The presence of heavy bulldozers, excavators, front loaders, dump trucks and terrain cranes bear witness that serious construction work is going on. Daily, there is that motion-sound that informs even a blind person that someone is at work. Jalingo, the Taraba State capital, is quietly changing its face. One man to thank is Darius Dickson Ishaku, the governor.
Ishaku, a consummate architect and town planner, had set the tone and direction of his administration on day one when he took the oath of office. He has often said Jalingo is more rural than urban as it should be.
Heavy equipment, which Jalingo residents call ‘DDI bulldozers’ are seen everywhere in the state capital working. The Palace Way, which runs through the Jalingo daily market, is receiving the most attention. Shoddy buildings with rusted roofs along the Palace Way have been cleared to widen the street and for new edifices to be built with long span.
The PW Nigeria Limited is the contractor. This giant construction company had been contracted by former governor Danbaba Suntai since 2007. PW had however, stopped work and was pulling its equipment out of the state until Ishaku took over the mantle of leadership and reopened discussion and re-negotiation with the company. They were abandoned in the last two years when Suntai suffered severe injuries when a plane he flew crashed in 2012.
PW is now re-mobilised to site. Besides Jalingo, they are back to work on the Bali-Serti-Gembu Road which was constructed by the Babangida regime. The Taraba State Road Construction and Maintenance Agency (TARCMA) is also re-mobilise to rehabilitate some 6.5 kilometer local government township roads.
The DDI bulldozers in Taraba reminds us of the El-Rufai Bulldozers in Abuja few years ago. Not everyone is happy to have Ishaku’s “new and beautiful Taraba.” Tears are running down the cheeks of those whose properties have been pulled down by the DDI bulldozers.
“We didn’t vote this man to destroy our structures,” they cried out. It is the sweet-bitter story. And it is not clear whether those affected would be compensated by the state government. All make-shift apartments inform of shops have been cleared. Now, you can stand in one end of a street and see someone several metres away.
Another remarkable feature hallmarking Jalingo city as an emerging beautiful enclave is its traffic lights. Ishaku ensures that the lights are working, as taps too are running under his watch. Motorists are now stopped at junctions by the red light, until the green gives them way. Traffic officials now have less work to do. At night -when darkness comes, street lights shine to enthrall a beautiful grey or tan colour. These were absent when Taraba state was created from the defunct Gongola in 1991.
Rev. Jolly Nyame, who became the first democratically elected governor in 1992, met Jalingo as a typical rural settlement. From that time till date, what is referred to as the “City Beautiful Movement” may not have been speedy here, compared to the cosmopolitan states of Lagos, Port Harcourt, Abuja and Kano, but it has been stunning of recent.
The improvement of the aesthetics and grandeur in Jalingo, accompanied with increased population, has reshaped the moral and civic virtues of the Jalingo community.
Young men and women, who receive auxiliary pay cheques in the Ministry of Environment, work as cleaners to sanitise the main arteries to make them sparkle. You will marvel at its contrasts from what it used to be. Its architectural range reflects modern touches. And now the climax can be reached, with an architect cum town planner in the saddle. Sources say the governor may go a step further, to totally implement the Jalingo Master Plan. Jalingo sprang up in defiance to its master plan -decades before it became a state capital. “This is just a little start and people are beginning to cry, what if the master plan is to be implemented in totality? You know even our government offices were not built according to the plan,” a source from the State House told The Nation.
That is to say, at 24 years of creation, which the state celebrated in August, the urbanisation of the state capital has influenced both demographic social reform and contemporary planning of settlements, particularly in its heartbeat. Magami and Mayo-Gwoi areas are good examples.
The state capital had taken off in disregard to its Master Plan. Residents had used local implements like hoes and shovels to open up foot paths. They built residences on sanitary lines and dumped refuse in water channels that blocked run-offs. There was no descriptive settlement pattern, and raw sewages were openly dumped to pollute the town. Its environment was always enveloped by a putrid smell of meat and animal and human defecates.
Now, some good roads, paved streets and curvets are being built, to stimulate the rise of grandiose structures and exquisite complexes like modern shopping plazas.
Ishaku has said he has come to “rescue Taraba” from all of that. And the change has been remarkably rapid within the first 100 days of his administration despite cries of fierce economic crunch and unprecedented debt burden inherited from the previous government.
Jalingo city, like every other capital city, is now more of the people, than the physical precinct; the social and economic life, their businesses and where they unwind after the daily official work etc. There is a modified pattern of buying and selling, a departure from the hitherto uproar by a rowdy grasping consumers or goods vendors struggling to make brisk business.
More tributary streets are springing up, adorning the face of the Hammaruwa Way -the main artery in the state capital.
“If I have N9 billionI will hit nine major roads running. What I need is peace; give me peace and I will give you development,” Ishaku said at a dinner he organised in Government House Jalingo to mark the 55th Independence anniversary.
