Even if you dislike Adamawa…

You can try anything at all and find supporters, no matter how bizarre, inane or archaic your idea may be.In the last fifteen years, the state has had nine chief executives.  These have come in different ways. The only common denominator is their constitutional baggage. Some have ascended power with the help of it while […]

You can try anything at all and find supporters, no matter how bizarre, inane or archaic your idea may be.
In the last fifteen years, the state has had nine chief executives.  These have come in different ways. The only common denominator is their constitutional baggage. Some have ascended power with the help of it while others have circumvented it to get the office. In fact right now there is a subsisting court case about the legality or otherwise of who governs Adamawa State just as there was this week an attempt by members said to be close to the governor to impeach the Speaker Ahmadu Umaru Fintiri who himself impeached Governor Murtala Nyako.
At work, some chief executives have executed their functions chiefly while others have, chiefly, been colossal disappointments. Summarily, we are talking about a state which itself is run like a circus. Adamawa state, more than ever before, seems to be tumbling from one debilitating debacle to another. Doubt and distrust divide, the blame game flourishes, executive fingers point at each other, and the itch for internecine conflict spreads beneath thin skins and thick skulls.
Worse, there appears to be no redeeming factor; and there is unlikely to be any lasting remedy. until all parties come to grips with the root cause, which is the strong and stubborn tradition of autocratic leadership that has been a dominant characteristic from the states inception, and for at least 15 years thereafter.
But I have noticed in the last couple of months that I have frequented the place, that the autocrats that have held sway in the state have turned the rest of our people to “autoclaps” – people who applaud anything. And this has found domestication mostly in the coming of Malam Nuhu Ribadu.
It is amazing that the politicians in Adamawa state do not learn from yesterday, live for today and hope for tomorrow, the most cardinal thing that Albert Einstein prescribed in politics.
Let me quickly invoke Thomas Jefferson, one of America’s founding fathers and principal author of the Declaration of Independence in 1776, who provided, in my estimation, the best definition of government to date. In a letter to the citizens of Washington County in 1809, Jefferson said: “The care of human life, happiness, and not their destruction, is the first and only legitimate object of good government.” Jefferson said that the purpose of government was five-fold:
Acknowledge and adore God — Jefferson was a deist, he meant the god in nature not Jehovah, Jesus or Allah SWT etc. 2. Exercise frugality. 3. Restrain the infliction of injury — meaning keeping citizens safe. 4. Encourage entrepreneurship and free enterprise; and 5. Protect property and earnings of citizens.
I have interacted with most of the candidates and perused their core values in their speeches and interviews and none of them, again for me, cut it like Ribadu. In a previous conversation with Ribadu he had told me something that in a cube encapsulates the above Jefferson theory, of how he intends to feed all primary schools with breakfast – bread and tea every morning – even if it costs the state up to a hundred million a month. In this idea, and with the level of hunger and starvation in the country, no child will be out of school.
The other aspirants have adopted identity-based politics as their strategy and this has been largely responsible for the states backwardness over the last decade and a half. When politicians instigate brother against brother or knock communities against one another, the result is usually in the absence of service delivery. In Adamawa all these principles are trumped by the rumour mills that litter the place. Interestingly Yola, the headquarters of Adamawa state remains a capital now for its thirty-ninth year and the development indices that are known to modern man are afraid to stand in  its space. Even if you hate or dislike Adamawa state you must agree that the state needs a cultural, economic, social and even psychological rejuvenation. The state is in a bad shape. It is backward. Its streets urchins are uncouth, and there are many of them. And worst of all its elite population is very selfish. In Adamawa there are too many captains rocking the ship.
There are too many cooks brewing the broth and there are too many hands on the steering wheel. It is a state with a lot of potential but it is also a state in the hands of the most inconsiderate specie of political elite and the least one could ask of them is to give the state a human face and only then would the geographical expression called Adamawa state and its people walk out of this darkness and into civilization. So even if you hate Adamawa, come April 2015 do the best you can to wake Adamawa up.