All for Patrick Yakowa?

Automatically, the appointment of Sambo paved the way for the swearing in of Mr Patrick Ibrahim Yakowa, as the governor of Kaduna State. This was done on Thursday afternoon at an elaborate but humble ceremony presided over by the Chief Judge of Kaduna State, marking a new phase in the history of inter communal relations […]

Automatically, the appointment of Sambo paved the way for the swearing in of Mr Patrick Ibrahim Yakowa, as the governor of Kaduna State. This was done on Thursday afternoon at an elaborate but humble ceremony presided over by the Chief Judge of Kaduna State, marking a new phase in the history of inter communal relations in the state.

No doubt, Kaduna was once a melting pot of all forms of ethnic conflicts in the country. It was a hot spot of intolerance and hostile inter ethnic aggression spearheaded by its elites from the two major divides in the North and the South.

Since the creation of Katsina State in 1987 by the General Babangida administration, there have been protracted struggles for the control of the life of the state by the two dominant elites from the South and from the North. This led to several bloodbath beginning with the Kafanchan riots of 1987 to the last which was enveloped under the toga of Shari’ah riots in which thousands of innocent lives and property worth billions of naira were lost to impatience and intolerance.

However, the unrelenting policies of the governments of Ahmed Makarfi and later Namadi Sambo, have successfully brought such crises to a fanciful end to the extent that Kaduna today is one of the most peaceful cities and states   Nigeria. Thanks be to God and for good leadership coupled with a renewed understanding by the people of the state of the inevitability of living together.

For very long, the elites from the southern parts of the state have been agitating for control of political power in the state. Such agitation was responsible for the evolution of the rotation of power amongst the various sections in the state. It was to come in 2007 but stopped by forces stronger than those who wanted it.

We supported Isaiah Balat but we couldn’t make the project see the light of day. Life continued as usual but with some social and moral bruises. As the common saying goes, gradually, with patience and perseverance, David shall always conquer Goliath. This precisely is the case today. A man of Southern Kaduna origin is the Executive Governor of Kaduna State, the headquarters of Northern Nigeria and the only true and cosmopolitan city in Nigeria.

Mr. Yakowa’a rise to stardom is anchored on his personal characteristics. He is very educated, very tolerant, never suffered from any form of complex and above all, a true believer in tolerance and peaceful coexistence.  A tested bureaucrat and an administrator per excellence, a successful politician who has many a time worn a thick skin against those pressures and forces of distraction.

Patience they say is a virtue. The governor has a lot of it and I am aware he has faced several persecutions in the hands of his own people who at one point or the other saw him as either a sell out or simply a lackey. Some of the ethnic nationalists saw Mr. Yakowa as simply an appendage who has failed to carry their message of agitation loud and high.

I am aware on a few occasions, the kind of pressure and hostility that Mr Yakowa received from his immediate constituency on matters relating to appointments he recommended some individuals from the southern part of the state that were neither Christians nor belonging to any of the ethnic minority groups. To the extent quite a lot of people thought he could serve no better purpose.

I saw wisdom in Mr Yakow’s breakthrough in making recommendations for non Christian indigenes of southern Kaduna’s appointment both within the state and at the federal level. This has now become his greatest asset in acceptability because those things he did are now standing for him and people outside his enclaves are confident that they can go to sleep with their two eyes closed with Mr Yakowa as the governor of Kaduna State.

In the new Governor of Kaduna State is strength of character, maturity, impartiality and honesty. These are the major prerequisites of leadership without which there will certainly be failure. We in Kaduna State are lucky and all that we need to do is to encourage the new leadership to even excel. Everyone must be entitled to his worth. Justice is giving to each what each deserves. It is not about giving in differentials on the basis of sentiment.

The need to cooperate with the new governor is essential if we are to encourage him and his government to set the agenda and continue with the onerous task of building a model state in Kaduna. As the saying of the late Reverend Martin Luther King Jnr goes, to all of us who hail from the southern part of Kaduna State, ‘our time has come’ and the need to use it wisely even IF TO PROVE A POINT IS ESSENTIAL AND CRITICAL so that at the end of the day we may say, ‘we told you, we can do even better’.