El-Rufai’s one year in office: The pluses and the minuses

One hundred days in office is not enough time for us to assess any government, an opinion that was first aired by Alhaji Ali Sa’ad Birnin Kudu, the then Governor of Jigawa State. We have also not forgotten that the airing of this news caused this author his job as Senior Editor in the Kaduna […]

One hundred days in office is not enough time for us to assess any government, an opinion that was first aired by Alhaji Ali Sa’ad Birnin Kudu, the then Governor of Jigawa State. We have also not forgotten that the airing of this news caused this author his job as Senior Editor in the Kaduna State Media Corporation (KSMC) at that time. The news had hit the air when the then Kaduna State Governor, Alhaji Dabo Lere was celebrating his 100 days in office at General Hassan Usman Katsina House.
But we think Sa’ad himself would readily agree that a year would be appropriate after which we can begin to assess a government that has a life span of four years.
To judge the Governor Nasir El-Rufa’I over his stewardship of Kaduna State would require that we draw a balance between the led and the leaders in terms of the criteria for performance assessments.
A few comments have been made regarding his appointments, his free meals educational policy, his disregard for other pinions, his transport policy, demolitions, labour relations and most sensitively the policies on religious issues. There has been some undue silence on yet some issues that need to be talked about.
There is the issue of staff verification, which was necessitated by the fraud that characterized the previous administrations, where fictitious names enjoyed salaries in favour of their imputers with impunity. This exercise was marred by errors attributable to capacity crisis on the part of the verifiers or mischief by what would refer to as the “fifth columnist”. These errors have left some workers at various levels of the state without salaries for months. The governor has taken responsibility for this and since apologized. But I think he needed to have done more than just that. The El-Rufa’i that is known for fairness and utmost regard for order, needed to have had somebody’s head rolled for the hardship such a person would have caused many families, an action that would have been akin to the kind taken by his hero, President Muhammadu Buhari in the Budget office.
One of the issues which have received serious bashing from the public domain is the issue of the feeding of 1.8 million school children in Kaduna State by the government. But it is also pertinent to ask how many people understand the policy. Those who criticize the policy, I am not sure have not been able to draw a distinction between it and merely feeding a subjugated animal. I am pretty sure that El-Rufa’i sees beyond that.
The demolition exercise which was carried out to recover land belonging to schools and hospitals has been a subject for cheap blackmail of the Government. But we know the kind of impunity with which encroachments were being made into both private and public lands under the watch and sometimes the aid of previous administrations. We have seen where people backed by some traditional institutions, which by our last check do not have any authority over land, went and seized a land between classes and staff quarters in some schools and developed them.
The transport system is one area the governor has used to showcase the spirit of Nigerian unity. Critics believe the beneficiaries of the state cabs must be limited to indigenes of the state, but the governor believes that anybody who has lived in Kaduna State in excess of twenty five years or who was born here has no reason to be segregated against, especially looking at his contribution to the socio-economic development of the state. The reader is at liberty to side with either sides of the divide.            
Then perhaps the most sensitive of the criticisms is that of the dusting of a law on religious activities in the state. We say ‘dusting’ because some of us that have been here for a while very much know that the law in question is not new, but perhaps because the previous administrations lacked the political will to enforce it, including those that enacted it, it now appears new. Especially because it is being dusted by a man that is adjudged by some to have a sucker for controversy and “disrespect for humanity”.
The government in defending her actions informs about a woman somewhere in the state who had dreamt about seeing the prophet of Islam to the extent that she had began to enjoy a followership from the mischievously gullible Nigerians. But there is no Islamic sect which does not frown at these insinuations. There was yet said to be another development, where a sect had emerged, observing its Zuhr prayer at 11.00am, in which case the number was enlarging.
The question to ask is whether there could be any responsible government, having experienced Maitasine, Kalakato, Bulunkutu and currently Boko Haram, with their antecedents, which could fold her arms in the wake of such life and property threatening off-shoots.
If anything, I think what the government should do is an addendum to the law by outlawing the practice of child labour and slavery that characterizes the traditional form of Islamic studies. This practice allows an Islamic teacher to keep children who fend for themselves through begging, but seasonally are taken to his farm for free labour. We are sure a religion of fairness and justice like Islam would have no provision for this abuse of humanity.
The problem with critics, and I think globally, is that they are more interested in the wrongs to the extent that the right is either suppressed or distorted: Kaduna State Government appears to be suffering from both.
The distortions are of course in the areas of free meals for primary school children, while the critics have ignored the aspect of the free uniforms to all the secondary school students.
Governance is all about ideas and political will and I think this is what makes El-Rufa’i to stand out among his peers.
El-Rufa’i seizes every opportunity that he has for human progress. He is exploiting his personal relationship with Alhaji Aliko Dangote, President of Dangote Group of Companies, to establish a tomatoe processing company in the state. When this happens, it will adequately check rural – urban migration because the farm produce in especially the Northern part can now have an appreciated value. This does not include the potential of at least attracting the African sub-regional market in favour of the State economy.
The two thousand (2,000) housing units being built by the Kaduna Eastern bye pass  is also one evidence of El-Rufa’i ‘s ingenuity and political will.
These and many other projects are the reasons for which I think El-Rufa’i’s critics are either the toes the man has stepped on in the course of bettering the life of the people of Kaduna State or are just being mischievous in their approach. Which ever group one belongs to, our opinion is that we have had enough of distractions in the governing affairs of this state.

Rafee wrote this piece from Kaduna.