An anniversary of unfulfilled promises
365 days after, citizens are asking, ‘where is the promised wind of change’? There is a popular adage that says, you will know a good dancer from his dance steps. Juxtaposing that adage with Al-Makura’s superintendence of the state in the last one year, it is safe to conclude that the governor has lost touch […]
365 days after, citizens are asking, ‘where is the promised wind of change’? There is a popular adage that says, you will know a good dancer from his dance steps. Juxtaposing that adage with Al-Makura’s superintendence of the state in the last one year, it is safe to conclude that the governor has lost touch with the nitty-gritty of modern governance, a situation that has stultified the development of the state.
But as the nation celebrated ‘Democracy Day’ last Tuesday, for the people of Nasarawa State, the occasion was a sad reminder of promises unfulfilled or broken. It is also a painful reminder that this Democracy Day was an anniversary that did not call for the clinking of glasses. For starters, we will take Al-Makura’s administration to task on his campaign promises, one by one, to establish whether or not he has been able to fulfil them.
On his promises to impart skills into youths to with a view to making them self-reliant, Al-Makura felt that the best way to achieve that was to fire 25 out of the state’s 27 permanent secretaries and to send over 7,000 local government workers into the already saturated unemployment market, a development that has worsened the unemployment situation in the state. The governor further polarized and politicized the state civil service when he replaced the sacked permanent secretaries with inexperienced CPC loyalists. The administration of the state in the last one year has equally been hallmarked by arbitrary posting of civil servants without regard to Civil Service rules and regulations as exemplified by recent re-deployment of Directors of Personnel Management of the 13 LGAs and 16 Development Areas of the state.
A promise of provision of free medical care for pregnant women has been observed in the breach. Apart from the delay in the commencement of free medical treatment, most of the hospitals are bereft of essential drugs; deficiency in manpower; dearth of facilities and acute shortage of water and total blackouts. This much was testified to by the state’s commissioner for health, Dr Emmanuel Akabe who affirmed that only two public hospitals—Mararaban Garku General Hospital and Dalhatu Araf Specialist Hospital—are functional.
The practice of supplying farmers with fertilizer in the month of April very year has been sidetracked or rather abandoned as the state is even yet to procure the essential commodity, let alone making them available to farmers. This has the potential of creating poor harvest next year.
It is no longer secret that his promise of rehabilitating roads in the state is all motion without movement. The hullabaloo about the rehabilitation of Lafia township roads where the governor claimed to have expended N20billion is characterized by unusual practices.
In the area of housing, the governor wrongly appropriated glory to himself for the 500 housing unit initiated by the Doma administration, which attained almost 90% completion level under that same administration.
It is no longer news that during the current administration in Nasarawa State, government quarters rent has been upped by as much as 200%. For instance, one bedroom apartment (from N24,000 to N72,000); 2 Bedroom (N36,000 to N120,000); 3 Bedroom (N84,000 to N216,000) and 3 Bedroom with BQ (N120,000 to N336,000).
Even with the N48billion collected from the Federation Account in the last one year, there is nothing much on the ground to justify such a huge allocation. As the rest of the country engaged in celebration of Democracy Day, for the long-suffering people of Nasarawa, it has been 365 days of broken promises and of hopes dashed.
Gambo is of Nasarawa State Sustainable Group for Good Governance