Al-Makura Has Restored Order To Nasarawa – Mohammed
The Executive Chairman, Nasarawa State Universal Basic Education Board, Mallam Abdulkarim Mohammed, in this interview with DONATUS NADI, speaks on the leadership style of the state governor, Alhaji Tanko Al-Makura. He also discusses the security and other challenges facing the state.
As Al-Makura approaches mid-term in his administration, what impact has he been able to make within the time frame?
We have to contextualise some of the main issues affecting this government. Al-Makura has the best of intentions and goals for the attainment of a better society, but he is surrounded by too many gatekeepers with their alternative agenda in the system, which negates his positive principles and altruistically instinctive passion for the common man.
Take, for example, a simple exercise in the simple nomination and selection of credible candidates for the local government positions; you will be shocked to the marrow if you investigate the level of conspiracy, malpractices and treachery by elements trusted and relied upon by Al-Makura in the political environment and within the confines of his office, who distort facts to deceive the governor in favour of tainted candidates they would have entered into some unholy pact with.
They are fundamentally the source of Al-Makura’s ordeals because, by their ill-advised treachery, they forsake the will and interest of the majority for their narrow personal interests. This is the major area of concern in the state and we hope that the people’s governor will take measures to check those enemies of the people in his second tenure.
For the avoidance of doubt and without fear of contradictions, a number of highly placed people have expressed their displeasure and disenchantment with the submissive and condescending manner Al-Makura easily allows people with negative tendencies and ulterior motives to manipulate him to surrender an earlier principled position he had agreed and pledged his honour to pursue only to reverse in favor of a decision that is clearly plotted and hatched to tarnish his well established record of credibility.
Having said that, I like the way the question is contextualised on the issue of assessment. In trying to understand the Al Makura philosophy and the advantages he has brought into governance, it is good to look at it as an examination. So, he has almost completed his first term and this is examination time.
To be honest and objective in assessment, it is always good to look at the records, to look at the past and what was obtainable within the political environment and how for better or worse an agent of change has come to mediate in making thing things better.
By my assessment Al-Makura has instilled sanity and dignity into the art of governance in Nasarawa State. We are all aware of the past where Nasarawa State was synonymous with corruption due to failure of governance, and if there should be any example of a failed state Nasarawa State qualified as number one in the context of Nigerian politics.
I think Al-Makura has done very well in trying to redeem the state and he has demonstrated his ability and capability; he has shunned all the vestiges of abuse of office and so he has been able to revive Nasarawa from the state of apathy. It was a state in complete disarray with no sense of purpose.
I also think that we forget all too easily because, not too long ago, people cried for a messiah because of the difficulties they were facing. There are those who confessed that if Al-Makura had not won the election, they would have gone on exile.
He has since assumption of office brought order into a disordered society, a system that lacked accountability. He has brought honour and dignity to the people of Nasarawa State and even for that purpose we can appreciate his contribution to make the state at least become an entity that can call itself part of the Nigerian political system.
In the past, governors were accused of enriching their family members through corrupt means; is Al-Makura immune from this?
Well, you can say this to anybody and I can swear to the Qur’an and vouch that he is completely opposed to this kind of favoritism. He is against people taking advantage of their positions to enrich themselves. I am saying this because I can give you a practical example of an encounter between Al-Makura and me when I took over as the executive chairman of the Nasarawa State Universal Basic Education Board (NSUBEB). He called me to say that I should never allow any member of his family to participate in contract opportunities available, under any circumstances.
Well, you can say this to anybody and I can swear to the Qur’an and vouch that he is completely opposed to this kind of favoritism. He is against people taking advantage of their positions to enrich themselves. I am saying this because I can give you a practical example of an encounter between Al-Makura and me when I took over as the executive chairman of the Nasarawa State Universal Basic Education Board (NSUBEB). He called me to say that I should never allow any member of his family to participate in contract opportunities available, under any circumstances.
But I told him I could not undertake such an assignment because, one, it is their inalienable right. Even then, he insisted that if they got such contracts, he was going to revoke them. I told him we are talking about legality, and that he cannot take extreme measures just because he wants to pursue the principle of accountability; and that it is also an abuse of individual rights.
I told him that I will not give them any undue advantage over any bidder, but if they sail through on merit, I shall be duty bound to give them like any other contractor. And I think I had a very rough time with him and told him that the scale of justice does not allow for that kind of high-handedness. Even the principle of democracy is against it.
I can therefore categorically tell you that the Al-Makura family is the most deprived in this country. As far as I can remember vividly, Senator Abdullahi Adamu also never gave his children such privileges, but Al-Makura has gone a step ahead in denying every member of his immediate family. So, in this government, we recognise due process, not relationship.
Al-Makura is being accused in some quarters of not carrying everyone along in the decision making process; won’t that impact negatively on his administration?
What you said is a common allegation, but you have to understand the praxis of the Nigeria political equation. It is in Nigeria that you have different vested interests and each competing group likes its own view or interest to be carried, whether positively or negatively, and, additionally, it is in Nigeria that many demi-gods want to be worshipped. And the circumstances in which Al-Makura has found himself and by the nature and character of our political system sometimes he goes out of tradition to appease.
Al-Makura is being accused in some quarters of not carrying everyone along in the decision making process; won’t that impact negatively on his administration?
What you said is a common allegation, but you have to understand the praxis of the Nigeria political equation. It is in Nigeria that you have different vested interests and each competing group likes its own view or interest to be carried, whether positively or negatively, and, additionally, it is in Nigeria that many demi-gods want to be worshipped. And the circumstances in which Al-Makura has found himself and by the nature and character of our political system sometimes he goes out of tradition to appease.
But I think that some people want him to surrender the reign of power to them before they know that he is a democrat. But let me tell you that sometimes he annoys me a lot because he panders to the side of those with vested interests. In Nigerian politics, the elite tend to dominate the political decision making.
So Al-Makura really makes a lot of consultations; the only thing is that the local community, the peasants, are short-changed by the political elite. We must try to understand that politics is about access, so the elite have access and there are many gatekeepers and there are chains of command between the local communities and the government and in the inter-play of power in this kind of matrix, the genuine heroes of democracy, the locals, are excluded.
In most circumstances Al-Makura tries to reach those at the grassroots, but sometimes the voice of the guilty seems to carry the day, because our system is dictated by the rogue group with their anti-people mentality. Unfortunately, too, the people that should anchor the penetration of the society are not there, because almost all the political players are fortune hunters.
They are either after what they are going to get or plant those who would make it easy for them to have a dominant role so as to perpetrate their egotistic mavericks. Al-Makura is a lone ranger in the long run because the local populace is insulated by the elite who use their people as jokers; they trade off their people for their own ends.
With this new set of commissioners he should learn his lessons and will not allow himself to be seduced with the same virus as in the past. Governance is about the interest of the people, not vested interest.
In the state, politicians who are lazy and, for most parts bare, resort to ethnicity or religion to advance their cause; how is Al-Makura coping with this?
This ugly manifestation is the root cause of the underdevelopment that we face, but Al-Makura has tried to be the champion of emancipation in Nasarawa State without emphasis on ethno-religious divide. He has made some politicians who have been sent into hiding to re-emerge with some claiming glories that they do not deserve. He is not given in to tribal or religious tendencies.
This ugly manifestation is the root cause of the underdevelopment that we face, but Al-Makura has tried to be the champion of emancipation in Nasarawa State without emphasis on ethno-religious divide. He has made some politicians who have been sent into hiding to re-emerge with some claiming glories that they do not deserve. He is not given in to tribal or religious tendencies.
Even as a kid under my supervision in the then Government Teachers College, Keffi, he was a social mixer with most of his friends from the other tribes like the Tiv, Idoma and Hausa. He was one of the youngest at the college then and he was particularly likeable because of that. Having said that, it is only to be expected that a person like this would have a better understanding of relationship with human groups. Al-Makura has groomed a Tiv boy who is now a colonel in the Nigerian army; most of the people you see around him now are Eggons whom he groomed from childhood.
His household is a mini-Nigeria and I would not forget to say that he championed the cause of political equality and fairness during the period when there were chauvinistic tendencies in the politics of Lafia and Nasarawa State. He was the arrow head behind the emergence of “Al’Umma” political movement that gave rise the first Eggon elected chairman of Lafia local government.
Those who are selling religion are only doing so to those who are gullible, but no religion of tribe should serve as a barrier between people. And Al-Makura did not campaign on the basis of that, but on the basis of pure service and impeccable record of achievement as the crux of making human development the goal of his government.
Of course, for many of the current political players in the state - as we see manifestation of it in the resurgence of different groups - it is nothing more than condensed ethno-religious coloration of some figures that use thugs and touts after making political fortunes from Al-Makura. They are now trying to pay back evil for good, but they would fail because Nigerians are not fools and Nasarawa citizens are not fools. We know their colours and they will never escape the sword of justice.
Anybody who tries to use religion as a factor, may God descend with merciless penalties on them and never allow them to achieve their aim.
There seems to be a resurgence of militia groups in Nasarawa State; why is the state government not so firm and decisive in containing them?
First and foremost, Al-Makura is trying to play a kind of fatherly role, and because by his nature, he does not want to insinuate the insurgency as being a factor of a religious or ethnic doctrine by some of the principal players. But you don’t confront a mad person with another level of madness; you try to give them some hope and invite them to see reason.
First and foremost, Al-Makura is trying to play a kind of fatherly role, and because by his nature, he does not want to insinuate the insurgency as being a factor of a religious or ethnic doctrine by some of the principal players. But you don’t confront a mad person with another level of madness; you try to give them some hope and invite them to see reason.
But I think it is becoming uncomfortable; other people would have used all the force they can garner to put them where they belong, and I think there is the need. Only on Saturday, I understand, some insurgents, in the most brazen display of impunity, caused serious traffic problem between Lafia and Akwanga. I think government should come to terms with this reality; and not only government, but members of the public should also try to isolate those who want to cause anarchy. There must be an end to this impunity regardless of who are their sponsors.
The security people are also not helping matters, because they know what happened even before this stage when they are at the verge of becoming a terrorist group. I don’t know why the government is delaying to act. The person that is said to be administering the ritual should be detained and dealt with like Maitatsine and other elements that had perpetrated such acts.
Is the government afraid of some forces? That is the question people are asking. It may be uncomfortable to the governor but people are asking why he is shying away from confronting the evil force that is trying to turn the state into a theatre of conflagration of ethnic divide.
One thing I know about Nigeria is that we are hypocrites and we play game with reality; nobody wants to come out to challenge the impunity of those who are trying to create dirt in the society. These are also some of the political trends of some of our politicians who have always acted their selfishness. Most of them I call nomadic politicians who are after winning political offices.
When you do research, it is not farfetched because they move from one party to the other, not because of their community but because they want to occupy a political position.
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