By Mahmud Jega
September 4, 2004
He himself threw on
birthday bash, but on Sunday last week, when Kaduna state Governor Alhaji Ahmed
Mohamed Makarfi clocked 48, there were many messages of congratulations on the
radio, on television and newspapers. Since he himself did not speak publicly on
it, it was left to those who saw him on that day to report his one well-spent.
It wasn’t easy in the beginning, he said, but with Allah’s bountiful mercies
and with his own struggle and hard work, he had accomplished more in the
service of the people in 48 years than many people are opportune to do in 100.
Talking
about Allah’s mercies, exactly a week to the birthday, Alhaji Ahmed Makarfi and
the administration he heads had been thrown into turmoil following the death of
Alhaji Umaru Balarabe Kubau. He had been the Commissioner for Works, Housing
and Transport throughout the Makarfi era, and more than that, he was the
governor’s technocratic right-hand man and a pillar of the administration.
Early
in the morning that day, Kubau was with the governor, and they discussed many official
and non-official matters. [In view of the importance it later acquired, we
shall explore this subject again shortly]. Kubau then left for his hometown to
see his mother, and four hours later, the governor received a phone call. He
was told that Kubau had an accident just outside Kaduna and that it was bad. Makarfi
immediately reached for the phone and began making arrangements for better
medical care, but another call soon came in and told the governor Kubau had
died. For Makarfi, it was only the confirmation of an uneasy feeling he had an
hour earlier when he unsuccessfully tried to have a siesta.
Over
the next few days, Kaduna State’s governance came to a standstill as thousands flocked
to Kubau’s house at Malali to condole his family and the governor, who led the mourners.
What was Kubau like to the government? Governor Makarfi said he was extremely hardworking,
very reliable, and always looking out for ways to work out the best for Kaduna
State. This was no empty statement. Kubau‘s legendary technocratic expertise
had been attested to previously by Brigadier Lawal Jafaru Isa, and Governor
Makarfi cited cases to prove the latter assertion. Kubau, he said, helped to
evolve the state government’s policy of paying contractors per specific
measurement of work. In other words, payment is made only for the exact work
done, which helps to make savings. Such savings are then either returned to the
treasury, or the government asks the contractor to execute additional work to
cover the savings made.
For
example, the governor told visitors, when the state government dualised Zaria
city roads, Kubau’s dogged implementation of the policy ensured a lot of saving
which were then ploughed back to do the circular road, to provide street
lights, and to repair the road from Dan Magaji to Kofar Doka. Similarly, the policy
made savings from the dualisation of Kaduna Refinery road, which was ploughed back
to make the road from Peugeot Automobile to link with the Bye-pass road and
also to erect streetlights on it. All from the savings, and these are only two
examples.
Many
city political types spoke of the departed Kubau not as a technocratic mainstay
of a dynamic regime, but as a “business associate” of the governor, it was a
charge that Makarfi scoffed at. After their exit from the military -era state
cabinet and prior to their return to power as politicians, he had said, both Kubau
and himself were businessmen, but of parallel lines of trade. Kubau, a trained
architect, went into construction, while Makarfi, a trained accountant, was
into investment, finance, and consultancy. They were, however, socially very
close and again met in politics.
What
were the two men discussing hours before Kubau’s tragic accident? At a cabinet remembrance
session last week, the governor said he asked Kubau whether some of their strategies
in the epic road rehabilitation programme didn’t need re-examination, but Kubau
analysed it carefully and concluded that it was all on the right track. Part of
the record of the cabinet session shown on television that night also showed
the governor telling a story about how, on that day, he talked to Kubau about
the latter’s personal financial problems and advised him to sort them out. It
all sounded very strange because talk around town was that Kubau was a wealthy
man. What was the governor actually trying to say?
As
far as could be gleaned from sources familiar with the situation, Kubau’s
return to government in 1999 kind of wrecked his once flourishing construction
firm. The firm felt his absence; then it took a bank loan to do a Federal road
project, which was not paid for years, and then the man who took charge of the
company in Kubau’s absence died in a car crash. The Commissioner’s private firm
was a wreck, and he never told Makarfi about it until the governor found out.
That was what he urged him to put aright, but alas, there was no time.
On
the day that Kubau died, on Sunday evening, the government hurriedly declared
the following day, Monday, as a public holiday in his honour. Many people
criticized this action, with some saying no such holidays were declared when a
commissioner and a state assembly member died previously, or even when former state
governor Alhaji Dabo Lere died. When senior officials however prevailed on the
governor to declare the holiday, they advanced many reasons. They said, for
example, that Kubau’s death was a disaster because it was sudden, not due to a
protracted illness, and also that he was a key element in the government’s most
smashing success, namely its infrastructural development projects.
The
Commissioner of Works and Transport died at a time when the Makarfi
administration embarked upon an ambitious road rehabilitation programme. All
over Kaduna, Zaria and the major towns and deep into the rural recesses, whole
old roads are being ripped up by earthmoving graders and are being rebuilt. And
it isn’t over until it is over; Governor Makarfi has expressed his desire to
rebuild Kaduna city’s old and worn-out Jos and Kontagora roads. He was also at
Mando, Rigasa and Sabo, where he expressed his intention to rebuild many more
roads there.
The
Kaduna State government had learnt some extremely useful lessons in the last
five years of its frenetic road reconstruction. To some visiting officials and
engineers, Makarfi had said that most of Kaduna State’s rural road ought to be
taken over by the federal government because they are in reality interstate roads,
given the state’s geographic centrality. Heavy trucks regularly ferry goods on
the state’s rural roads, ripping them up in the process. Last year, the
governor said the state must build rural roads that can accommodate trucks if
they are to last long. It quickly added to the cost of building them, but the
government erected protective barriers on some of them, allowing 15 to 20 ton
trucks to pass but locking out 40 to 60 tonners.
Awarding
the road contracts is a rigorous’ process, despite popular suspicions that they
are closed affairs for cronies and officials. At least 5 firms bid for each
road; technical teams check their rates and correct any miscalculations. The
tenders’ board negotiates with the bidders to reduce their quotations, and all
this information is made available to the Executive Council when it considers
the bids. Contracts, however, are not necessarily awarded to the lowest bidder,
because the lowest bidder’s overall history and technical capacity may not
guarantee a good work.
Road
building apart, the state government has in the past year given out thousands
of motorcycles to various officials on loan. The scheme may be popular with the
recipients but not with others, who feel Kaduna is already awash with very
dangerous riders. The Makarfi regime however sees it as a key element of its anti-poverty
programme. Last year, 12,000 motorcycles were given to teachers all over the state.
Several more thousand cycles then went to junior civil servants, and recently,
the governor was on television giving out more cycles to local government
officials, all shared on the basis of local governments’ equality. There are
still 2,000 motorcycles cooling their wheels at the Sir Kashim Ibrahim House,
which are soon to be shared to NGOs and non- government people.
Perhaps
more conspicuous than even the motorcycles “is the new Kaduna State University.
A month ago, it got a chancellor, pro-chancellor, vice chancellor, registrar
and bursar, and two weeks ago, the government voted money to relocate a girls’ secondary
school in Kaduna to make room for the university. Where’s it all going? Alhaji
Ahmed Makarfi has said that Kaduna State’s varsity should soon catch up with
and surpass other state universities. In fact, he wants to rub shoulders with
old Federal varsities within a few years, and he has already evolved some innovative
measures to achieve that. For example, the state government wants to build lecture
halls, theatres, laboratories and a library very quickly, to find
well-qualified teachers and to provide an attractive welfare scheme.
Energetic
road works, fast riding motorcycles and a brand new university may be very
conspicuous, but they are not even the cornerstone programmes of the Makarfi
second term, according to key officials. Although the governor relishes his
popular title of Limamin raya karkara da birane, he told officials at the beginning
of his second term that it was time to move on to another crucial area, that of
“developing the human factor.” Education, health and agriculture are the
declared priority sectors this time. The key elements of the programme are
quite well integrated. They include this year’s abundant supply of fertilizer
and machinery to farmers, cooperatives at agreed conditions, the hiring of 1,000
secondary school teachers this year and another 1 ,000, next year, as the
hiring very soon of 1,000 health workers, including doctors, nurses, and war
attendants to man the rebuilt hospitals. Makarfi has pledged to set aside N1 billion
next year to build primary school classrooms, and he has asked the local government
councils to prepare to recruit thousands of additional school teachers next year.
In addition, the state government has instituted a micro credit scheme for
small traders and cottage industries. Taken together, these programmes should
greatly affect people’s lives in Kaduna State.
And
they are not the only ones. The creation of Development Areas by the Makarfi regime
may have been an accident occasioned by the failure to satisfy the
constitutional provision for creating new local governments but in retrospect,
it looks like a good accident. Many- of the areas making up a DA never had up
to NI00,000’s worth of project by their respective local governments in 4
years, the governor recently complained, but this year, every month, each DA
gets N1 million from state grant alone to undertake a small capital project.
This may be a borehole, a sanitation project, a small culvert or a classroom
repair, but these are usually matters that greatly concern a community and they
no longer have to go to the state or even local government headquarters to seek
help. Some of the Das have been very successful, and have repaired up to 7 primary
schools in the last three months. They have got a pool account from which they
draw their funds and they are already started on second quarter projects.
For
a man who is driving this robust state of governmental affairs, Governor Ahmed Makarfi
is probably still savouring the bitter taste of last year’s charge by PDP chieftain
Alhaji Umaru Gana, who said N60 billion poured into state coffers in 4 years
and that the governor had nothing to show for it. Even as the brickbats flew,
Alhaji Ahmed Makarfi privately groaned about the attitude of a Nigerian man,
saying a cynical Nigerian man may ignore a beautiful road that leads right up to
his own doorstep and accept the charge that money is unaccounted for. The
Kaduna State government actually made more money in 4 years than Gana claimed
regularly published details of its receipts and expenditure in the Auditor
General’s report, which was tabled at the state assembly and openly debated.
The fuss puzzled and bewildered the governor.
Alhaji
Ahmed Makarfi may have viewed the Gana affair as a small media footnote, but he
must still be learning lessons from the Hunkuyi affair. Alhaji Sulaiman Hunkuyi
was Makarfi’s Commissioner for Finance, very close personal friend and Director
General of his re-election campaign outfit, who suddenly bolted and mounted a
challenge for the PDP nomination. When he failed there, he crossed over to
ANPP, picked its ticket and reaped a lot of votes from the Buhari whirlwind. He
couldn’t unseat Makarfi, though.
PDP
chieftains in the state were at first puzzled, then alarmed when they saw
Hunkuyi paying occasional visits to Makarfi after the polls. They didn’t like
it one bit; especially when it was rumoured that Hunkuyi had apologized and was
on his way back to the party. A senior politician said when they accosted the governor
for an explanation, he said he had forgiven everyone for whatever he did during
the last polls. When he thought that sounded like a blanket approval of
political treachery, Makarfi reportedly corrected himself and said, “I forgive
everyone for what he has already done, but not for what you may do in the
future. That one, we must wait and see what you do first.” The governor’s “forgiveness”
notwithstanding, party leaders say Hunkuyi must reconcile with them before he
can rejoin the party, must re-register at the ward level, and must not make any
preconditions, for none could be granted.
The
case of Alhaji Yusuf Hamisu Abubakar, better known as Mairago, was a different
kettle of fish. This wasn’t political treachery because he wasn’t close to Makarfi,
only that it was widely assumed that Vice President Atiku Abubakar sponsored
the challenged as part of strategic 2007 calculations. Though Maigoro never
quit the public service or openly declared his sea of campaign posters, not to
mention the hundreds of rams he shared, greatly unsettled the governor’s re-election
team even before the Hunkuyi desertion. At the last minute, the Vice President
stepped in and “reconciled” the two men. What were the terms of the deal? None,
if senior officials close to Makarfi are to be believed, because the governor-
refused to make any promises at the peace talks and, strangely, the Vice
President agreed with him that no such assurances to Mairago were required. It
may have been part of the deal but, strangely, Makarfi does not concede even in
private that Atiku was behind the Mairago campaign. He waived away the
unanimous conclusion of his entire campaign team by saying Atiku may not control
the actions of people around him anymore than the governor himself controls all
the actions of people around him.
Another
swirling issue is the matter of the governor’s personal house. Alhaji Ahmed Makarfi
had lived in a modest home on Sokoto road before he became govenor. Since 1999,
he has lived inside the Sir Kashim Ibrahim House but three months ago, he moved
out into a house he built on Jabi Road. To charges that he had gone to leave in
a mansion, Makarfi told’ politicians that his house had nowhere near the number
of bedrooms he was leaving behind in the Sir Kashim house. The new house reportedly
has a library, a gym and several reception areas, but not so many bedrooms. Why
then did the governor move into it when he still has three years to live in Sir
Kashim House? According to a personal friend, he moved because he wanted his
family to begin a gradual separation from state protocol. Not that their life
could be entirely protocol-free at this stage, but it is freer than at the
government house, somewhat.
Anyway,
as 2007 steadily approaches, a matter more important than Makarfi’s personal house
is what he does in the gubernatorial and presidential election contests of that
year, which are now shaping up. All the friends and close political associates
professed ignorance as to his likely course of action, beyond what he himself
said. When the time is ripe fat both state and Federal level], he said he can’t
fold his arms, but it would then be apparent where the people’s inclinations
are and also which candidates have brought peace and development to the state
and country. He would then consult appropriately with his associates and they would
take a stand, but not now.
Well
before that time comes, there would be many interesting stories to tell from
the mind of Alhaji Ahmed Makarfi, often with the help of a sorcerer’s stone.
Jega
is Editor of the New Nigerian, Kaduna.
Comments
Post a Comment