*Says emergency rule has saved lives and property of citizens
Eng. Stephen Albert, a former Chairman of Mayo Belwa Local Government Area of Adamawa State and leader of Save Adamawa State Movement, a political pressure group, disagrees with Governor Murtala Nyako that the state of emergency slammed on the state by the Presidency is hurting the state and its people. Stephen, who is from the same LGA with Nyako, maintains that without the emergency rule, insecurity would have overwhelmed the state and its people. Excerpts:
Gov. Nyako
With due respect to the governor’s age and office, I won’t want to call him a liar even though he actually lied in the interview we read in your paper. He made many false claims in the interview. Allow me to start with the fundamental one where he claimed that he had achieved the set goal of unity, peace and progress of the state. This is farther from the truth because Nyako has championed an apartheid policy of advancing the Fulani interest over that of the other tribes and religions in the state.
For instance, Nyako has sent more than 200 Fulani on overseas scholarship. It is a deliberate policy of marginalising the other tribes. I am saying this because on the 6th of September, 2010, the governor followed up by employing into the judiciary more than 40 lawyers of which only five are Christians ; this is in one sector alone. We have many such cases in the other sectors. The governor’s action has generated crisis in the state. Nyako is clannish and for him it is not only about your religion, it is also about your “Fulaniness”.
You must come from the right stock and, in this case, Wittijo. So you may be a Muslim, but if you are not Fulani from Wiitijo, too bad. In this scenario, I leave you to imagine the plight of Christians. Many of his Fulani brothers like Professor Jibril Aminu are up in arms against him on his style of leadership. So the governor, rather than unite the state, has created a division that will need a real bridge-builder to come and correct. We can now understand why Nyako was dropped as a military governor and Chief of Naval Staff by the Babangida administration.
It is laughable that Nyako also described politics as “the art and science of judicious use of resources for the attainment of public good” and that this is what he has been doing. This is another falsehood. The governor has been everything but judicious with the resources of the state. He has also not been concerned about the general good of the people. If he was, he wouldn’t have stopped the payment of WAEC fees that every family was benefiting from. Boni Haruna faithfully implemented this programme as governor.
In Adamawa State, governance is about Nyako and his family and not about any other citizen. I therefore take exception to his sweeping generalization. In Adamawa State projects are inflated at scandalous rates that would make the convicted former governor of Delta State James Ibori a saint. For example, the Maiha-Pella Road project has been on-going since the inception of his administration. It has gulped billions of naira. Periodic upward review of contracts is the order of the day.
At the rate we are going the Maiha-Pella or the Gombi-Ga’anda Road project will not be completed in his time as governor. Take the Gombi-Ga’anda Road project, it was awarded at the cost of N 5.6 billion in 2008 and lately it was reviewed upwards; do you know that only two out of the three bridges have been constructed and this is just a 36-km laterite road which is nowhere close to being tarred.
But if you check some publications, you will find a write up by Gombe State Patriotic Front that former Governor Danjuma Goje for N5.7 billion constructed an international airport and 52 roads fully tarred. So, how can Nyako claim that he has judiciously used the resources of the state? This is the reason we took him to court to stop him from accessing the more than N20billion loan from the Islamic Development Bank and indeed many other sources. We know that the money, like all the previous ones, will be misused and our children and grand- children will be saddled with the debt. We will fight this issue if need be, up to the Supreme Court.
But who appointed you to act as the court or even the House of Assembly, which is saddled with powers to act as a check and balance on governor? Are you tackling the governor just because he recently crossed over to the APC or is it because you just want to bring him down?
The Save Adamawa State Movement came about because of the poor leadership style of the governor. Our group can be rightly described as a mass movement. Three of us- Panny Boga, Dr.Francis and I – are just the public face of this campaign against bad governance. It might interest you to know that some members of the state House of Assembly and commissioners are funding our activities.
We are most grateful to all the good people of Adamawa for their support. Before now they had suffered in silence while Nyako dragged the state backwards due to his incompetence. We say thank you to them for giving us the opportunity of leading this campaign. Our focus is to challenge the lack of governance. And we believe in waging the campaign in a peaceful manner. That is why we went to court on the loan issue and we are getting ready to challenge him on his failure to appoint a substantive chief judge.
On the other part of your question, it has nothing to do with his movement from the Peoples Democratic Party. We started this while he was still in the PDP. Nyako cannot take the APC to anywhere in Adamawa because he is not the leader there. Already the Markus Gundiri and Marwa Buba group in the APC have rejected him because he is going to kill whatever chance the party has. Ordinarily the APC would have welcomed him, but they can’t because he is not a performing governor.
The other governors that moved were able to convince their members and senators to move with them but who has moved with Nyako? Not even his deputy. Ask Nyako why nobody moved with him? He is very unpopular in the state and worse even in his local government where his candidate was defeated in the last bye-election to the state assembly seat for Nasarawo- Binweri Constituency.
But the governor has done well in agriculture, health and education sectors of the state from what is on the ground?
At the inception of his administration, Nyako said his government would provide functional and qualitative education at all levels. He also promised to create opportunities for acquisition of knowledge, productive skills and positive attitudes. I challenge you as a journalist to investigate why there has been mass failure in WAEC conducted examinations in the state in recent years.
It is on record that out of the 31,000 students who sat for the SSCE, only 1,000 or so passed and this is because the teachers are not there and when they are there, they are not motivated, salaries are not paid. What is the reaction of Nyako? He said parents should fetch fire wood to educate their children and of course he has stopped paying WAEC fees. So far, there has been no reaction to the crisis in the education sector.
As for the health sector, please kindly take a trip to Mayo Belwa; my local government and Nyako’s local government. There is a so- called German Referral Hospital that has gulped over N8 billion. I am an engineer, I can do that hospital for N3billion.The contractor did a substandard work, so Nyako had no choice but to pull it down. I understand there is a N4billion provision to change the roofing. The German Hospital is nothing but a glorified mortuary. What we are talking about is about a disaster that was foretold.
But he has done well in the area of agricultural development going by the number of farm training centres spread across the state.
The governor is entitled to his views but the fact remains that facts are facts. After seven years as governor, the gains of his agricultural policies should have become visible. He should not be talking about intentions. The truth is that the governor established these centres but the first problem is the cost. I am an engineer and I know that these centres should never cost as much as they are claiming to have built them.
The fencing of one of the centres alone was put at N250 million. I can do that job for N20million. I challenge Nyako to invite independent quantity surveyors to cost them. His claim that the graduates have become hot cakes only exists in the governor’s imagination and it is contradictory because in one breath he described Adamawa State as backward and where are the multi-national companies that are chasing after Nyako’s hot cakes?
But the governor boasted that the Special Assistants Programme has checked unemployment in the state. Are you disputing that he has been paying these people?
Which special assistants, who are they, what do they do and what is their function and contributions in terms of governance and development of the state? We see it as unacceptable when a governor deliberately underpays workers and then claims to be paying faceless persons by whatever name. We know for a fact that Nyako pays his Wittijo Fulani brothers hundreds of thousands and the other tribes that are lucky to be engaged less than N10,000 for political mobilization .
Let the governor tell us by what statistics unemployment has been reduced? I am indeed ashamed that in the 21st century a governor will be celebrating the payment of hand- outs to his hangers on and describe it as empowerment? Empowerment of who?
Does your movement support the imposition of emergency rule in Adamawa, which the governor says has seriously hurt the state and its people?
l read his interview and for once I am happy that Nyako has finally revealed that he wrote to the Presidency about the security situation, a charge he had vehemently denied in the past. Now back to the question, the truth is that the governor might be complaining because he has lost the lucrative security vote and maybe because the security structure is not directly controlled by him anymore. But what we know for sure is that the deployment of the Joint Task Force has helped check the activities of those using others for their dirty job.
We want to thank President Goodluck Jonathan for doing the right thing. The imposition and extension of the state of emergency in Adamawa is justified. The governor himself justified it and I want to quote him… “The Bank (World Bank) also described (the North-East) as a dangerous zone because of the problems of poor infrastructure, poor educational facilities, unemployment, and frustrated elements.”
This is the governor talking. Why is he opposing state of emergency? It is all politics. Anybody opposing the declaration either benefits directly or indirectly from the previous wanton killings in the state and because none of their relatives has fallen victim, they continue to speak against it; it is hypocritical to oppose what you agree with.
Governor Nyako said he left the PDP for APC because of impunity, that he didn’t get a fair deal in PDP. Do you agree with him?
Nyako in the first place has never been a democrat, he has no respect for democratic process or its principles. Maybe his military background is still affecting him. This is a man who came to power through the worst form of democratic subversion .The case between him and Ardo over the conduct of the PDP primary election is still in court. So Nyako is a product of everything undemocratic .He was imposed on the state by Obasanjo. And this is the same man that some journalists are celebrating as a democrat. Before you call Nyako a democrat, please try and find out the relationship between him and his deputy, his commissioners and the chairmen of local governments.
Nyako’s problem with President Goodluck has to do with the refusal of the president to allow him control the state structure that was not properly constituted. He was scared that with the emergence of Bamanga Tukur as National Chairman, there was no way he would be able to control the party. His fight with everybody stems from this. It was all about control. Why is Nyako having problem in his new party? Is it not because he wants to become the landlord in a party that he has just joined?
With the exit of Nyako from the PDP, do you think President Goodluck Jonathan can still win in the state like he did in 2011 when the governor was in control of the PDP structure in the state?
I want to say this and without any doubt that President Goodluck Jonathan will win the presidential election in 2015.We understand what the election is all about. I laugh when the media talks about the North being against Jonathan. Which North? Is it the North of Ango Abdullahi that does not recognise Christians? The North that is Hausa/Fulani and Muslim? We know a good number of Muslims who support the president, who stand for the truth.
They may not be talking but at the right time they will show by their actions that they are with the vast majority of Nigerians. The myth of one North is dead and buried until when everyone is accepted and treated with respect that they deserve .Kaduna State today is calm because Governor Yakowa, the only Christian governor that ever governed the state, died.
Doesn’t this tell you something? I have heard people say that Jonathan has not performed .I want to ask, in what sense ?Is it when some people have created security problems that ensured that the government has diverted trillions that should have been spent on education or health into fighting terrorism ?And even at that, the president has given a good account of himself. Mark my word, if for any reason the president refuses to run, the security issues that we have been experiencing would be a thing of the past.
- See more at: http://www.vanguardngr.com/2014/01/nyako-lost-relevance-adamawa-eng-albert/?utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=twitter#sthash.b2mTk1JC.dpuf
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