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Footprints of an achiever

Thursday, July 07, 2005

The Keffi country home of Alhaji Abdullahi Adamu, Executive Governor of Nasarawa State, north central Nigeria, was a beehive of activities on May 30, a day declared by the Federal Government as a public holiday to commemorate Nigeria’s Democracy Day (the actual Democracy Day, May 29, fell on a Sunday). Within and outside his deluxe courtyard, contractors, consultants, village kinsmen, state government officials, as well as enterprising young men and women gathered in groups waiting for their turn to see the governor.

The visitors had nothing to do with any social or state engagement but were there to solicit for one executive favour or the other, business deal or to simply engage in normal consultations. It would have been understandable to find such crowd at the Government House, Lafia, but certainly not at the governor’s private residence in Keffi on a day Nigerians were supposed to rest. The puzzle however was not so much about the crowd but how Governor Adamu could have attended to every one of them without breaking down. But then the energetic governor is well acknowledged as a master of the game and has been at it in the last six years.

Without discrimination and with a large appetite for accommodating every shade of visitors, provided they have the patience to wait for their turn, Adamu attends to all with equal attention. This is obviously a rare quality with most politicians but a virtue with proven leaders. Part of this enviable trait in Adamu could be traced to his fervent belief in a democratic system that should be able to address issues that would improve the lot of the citizens. For him everybody counts in democratic politics and so he never hesitates to personally attend to all who come to him. "It is a lesson this generation of political leaders in our country can only ignore at their own political peril," Adamu once stated in his welcome address to Bill Clinton, former President of the United States, who visited Nasarawa and some other parts of Nigeria shortly before leaving office in 2001.

Doing this is seemingly easy for Adamu, thanks to his guiding principles - service and humility. Says the governor: "If you want people to identify with you, you do what you think is good and keep going. Someday, somewhere, somebody will identify the fact that there is somebody here but again, one is not taught to blow his own trumpet. When you combine these two things - service and humility - the chances are that people will appreciate you and would see a partner with whom to do business, especially one they can trust and relate with."

So far it has worked for him and fired with the vision to leave a lasting legacy in Nasarawa State, Adamu has made tremendous strides albeit with limited resources. The starting point for the desired radical development of this young state created 1996 has been qualitative education. Nothing challenged his government as much as manpower development in order for the north to compete on equal terms with the south in the various industries such as telecommunications, banking and finance. In a paper titled "People of the North, Think," Governor Adamu drew attention to the educational imbalance between northern Nigeria and the southern Nigeria. He also alluded to the development efforts of Sir Ahmadu Bello, the late Sardauna of Sokoto and former premier of the then Northern Region, during whose time no less than one-third of the region’s annual budget was committed to education, particularly the establishment of institutions that raised the first crop of technocrats and educationists in the region.
Taking a cue from the revered Sardauna, the governor embarked on massive rehabilitation and strengthening of the education sector once he assumed office in May 1999. Apart from establishing primary schools in all the communities, he also made the first nine years of schooling in the state free and compulsory.

"We have launched a scheme to boost primary school enrolment throughout the state," Adamu says. "We have established almost 200 secondary schools across the state. Our programme of improving instruction at the primary and secondary school levels has seen our students excelling in the secondary school certificate examinations. To accommodate the rise in qualified secondary school graduates, we established four new tertiary institutions, to wit, the school of nursing and midwifery, the school of health technology, the state polytechnic and the Nasarawa State University. We are satisfied that these institutions are providing unparallel opportunities for our sons and daughters to fulfill their educational aspirations."

Nasarawa was the first state in northern Nigeria to establish a state website and is currently in the process of computerising the entire public service. Public officers are being encouraged to become computer literate, while nine specially designated science schools have being equipped with computers as a first stage in an aggressive pursuit of computer literacy in the state.

Another area of priority attention to the administration is healthcare. Before Adamu’s assumption of office, the healthcare situation in this state of about 3.5 million citizens was deplorable. It had only four general hospitals and few primary health care (PHC) centres. Today, the story is different. There are now 13 secondary-level general hospitals, with additional ones at various stages of completion at Udege, Panda and Agbashi. To stem the menace of water borne diseases, more than 97 PHC centres have been established in the rural communities. They provide the most basic medical attention to the people in ways that cannot be quantified.

Governor Adamu shows similar commitment to potable water supply. He has employed solar-powered technology to provide potable water to the various communities. At the moment, there are 147 functional solar power-driven boreholes that provide potable water throughout the state.

In the area of infrastructure for the industrial take off of the state, the government is constructing an independent hydroelectric power plant at the Farin Ruwa Waterfall. When completed, the project will significantly boost the supply of electric power for commercial activities, thus providing a platform for industrial conglomerates to set up large-scale production plants in the state.

For a state that is less than 10 years old, these projects are eloquent testimony to the governor’s commitment to move Nasarawa into the 21st century. He couldn’t have captured it better: "There are landmarks, things you can see (legacies) that have been left as footprints. They are there and nobody can take them away and that makes me fulfilled. I thank the people who have made it possible for us to work – to be able to achieve these feats, to cover the grounds we have covered over the past six years. The support has been tremendous coupled with a peaceful atmosphere. We had some trials alright but we overcame them."

A democrat to the core, Adamu is also a nationalist and a patriot who is deeply committed to the indivisibility of Nigeria. On occasions when he is called upon to make a speech, he shows a profound grasp of politics in Nigeria and is ever ready to share his views with like minds. As it is common with visionary leaders, those who should know better sometimes misconstrue his views. Take, for example, his unalloyed support for President Olusegun Obasanjo as opposed to the no-love-lost position of his peers in the same party. For the Nasarawa State helmsman, even in the face of divided interest it is unthinkable to denigrate publicly, the office of the President without regard to party constitution. He has been a pillar of support for the President, a southerner, always defending him even when the tide of opinion in the north appears to be flowing in the opposite direction. The first two years of Obasanjo’s government, which witnessed a steady flow of complaints from northerners, saw Adamu at his loyal best.

"What did Chief Obasanjo do wrong?" he asked on one occasion. "In what way or ways did he go against the political, social, economic and other vital interests of the north? Was there an agreement between him and the north that he reneged on? Perhaps, we may never get answers to these and similar questions. The absence of answers more than anything weakened our entitlement to complaints."

Continuing, the governor stated: "In complaining of neglect, we gave the impression that the two years of Chief Obasanjo had such a negative effect on the north that it lost everything it gained when northerners ruled the country. We know this is not true.

"The north remains a major player in the politics of this great nation. It has the advantage of number. No one can rule this country without the full and active support of the north. But this must not be interpreted to mean that the north reserves the right to appoint and fire the country’s President. A Nigerian leader becomes such with the consent of the majority of all Nigerians. But politics being a game of give and take, the north must at all times articulate its interests and bargain for their defense and protection in a situation of power shift. The north benefits nothing from throwing its weight around as a champion of power shift. Power shift is not an end in itself. The north has to strategise and bargain and ensure that it gets its fair share from its political support for whoever seeks to lead the country. I am sure that if this had happened in 1999, it would have been both right and proper for the north to hold Chief Obasanjo to his commitment or his own part of the bargain."

Not many would agree with him but, then, Governor Adamu is not one to call a spade by another name just to be popular. And who says he is not popular? Aside from Adamu’s commitment to service and humility, his detribalised nature, deep humanity and breadth of vision tend to inspire widespread confidence beyond the borders of Nasarawa State. Adamu is widely respected among his fellow governors, who elected him chairman of the Governors Forum, a position in which he acquitted himself well till the end of his tenure. He also enjoys very close relations with President Obasanjo.

Only recently, Adamu was conferred with the highly regarded title of Aare Obateru of the Source by His Royal Highness, Oba Okunade Sijuwade Olubushe II of Ile-Ife, Osun State, in the southwest. Speaking at the occasion, the Sarun Odua (the traditional aide de camp to the Ooni), Chief Kehinde Kolade, said the title is usually bestowed on fearless warriors in Yoruba land. He said Oba Sijuwade conferred the title on the Governor Adamu "because of his loyalty, support and commitment towards the stability of the country, as well as his tireless efforts at improving the lives and conditions of his people in his home, Nasarawa State."

That, though, wasn’t the first time Adamu was receiving such an honour from a traditional ruler. Back home and long before he became governor, he was honoured in 1980 with the prestigious title of Sarkin Yakin Keffi by His Royal Highness, the Emir of Keffi, Alhaji Chindo Yamusa II. Every one of these traditional titles confers on him the power to defend and maintain peace in the areas where the honour originates. It would not be a surprise to see, in the near future, the Toto Local Government Area of Nasarawa State that is home to the Bassa and Egbirra communities honour the governor with similar titles for his role in resolving the 26-year-old conflict that claimed more than 3,000 lives and rendered, until recently, thousands more as refugees in six other states of the federation.

It has been one of the cardinal points of the Adamu administration to promote peace and provide adequate security for lives and property for Nasarawa people, other Nigerians and foreign investors that may wish to invest in the promising state. Even so, much remains to be done in the area of removing miscreants from the roads and keeping them gainfully employed. The administration has moved towards this direction by launching a skill acquisition scheme, but the governor readily admits that opportunities offered by the scheme are just not enough to take care of every such youth in the state.

In all, Governor Adamu’s rising profile as a political star from the north makes him a man to watch out for, especially as the country approaches the 2007 transition period. By then, he would have exhausted his maximum two terms as governor allowed by the Nigerian Constitution and would have to look towards the national political scene in search of new challenges. As a devout Muslim, he would not be drawn into any speculations about his political future, preferring, instead, to leave things in the hands of Allah. But should he decide to go for a higher office, his credentials as a hardworking, detribalised Nigerian, a committed nationalist and patriot would no doubt stand him in good stead.

* Culled from Africa Today, July 2005

  


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