By Shuaibu Gimi
Governor of Kaduna State, Uba Sani, is neither just a complainant who seeks to hide under past failures to underperform nor a compliant leader who sustains retrogressive systems, but a kind of realist who adequately appreciates challenges and strives to surmount them. He not only avoids indulgence in escapism and skepticism, both of which hinder attainment of tangible results, but also commits himself to the expansion of scope of governance as a strategy for the delivery of democracy dividends.
As the member of the 9th Senate and current Governor of Kaduna State who also belongs to the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC), Uba Sani holds a position that is most critical to the peace and development of the North and therefore absolutely qualified to respond to the views of others on the region and the whole country. He reserves the right to, either as a counter-argument or simple clarification respond to the issues being raised against the government of Kaduna State or even the Federal Government by some political opponents.
It is, therefore, with the usual courage for which he is known that he acknowledges the predicaments of the North in particular and Nigeria in general, but always strongly attributes the persistence of the identified problems to the prolonged neglect that the North suffered when most of those critics were in positions of authority and could therefore have dealt with them. Atiku Abubakar who was a very powerful vice president, Nasir El-Rufa’i who was at various times the Director General of Bureau of Public Enterprises, Minister of Federal Capital Territory and two-term governor of Kaduna State as well as some others like them who have turned themselves into regular attackers of even the most well-intentioned policies of the APC-controlled government are, by his judgment, guilty in this regard.
The bluntness with which he speaks about the North’s woes, tracing them to their sources, depicting their magnitude and proffering solutions, shows that he is prepared to tackle them to the extent that his position allows. As he continuously and desirably exposes the complacency of most of those critics at the time a lot of the challenges surfaced or even their complicity in the noticeable escalation of same, the Northerners and, by extension, all Nigerians are speedily becoming more knowledgeable about the origin and dimensions of the deterioration.
By taking the blame for the underdevelopment of the North to the doorsteps of the critics and even advising them to apologise to the victims of their inactions, Governor Uba Sani has fully spoken the minds of all well-meaning Northerners. It has already been widely realized that the succour for the North can be found only when such a realistic approach to the challenging issues is adopted and sustained.
What is, perhaps, most laudable is his effort to make a difference by introducing measures for the integration of the neglected persons in Kaduna State into the financial circles to enable them benefit from the empowerment programmes and other services offered by governmental and non-governmental institutions. The inclusion, so far, of millions of people of Kaduna State in the social register as a result of which financial services have now become accessible to them is a giant and most desirable step towards poverty reduction, especially among the underprivileged members of the society.
• Gimi writes via email: [email protected]