Kebbi: Shunned, stunted (II)

They are all deliberately recruited from the countryside and certainly, none of them is from the town of Argungu, Birnin Kebbi, Yauri or Zuru. None of them is a problem-solver. Some of them are worse than the person they purport to assist. The process of the selection of the members of the cabinet is unknown. […]

They are all deliberately recruited from the countryside and certainly, none of them is from the town of Argungu, Birnin Kebbi, Yauri or Zuru. None of them is a problem-solver. Some of them are worse than the person they purport to assist. The process of the selection of the members of the cabinet is unknown. What is known is that it is dubious. However, there is a worrying trend:  to date, five members of the governor’s cabinet have lost their lives in the course of duty. They include Senchi Zama, former Commissioner for Water Resources; Qasim Baura, erstwhile Attorney General and Commissioner of Justice; Bello Kalgo, former Commissioner of Commerce; Bawa Sidi, former Commissioner of Agriculture and Sani Muhammed Kangiwa, ex-Commissioner of Information. It is either these people were sick when they were appointed or the tribulations of working with Sa’idu Usman Nasamu Dakingari have killed them. Currently, the Attorney General and Commissioner of Justice, Boyi Dikko, is lying critically ill.
During the just-concluded Hajj in Mecca, Governor Dakingari who stayed in the Comerel Travel and Tour facility in Mina, felt disturbed by the sermons of some Ulamas there. The kernel of their sermon was that elected officials, having sworn by the Qur’an, should fear God, refrain from selfishness and serve with sincerity. In an apparent response, the governor was overheard claiming that all he needed to do was to construct hospitals, schools and roads to link settlements and he would have done his duty to the people of Kebbi. Sa’idu Nasamu added that his government, businessmen and elite of Kebbi were on the same page. The question is: are these groups of people on the same page with the masses of the state?
 In the last three years, the Governor has relocated the NYSC camp from the more accessible town of Argungu to his remote village of Dakingari without consultation with anybody.  The governor has also moved the Kebbi State Polytechnic to the same village, again without consulting anyone.  The construction of the Polytechnic in question, along with dual carriage way in a village without cars, is going on at satanic speed. Meanwhile, the Adamu Augie College of Education, Argungu, and the School of Preliminary Studies, Yauri, have suffered neglect because they are not located in Dakingari. Despite the fact that each of the institutions is more than ten years old, none has moved to their permanent site and absolutely nothing is being done in that direction. But the governor is spending billions of Naira on the permanent site of a Polytechnic he conceived last year because it is cited in his village. In all, one hundred houses, part of the housing estate the Governor is erecting in the state capital, have been diverted to his village to meet the needs of the Polytechnic. He has established an annex of the Federal Medical Centre there as well. In all their lives, our people say they have never seen this type of nepotism. At the moment, Governor Dakingari is desperately lobbying to locate the proposed Police College in his village. This is nothing but betrayal of the people of Kebbi. The rate at which we are going every village will be developed only if its indigene is elected governor. But here is the news for the governor: his successor is going to relocate some of those establishments to his own village. Certainly, the NYSC camp will not last in the remote village of Dakingari. As said elsewhere, Birnin Kebbi, the state capital, has only one public boarding secondary school for boys (the Nagari Science College), just as there is only one public boarding secondary school for girls. Both are absolutely congested and yet the Governor has refused to take drastic measures to address the situation. At the so called Science College, over 90 students are crammed in a class, although the government claims that provision of quality education is its priority. At the so called Government Girls College, the only public secondary school for girls in the state capital, the laundry room has long been converted into a dormitory. In order to solve this problem, the government logically needs to build at least two other public secondary schools each for boys and girls in Birnin Kebbi to achieve a 30-students per class structure. At the Governor’s alma mater, the Government Secondary School, Koko, learning conditions have deteriorated and the governor intends to do nothing. It is amazing how our governors, who had humble beginnings, have contemptuously allowed our schools to become decrepit after benefitting from them.
It is an open secret that the hospitals the governor claimed to have built lack doctors. The two persons hitherto appointed CMDs of the white elephant hospital near Kalgo – Dr Suleiman Yahaya Bawa and Dr Bande Gayi – mysteriously died in quick succession soon after their appointment. The road Nasamu has noisily built linking Birnin Kebbi, Makera and Argungu is sub-standard. Even the few ones he has built inside the state capital are short of what is called road furniture. The roads have no signs or befitting round-about, flower or bus-stops, not to mention pedestrian crossings or street lightings. The roads are made without any positive imagination. The road that leads to Badariya from the former PDP office has a very dangerous inter-section around Prince Dan Mahe’s house. Those who built the road were obviously undecided about whether to fix a round-about there or not. Suffice it to say that the road originating from ECWA church to Gesse Hotel which joins the Badariya road to form the inter-section is completely detached and people have lost limbs in the resultant vehicular accidents there. By the way, the road departing from Qadi Usman Muktar’s house to the old prison and linking with the Badariya hasn’t been constructed.
This is despite the state government’s claim that it has paid compensation to those whose homes have been demolished to make way for dual carriage way. Two years after, not even a wheel barrow has been mobilised to the site of the road. The people affected sit forlorn in their broken homes and seeing all the ugly demolitions you’d think they were conquered by Boko Haram insurgents. Such is the flippancy of the Nasamu government regarding projects inside Birnin Kebbi. Why demolish people’s homes in the name of a road you know you don’t want to construct?