Working until wee hours
Hard work is good, but the Kwankwaso picture still left some questions unanswered. If the governor was still at his desk at 1.08am, what time did he go there? For all we know, he could have arrived at his desk 30 minutes before the picture was taken. I am not saying that was what happened; […]
Hard work is good, but the Kwankwaso picture still left some questions unanswered. If the governor was still at his desk at 1.08am, what time did he go there? For all we know, he could have arrived at his desk 30 minutes before the picture was taken. I am not saying that was what happened; I am saying it could have happened. That is because Kwankwaso looked neat and alert in this picture. Quite alright, his flowing white babbar riga had slightly fallen off his right shoulder, a usual sign of stress, but his perforated red Kwankwasiyya cap was still sitting firmly on his head. After many hours at work, Northern public officers usually remove their caps and put them aside on the desk.
An indication of why the governor was still at his desk at this late hour could be gleaned by looking slightly to his left. I can see two In trays and both of them were full. The tray furthest to the right is stacked with a lot of secret files; I can quite clearly see the red X across the file cover. To know where the files came from before they reached the governor’s desk, you must either see the indicator columns on the file jacket’s front cover or the attached strips of paper. I knew these from my days as the receiving clerk at the old Sokoto State Public Service Commission [PSC] while on student’s vacation job. I collected every letter brought by dispatch messengers from various ministries, recorded them in a register, put them in a file and took them to the Secretary’s office.
The second In tray immediately to Kwankwaso’s right seems to contain letters that were not put inside files. These are probably letters from individuals and private organizations, appeals for donation and the like which have no previous file history. The files on the other hand contain letters and documents which are but the latest in a long back-and-forth official communication. If the governor needs to refresh his memory, he can always flip through the file’s pages to see what was approved earlier and who said what.
Now, if you study the picture again, to the governor’s left you can see one ‘Out’ tray. It is drawn close to Kwankwaso’s hand instead of its normal position at the edge of the desk. He must have drawn it closer himself; no one else could have done it. While the In trays are full, the ‘Out’ tray contains only two documents. What this means is that Kwankwaso had most of the day’s work still undone because there were a lot more untreated files than there were treated ones. Let me quickly rephrase that observation; whenever the private secretary walks in, he takes away the files that the governor has already treated, so it is possible that Kwankwaso had worked on more files than this picture signifies. Near the ‘Out’ tray I can see two remote control sets. Kwankwaso apparently flips the DSTV decoder and the large split-unit air conditioner that is visible on the far right every now and then.
Let us move on with this impromptu psycho-analysis of Governor Kwankwaso’s office. We thank him for working selflessly at 1am and not going in to see his family, which is another important duty. The question is, why did he have so many files waiting for his attention at that ungodly hour? It is either that he did not start treating them in time or there are so many of them that even though he had been treating them all day, many were still lying around. Each of those files represents someone’s or some community’s hopes and aspirations. The small scribbling that the governor does in the file could be a life changer for someone, so the earlier those files leave his office the better.
Now, it was 5-star American General Dwight David Eisenhower who once said, “If you do not have half the day’s work done by 10am, chances are you will leave half the day’s work undone at the end of the day.” This former Supreme Commander of the Allied Expeditionary Force [SCAEF] in Europe during the Second World War lived up to this billing when, as President of the United States, he was at his Oval Office desk by 5am every day. It was not stated in this picture when Kwankwaso goes to the office. If he does not close from work until the wee hours of the morning, chances are that he does not resume very early, though I don’t know for sure.
However, there is an important thing to be said here. Treating files is not the governor’s only work. It may not even be his most important work because he also attends many meetings, receives many visitors, makes many phone calls, visits many project sites and disaster scenes and attends many social functions. Security meetings especially could consume a lot of time, and Kano State currently has the most serious Boko Haram issues after Borno and Yobe States. Still, when you think about the daily schedule of the US President, he has time to jog, have a leisurely lunch with aides or family members, go for an afternoon round of golf, invite friends to the White House to watch a movie and even read books for education and pleasure. Barack Obama even allocates what he calls “Michelle time.” How come Obama has more spare time than a Nigerian state governor even though he heads a sprawling national government with self-arrogated world-wide responsibilities?
I think it has to do with the fact that Nigerian rulers have concentrated too many powers in their own hands, policy, execution, finance and politics. Civilian governors inherited these powers from military governors without democratic modification. Imagine a story I read in a newspaper recently that President Jonathan has approved the employing of teachers for unity colleges. I saw another story somewhere that a governor went round inspecting refuse collection. The biggest consumer of governorship and presidential time in Nigeria is what we call “politics.” Politics here is a round-the-clock business; all ambitious politicians must mill around at the governor’s office and residence day and night in order to earn his trust, since he holds the power to make or mar political careers.
In the long run however it is not how many hours a man stays at the office that matters but the quality of work he does there. In that all-important respect you must give it to Rabi’u Musa Kwankwaso. His egocentric wearing of a red cap aside, he has shown exemplary dynamism and visionary creativity in his governorship of Kano State with five special scholarship schemes, founding of two universities and twenty other tertiary institutions, marrying off a thousand widows, creating three whole new cities, laying huge water pipes and rebuilding many schools. Never mind his eccentric writing of Kwankwasiyya on their roofs. Long hours or no, Rabi’u Kwankwaso has been doing quality work in Kano, which is better than quantity. He should close from work much earlier than 1am.