OCTOBER 1: JEGA, HAKEEM APPRAISE PMB

The Hudaibiyya Foundation, Kano branch of the Zaria-based National Ummah Movement held its Annual October 1 Lecture this Tuesday. This year’s theme was “Charting Paths To Improve Lives of Nigerians” while the keynote speakers were Prof Attahiru Jega, academic, political scientist, election umpire now turned politician; and Dr. Hakeem Baba-Ahmed, academic, technocrat and now also […]

The Hudaibiyya Foundation, Kano branch of the Zaria-based National Ummah Movement held its Annual October 1 Lecture this Tuesday. This year’s theme was “Charting Paths To Improve Lives of Nigerians” while the keynote speakers were Prof Attahiru Jega, academic, political scientist, election umpire now turned politician; and Dr. Hakeem Baba-Ahmed, academic, technocrat and now also politician.

These two, if my recollection is correct, last publicly spoke on the same platform on ‘Orubebe Day’, that day in 2015 when Jega was Centre Referee and Dr. Hakeem and Minister Orubebe were Team Captains of APC United and PDP Rangers respectively. Times have changed – the Referee is now playing for PRP Shooting Stars, and the APC captain has since abandoned his club or, to be fair to him, his club has abandoned him.

The discussants were Senator Ibrahim Shekarau, teacher and public servant now long-serving politician, and Prof Auwal Yadudu, the academic and the only non-politician among the speakers. All the proceedings were in Hausa, and there was a robust debate after the lectures as the pros and cons of the topic were discussed and thrashed.

Prof Jega began by asking a set of rather rhetorical questions: What are the issues that have hindered the development of Nigeria and its citizens? What are the attributes that ‘developed nations’ applied over time to be where they are today? Are there lessons we should learn from them? Who is responsible for charting the ways to the solutions to the myriad problems bedevilling Nigeria?

He proceeded to provide answers to his own questions: the collapse of the economy can be traced to the careless attitude of our past leaders, nay, including present leaders, civilian and military; the over-dependence on petrol as source of funds, and the abject neglect of agriculture was another cause; the deliberate collapsing of local industries and opening of the floodgate of importation of foreign goods (consumer, cosmetics, vehicles, even beddings) is yet another.

Next, he said, is the blind corruption and wanton thievery, indeed robbery, of public wealth by civil and public servants and their contractor-collaborators, the action of which has continued to deplete resources at federal, state and local levels. Then came the I-don’t-attitude of leaders towards issues of security, health, education, water supply, roads electricity and other socio-economic amenities.

These, said Jega, have now led to massive hunger and penury in the land, the maladies which have in turn bred various ailments of poverty. Insecurity has reached every part of the nation, and no one is safe in the cities or the villages. Communal crises underpinned by ethnic and religious intolerances add to the insecurity mix. Militancy in the Niger Delta has now been overshadowed by banditry and kidnapping in the once-safe far Northern Nigeria.

All these issues affect all Nigerians, said the speaker, but we in the North are particularly more vulnerable because the indices of everything negative have converged around us. Problems peculiar to the North include the Almajiri situation, the lack of opportunities for women and the denial of the rights of the girl-child.

Developed countries, according to Jega, resolved their developmental problems by honing their political skills in ensuring only the most competent are elected into leadership. Sadly, the opposite is the situation in most underdeveloped countries, for, if a leader has minimal literacy (as in ‘Karamin Sani Kukumi’), or is prone to pecuniary embarrassment, or does not listen to wise counsel, or has a careless attitude toward the wellbeing of citizens, then there is a serious problem.

Prof Jega posited that whenever a country faces great suffering among its citizens, even if that country prides itself as a capitalist economy, it is encumbent upon government to undertake emergency radical social, economic and political measures to ameliorate the situation. The United States, the mother of liberal capitalist democracy, he said, did exactly that back in 1929 when its economy hit hard times and it entered the Great Depression.

Faced with massive unemployment, then US President FD Roosevelt created his New Deal Programmes, deliberate actions to create of jobs and mitigate suffering through agencies such as Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC); Civil Works Administration (CWA); Public Works Administration (PWA); Works Progress Administration (WPA); plus massive Social Housing and Social Security – decidedly socialist measures in a capitalist economy.

Finally, Prof Jega called on the Buhari Administration to adopt similar Great Deal Programmes through coherent policies and implementable laws to mitigate this suffering. Government, he said, cannot just stand aloof and wish that a nation’s problems will somehow solve themselves. They never!

In his contribution, Dr. Hakeem Baba-Ahmed was pleased it was mostly youth that were at the Annual Lecture, as it made his task easier since it was to the youth he was directing his address.

He lamented the situation whereby today Nigeria’s leadership has become for the highest bidder and there is no recourse to competence, experience or integrity in leader choice. Masses are corralled into making decisions they live to regret later. The conscience of society, traditional rulers, ulama and intellectuals, have been caged by the political economy which is in the hands of these elected incompetents. The knowledgeable segment of society has sadly become mute in anticipation of crumbs from the filthy tables of political lucre.

Have leaders forgotten that they will one day answer to the Lord on the Day of Reckoning, Hakeem rhetorically asked. We must remember, he added, that the leaders who are not just, do not deserve our obedience, and we should throw them into the dustbin of history at the earliest electoral opportunity.

He further asked – have our hearts died to be waiting for political leaders and government to chart ways for us out of our unfortunate predicaments? Our situation is like that of a passenger car whose driver everyone knows cannot drive, yet the passengers are still in the car lamenting that the driver is going to crash them. And yet they are still in the car. And yet they let him drive. And he continues to tell them there is no problem at every bump, hill and corner. Are we sane at all?

The North, said Hakeem, has seen double jeopardy – we elected a Southerner and suffered a great deal; we elected a Northerner and our experience is better narrated by the people experiencing the trauma. When he lamented, will we get it right?

The solution, as can be inferred from Dr. Hakeem’s thesis, is the Biblical ‘To Your Tents O’ Israel’, or, in the words of late Mallam Aminu Kano, ‘Nigeria Duka Daya Ce, Amma Kowa Ya San Gidan Ubansa!’