Yuguda and politics of second term
Yuguda’s monumental failure is glaring enough to stop him from contemplating an attempt for a second term in office. However, his kitchen cabinet and cronies made up of over-ambitious and self-serving young men and women, who have been living fat on the administration because of their boss’s weakness and inability to check their overindulgence, could […]
Yuguda’s monumental failure is glaring enough to stop him from contemplating an attempt for a second term in office. However, his kitchen cabinet and cronies made up of over-ambitious and self-serving young men and women, who have been living fat on the administration because of their boss’s weakness and inability to check their overindulgence, could not allow him to do the right thing. The so-called cabal has interrupted the three and half year opportunity to impact positively on the lives of the people of Bauchi State. But sheer greed and competition to outwit one another in wealth accumulation is their main and only preoccupation, and thus their undoing.
The primary purpose of governance is to provide welfare and adequate security for peaceful co-existence to prevail. The state is also made for man, and not man for the state. Moreover, the care of human life and happiness and not their destruction is the first and only legitimate object of any healthy government. The entire period during which Yuguda held sway as the executive governor of Bauchi State negates all that political pundits hold as the primary purpose of governance. Government, to Yuguda and his cohorts, is a money-spinning venture where those who are saddled with authority could plunder public treasury with impunity and reckless abandon. The governor therefore lacks that simple empathy which most leaders have on their people. Because of his government’s failure to use the billions of naira it gets from the monthly disbursements from the federation account, the ecological and excess crude oil funds, people are living in a very excruciating condition with no end in sight.
His promises to build a world-class international airport, refinery, hydroelectricity independent power plant, provide security of life and property and turn Bauchi State into a tourist haven has not been met till today.
In Bauchi metropolis and environs for instance, there is an escalating crime wave characterized by Boko Haram reprisal attacks, sporadic kidnapping and return of the dreaded Sara-Suka (hack and stab) gangsters’ rivalry. The term “home of peace and pearl of tourism” which is used to describe Bauchi in the past is therefore a misnomer. Nigeria citizens living in Bauchi are not secure whether at home, on the road, in the office or in their presumably safest sanctuaries- the mosques and churches.
Subsequently, the reputable Specialist Hospital Bauchi, renovated and put to standard by Ahmed Adamu Mu’azu, the immediate former governor, has been sold to the Federal Government and tagged Abubakar Tafawa Balewa Teaching Hospital with no replacement to the state-owned hospital.
Instead of the governor to live among the people that entrusted him within the burden of leadership, he abandoned them and relocated his entire family to Abuja where they could get sanctuary. He is a shining example of a governor in absentia who rules by proxy. What is even more worrisome is Yuguda’s nonchalant attitude towards general security in the state.
A typical pro-establishment man, Yuguda was initially Atiku’s boy but later metamorphosed into Obansanjo’s foot soldier when relationship between the duo turned frosty. He was an anti-Jonathan and a political mouthpiece for the late President Yar’adua. But when Yar’adua was on his sick bed, he did a quick u-turn and became a diehard Jonathan supporter. His main concern now is only to stage a political come back in 2011 by riding on President Goodluck Jonathan’s back.
The Yankari power holding plant which the governor assured the Bauchi State electorate will provide the power need for the state is a campaign gimmick, because Yuguda’s irresponsible and light-fingered regime has sunk stupendous amount of tax payers’ money into the dubious project without commensurate result.
In Azare, the fate of Kafin Zaki Dam, the over-ambitious project of constructing a world-class international airport which Yuguda claimed to be able to do because of his many years stint as a federal Minister of Aviation and the promise he made to katagum elders that the so-called state university would be established in Azare were mere rhetoric made to deceive people.
Hence, even a cursory look at Yuguda administration in the last three years would show the ineptitude of the governor and would throw up cogent reasons for Bauchi people not to contemplate giving him a second term in office. A second term in office is for achievers not for dishonest, directionless political jobbers. Bauchi people are now more politically conscious than ever before: and they know what they want for themselves. They would not give a chance to any sycophant, bootlicker and ingrate politicians to ride on their back and dump them again. They know that their votes must count and thankfully, this time around, INEC is now being run by men of virtue and integrity.
Pundits had predicted a situation where history will repeat itself in the 2011 gubernatorial election in the state. One would expect a situation where PDP supporters will turn their back en masse to the party should it field an unpopular contender of Yuguda’s ilk.
This portrays Yuguda as bad captain at the helm of the affairs of the state owing to the dwindling of his popularity in the state coupled with incoherent policies and deterioration of good governance. It also proved that Yuguda is not the best candidate for the Bauchi State Government House in the next dispensation because never has there been a time in the entire history of Bauchi State when people are in their worshiping places, offices and homes praying for salvation than the last three and half years when Yuguda reigned as the governor.
Azare wrote from Kafan Gabar, Azare