state merely
represented the team slated to front for
the failed Jonathan 2011 ambition.
Perhaps the only missing item on the
agenda is the thought of having it
collapse. While agreeing with the
pundits, it is equally important to
observe that the world as is currently
composed of is an unfair enterprise.
Most if not all those that were retained
to fly the PDP flag from the state at
Senate and House of Representatives
levels were third term apologists and
were rightly swept away by the sophistry
of cruel Nigeria’s politics. While the
Late President Yar’adua wasn’t caught
red handed to be a third termist, same
cannot be said of the Shema whose
political fortunes rose to peak when the
respected Late Iro Danmusa was
forcefully removed by Obasanjo through
his late boss, the then Governor
Yar’adua. While the late Yar’adua
maintained his usual silence on
Obasanjo’s third term especially in
Katsina when the constitutional
amendment public hearing went on, it is
not on record that he staked his
reputation in favor of that anti
peoples’ agenda, as Shema did when that
evil returns in 2011. People who think
they can satisfy the urge of the moment
with the crumbs of the day are only
postponing the thirst of tomorrow and
when it comes, water shall not be theirs
to drink for they shall not be worthy of
drinking from the fountain of integrity.
The headache is much and may keep
relapsing as long as we do not drop that
apathy that caused the 2007 palaver.
MUKHTAR KABIR USMAN WROTE
FROM FACULTY OF ARCHITECTURE AND
ENVIRONMENTAL DESIGN, INTERNATIONAL
ISLAMIC UNIVERSITY MALAYSIA.
Published
January 4th, 2012
