The Kaduna State Governor, Malam Nasir El-Rufai has refuted claims that he nominated his foster sister, Zainab Ahmed as the ministerial nominee representing Kaduna state.
He dismissed the allegation as a figment of the imagination of some elements who are not pleased with the drastic changes going on in the state.
Zainab Ahmed was until her nomination the Executive Secretary of Nigeria Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (NEITI).
Governor El-Rufai who spoke on a wide range of issues at the 4th Town Hall Meeting to interface with the people of the state on Saturday, said he has discovered that some elements are carrying the face of the All Progressive Congress Party, APC, but deep in their hearts, they represent the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP.
He insisted at the meeting which took place at the Kaduna International Trade Fair Complex,
Rigachikun, Kaduna, that he neither submitted anybody’s name as ministerial nominee nor that of his sister.
President Muhammadu Buhari acted on his own wisdom by nominating the Executive Secretary of NIETI as minister, El- Rurai stated.
Governor El-Rufai took a swipe of his critics for accusing him of running a vendetta government, saying such people should not expect appointments from his administration.
Some of the victims said the demolition was hasty but the government insisted that due notice was served on illegal occupants of school land. BLESSING OLAIFA reports that the recovery left shop owners in pains.
•Scenes of the demolition
The victims of the second phase of the demolition plan were the unwelcome occupants of a Kaduna State school land. In the first phase, in the first 100 days of the Malam Nasir el-Rufai administration, 39 residential buildings were pulled down in the university town, Zaria. That exercise triggered panic and anguish. The government explained that the demolished buildings were illegally built on land allocated to public schools.
The second phase has caused probably just as much grief. The area targeted by the government bulldozers was a mini-printers’ paradise. Mr Ibe Emeka who owned three printing shops there, all of which were pulled down, said there were over 231 stalls to which no less than 1000 people laid claim, each shop having about five workers. Emeka reckoned that millions of naira was lost in the demolition.
What attracted them to the school in the first place? It must be its centrality, being in the Kaduna metropolis. Otherwise, the school, Government Secondary School, Doka, whose land they were accused of occupying illegally, has pretty little to offer. It is decrepit, its space grossly underutilised.
The printers and shop owners have been counting their losses since the demolition. They woke up to see government bulldozers around their shops.
The government had ordered everyone whose buildings were standing on land belonging to public schools to show proof why the buildings should be allowed to stand. Some of those who were afraid of being affected by the exercise went to court, trying to stop the exercise. But the bulldozers went to work again even when the case was pending in court. Some of the shop owners are of the view that they were not informed of the exercise, while some of them claimed to have received extension in their quit notice. The shop owners said they were not aware of any warning issued before the government bulldozer moved to the sight of the school premises.
Government officials insisted that warnings were issued in July. According to them, the warning issued in July covered all parts of the state where government lands have been illegally taken over by unauthorized persons.
The demolition at Government Secondary School, Doka, reportedly caught many residents and owners of shops unawares. The areas affected were Muri Road by Lagos Street, Lokoja Road, Gwari Road and Cameroun Road. All the shops were pulled down by the government bulldozer under the supervision of officials of the Kaduna State Urban Development Agency.
Emeka, whose three shops were demolished, said,
“We have over 1000 people affected by this development with millions of naira being lost on a daily basis. We were surprised beyond words when the government bulldozer moved here with government officials and security agents. It was shocking that a democratic government could act in a way that suggests that the people do not matter, or could one say it was because they have got what they wanted and we have to live with this for the next four years”.
He said that assuming the government had the best of intentions, the way and manner it carried out the demolition showed that the government no longer has feelings for the masses as hundreds of families are affected by the action of the government.
Emeka lamented that what happened showed that government can wake up any day and send people away from their homes and places where they are earning their legitimate income.
When The Nation visited the school, the buildings were old, unkempt and dilapidated. In fact weeds have taken over one of the abandoned staircases of the building. There was damaged school furniture packed inside classrooms, while students take lectures on one end inside the classrooms with cracked blackboards. The school has capacity to take 400-500 students, but the patronage is very poor. It was discovered that the shop owners and printers took advantage of the neglect of the school to help themselves. The school was not protected with perimeter fence to discourage would-be encroachers on the facility. It was gathered that local government officials also colluded with the businessmen to allocate small portions of land surrounding the school to entrepreneurs who are desperate to own shops in the city centre.
One of the entrepreneurs who is a graduate of Ahmadu Bello University, Zaria, Malam Mohammed Nasir said the government did not give adequate notice regarding the exercise. According to him, a government that was elected by the people only a few months ago should not have made demolition of buildings and shops its priority.
“People are suffering in this part of the country. There are problems of unemployment, insecurity, armed robbery, kidnapping, etc, and the people that are directly linked with these problems are the youths. Yet a government that had barely spent four months in office is compounding the problems”, he lamented.
Malam Nasir said he was baffled that the el-Rufai government could not look at the far reaching implications of demolition peoples shops and houses at a period the country is plagued with inadequate shelter and poverty. He said it was unfortunate that the governor and his team were concern about the aesthestics of Kaduna city and its environs. He said it was painful that the government failed to carry people along taking into consideration the fact that the masses are also stakeholders in the country’s journey to development.
The Assistant Head Teacher of the school, Mr Leo Danjuma said the demolition of the shops was a welcome development. He said the school authority had complained over the years that the presence of the shops around the schools was making the environment not condusive for learning. But that their complaints were never taken serious.
He said, “We are happy that all the shops were demolished because once Power Holding Company of Nigeria takes light and the printers put on their electricity generators, the next thing we do is to close the school for the day because you cannot teach with the noise pollution of the atmosphere. We have been held hostage by these people for a long time. Thank God, we have a corrective regime and everybody will learn his or her lesson, including local government officials who allegedly allocated the land to them and have been collecting taxes from the shop owners and printers”.
Mr Danjuma called on the state government to expedite action on the complete rehabilitation of the school, saying whenever there is rainfall, the school closes for the day because the roofs are leaking and there are always fears that part of the building structures that have become weak might collapse. He said government should also look into the problems associated with the on-going verification exercise in the state as majority of teachers have not been paid in the past three months. He said morale is low among teachers and the situation is compounded by an unfriendly environment for teaching and learning.
The spokesman of the state government, Samuel Aruwan told journalists that the exercise was not a witch-hunt. He also dismissed insinuations that the state government was insensitive to the plight of the people, insisting that the efforts of the present administration were geared towards recovering all government lands that were illegally acquired. The Nation observed that most of the people affected by the demolition were printers and shops owners dealing in printing materials such as ink, papers, and plates. Others are business centres, and restaurants. Many of them were seen moving out whatever remained of their properties from the sight of the demolished shops. It was gathered that majority of them are non-indigenes and have been in the business for over 20 years.
Aruwan later circulated a statement saying the interim chairman of Kaduna North Local Government Area Alhaji G. A. Kurfi has been suspended and that “local government councils have no role in the land recovery process beyond gathering and forwarding information to the appropriate agencies”
The statement further said, “Recent actions undertaken within Kaduna North local government council under the direction of the interim chairman did not comply with the guidelines for the land recovery exercise.”
One of the printers who gave his name as Elder Oni said the government should have relocated them to printers village with modern facilities to work rather than throw them out of business. Elder Oni who said he is married with four children said government action would have negative impacts on his family as he would have to look for something to do or manage in another person’s shop within the area before he could attend to other pressing family challenges such as payment of school fees.
Elder Oni advised the government not only to consult widely before embarking on such mission, but also to provide alternative shops and accommodation for the people. He called on President Buhari to intervene regarding the approach of Governor El-Rufai to demolition of buildings and shops in Kaduna state. He appealed that government should not worsen their economic predicament with policy that would render them homeless or jobless.
Kaduna State government has offered explanation on the declaration of state of emergency in the education sector.
It said it was necessitated by 16 years of neglect.
The Commissioner for Education, Science and Technology, Dr. Shehu Usman Adamu, said the government adopted six-week emergency measures to rescue the sector from collapse in the interest of stakeholders and the future of the state.
He lamented in a statement issued in Kaduna and made available to reporters that about 80 per cent of the 4,200 public primary schools were in a dilapidated condition.
“More than half of the 1.106 million pupils sit on bare floor and the teaching force, which is understaffed, consist of over 40 per cent non-qualified teachers. The 349 public secondary schools are not in a better condition,” Adamu said.
He said the Malam Nasir El-Rufai administration waded in with reforms capable of standing the test of time by recruiting about 2,226 teachers in English language and the sciences.
Kaduna State Governor Nasir Ahmad El-Rufai has sent N20million as Eid-el-Kabir gift to the 5,710 indigenes in Saudi Arabia.
Each of the pilgrims got 50 Saudi Riyals, equivalent to N3,500.
The Amirul Hajj and Emir of Birnin Gwari, Alhaji Zubairu Jibril Maigwari II, presented the governor’s widow’s mite to the pilgrims in Mina.
He said El-Rufai rejoiced with the pilgrims on the successful completion of the hajj.
The emir said: “Governor El-Rufai asked me to wish you happy sallah and congratulate you on the successful completion of the hajj. He prayed that Almighty Allah would accept your hajj.”
He urged the pilgrims to desist from spreading rumours concerning the casualties of last Thursday’s stampede in Mina, adding that they should wait for the authorities to confirm the casualty figures and get across to the victims’ families.
With a project dedicated to the poor and some entrepreneurship tools for his people, Senator Shehu Sani is making an impact in his constituency just months after joining the National Assembly, reports TONY AKOWE
It is a turning point for residents of Kaduna Central Senatorial district. They are starting to savour the joy of quality representation. Senator Shehu Sani who represents them has given back to them even before receiving his constituency vote. He launched a pet project known as Talakawa Grassroots Revolutionary Development Programme which is expected to cover areas such as education, political enlightenment, health care delivery, women and youth empowerment, sports and recreation as well as skill acquisition and capacity building.
Some of the beneficiaries were physically challenged. Some got tricycles, wheelchairs, vulcanising machines and sewing machines, among others.
Sani said the platform is a product of “our collective struggle, our resistance to the dark, reactionary forces that prey on our people’s ignorance, scavenge on their fears and uncertainties and profit from their misery. Our platform is a resounding no to the impunities of the past and the stranglehold of narrow special interests on the destiny of our communities. Our resolve is firm and unflinching for we owe no loyalty except to the common bonds of faith in our people’s abilities, our shared ideals of struggle, and our history of staunch opposition to exploitation, social and economic deprivation and the mass imbecilisation of our humanity. The political, social and cultural battles we have fought and are still currently engaged in is a testament to our indomitable will and spirit, and our untiring efforts to retrieve and remobilise our energies for the existential challenges we continuously confront. Our constituency programme is your collective project, a platform dedicated to the realisation of your dreams and expectations. Its key principles and strategic trajectories are undergirded by your vision, your will and your values. The choice of the projects to execute will be based on your conception and your material and spiritual needs. Our revolutionary method of mass empowerment aims to banish the logic of top-bottom approach to human development and emplace as its essence a development and human transformation paradigm that evolves out of your living experiences”.
Sani is not unmindful of the fact that politicians use such programmes to perpetuate themselves and hold the people to ransom while failing to fulfill their promises to the people. He is also not unmindful of the fact that elected representatives of the people collect huge sums of money as constituency projects and smile to the bank while the people suffer abject poverty, only to return with hand outs few months to election.
In response to such attitude of politicians, he promised, saying, “Our method will radically differ from the approach of such political leaders who are already disconnected and divorced from the people, who hold them in contempt, who refuse to seek out their opinions and viewpoints, and who inflict on them pains and sufferings in the name of a bogus programme of deceit that have no bearing to their daily struggles”.
Describing his effort as a new revolutionary paradigm of change, Sani, a civil rights activist before his election believe that the time has come to effect a change in the ways things are done in the country. He said “change has come to Nigeria, and to Kaduna Central, but do not be deceived for change has two logical faces. The vehicle of change- our political party- is composed of two sets of individuals and Caucuses: the Caucus of the rich and powerful who exploited its advantages to advance their reactionary political career, and the caucus of the people who are making history by taking their destiny in their hands. Our caucus is of the latter part for we see the promise of change in the eagerness of our people to better their living standard, to improve their human development index, to engage in sustainable means of livelihood, educate their children, have access to better health care delivery system, reduce maternal and infant mortality, empower the youth with new skills, capacities and job opportunities, and live in affordable houses in clean and decent neighborhoods. We have no part in the political tendency that will destroy our people’s means of livelihood, shut down their social and economic spaces, destroy the dwellings the toiled to build and run a government that alienates them. We have no part in the paradigm of change that emasculates the people, is impoverishing and demeaning them, that has outsourced their jobs for political ambitions of the future and that has prioritised arrogance and impunity as sellable mantras. The change we worked for, we gave our all is a people-driven agenda; change that will improve their lives, accommodate their interests and needs, is inclusive and compassionate. Change is not meant to cannibalise our people and feed their flesh to the gods of avarice, unconscionable ambition and disdain for all that is egalitarian and fraternal in nature.
However, Sani told The Nation that his “philosophy of change is built on the belief that our political platform must be converted into a mass movement of the people and should to serve, without delay, as an ideological weapon for mass mobilization, mass conscientisation and mass empowerment. It is a vehicle that must be expropriated from the hands of the few and brought back into the domain of the people”.
He said further that “the Talakawa Grassroots Revolutionary Development Programme is the organic transformation of our notion of the new paradigm of change into praxis. It is conceived as a sustainable, self-reinforcing community of activists, workers, women, youth and children designed to effect a qualitative change in our mode of thinking and acting with regard to our political institutions, cultural platforms, economic system and spiritual mode of existence. It is an integrated, collectively owned and action-driven agenda that will make a clear and powerful statement in the areas of utilitarian and functional education, political enlightenment essential for political and social liberation, affordable healthcare delivery system, environmental renewal and improved living spaces, women and youth empowerment under an equitable and egalitarian order and framework, job creation that will be facilitated by skills acquisition and capacity-building, and sports, recreation and general individual wellbeing. I have my thinking and ideas about the direction to go, about the key projects that will work well for our people in this regard, but my thoughts and ideas are insufficient to unfold the totality of this revolutionary agenda. To do so will be to hand down to you my thoughts alone. Because we own this project collectively, the inputs all of all critical stakeholders are required in fleshing out the ideas my team and I have been working on for quite some time”.
Speaking in the likely success of the programme, Sani said “I see the immense revolutionary potentials of our platform as a mass movement, as a weapon of liberation and human transformation. Together we are already making history, by this very beginning, this historic start. The launch of this project today signals the commencement of a revolutionary pro-people change in our constituency Kaduna central. And it is a revolution that no one, no matter how powerful, can stop, can halt, can dislodge or contaminate. The reason for this is simple: the mass of our people voted for change, a change that would make meaning in their life, a change that would free them from exploitation and plunder, a change that would free them from master-servant relationship, a change that would recognize and uphold their human dignity, a change that would end their suffering, a change that would advance their collective socio-economic interest; this is my interpretation of change and the pillar upon which the new order and the new spirit in the country can only be sustained”.
One of those who benefited from the programme who identified himself simply as Alhaji Mohammed told The Nation that for the first time in his life, he was feeling the touch of governance. He said “I have been voting since the second republic. But I have never seen anything like this. We use to hear that government gives out poverty alleviation item to people, but many of us here today have never benefited. Infact, normally don’t see these people until when it is time for election or when election is near before they come to give us rice and some few money. But this time, Senator Sani, who has just been elected has decided to put a smile on our faces early enough. I am particularly very grateful to him. He has promised t do more and I know that he will do more”.
Muhammad Kabir Abdullahi, one of his aide said the Senator decided to use his personal money for the project, adding that the programme will be expanded once constituency money is released, adding that whoever knows Shehu Sani knows him as a giver especially to the poor or the needy.
Benue State Governor, Samuel Ortom, in the early hours of Friday in Kaduna paid a condolence visit on his Kaduna State counterpart, Nasir El-Rufai, following the recent loss of his foster father, Alhaji Yahaya Hamza.
All Progressives Congress, APC, leader in Benue State and Senator representing Benue North West, Senator Dr George Akume led the condolence delegation.
Governor Ortom stated that the visit which had been scheduled earlier could not hold because of unforeseen circumstances.
[ad id=”403656″]He described the death of a dear one as painful at whatever age but urged his colleague to take solace in the fact that the deceased lived a life of committed service to his fatherland adding that all must one day return to the creator.
Senator Akume who stated that he knew the late Alhaji Hamza at the Federal Ministry of Education described him as a humble and unassuming man.
In his response Governor El-Rufai said he would always remember his cousin who adopted him at the age of eight when he lost his father as kind hearted and accomplished educationist.
The deceased was one time Secretary to Kaduna State Government and Permanent Secretary in the Federal Ministry of Education.
Governor Nasiru El-Rufai of Kaduna State on Thursday said his administration would deliver good governance to the people through a sustained fight against corruption in the state.
El- Rufa’i made the remarks during a rally tagged, “The National Day of Action against Corruption and for Good Governance’’, organised by the joint labour unions in the state.
According to him, the APC-led government is the government of the masses and is committed to safeguarding the rights of all.
“As a public officer and servant to the people, it is my responsibility to ensure that the right thing is done always.’’
The governor assured the state’s civil servants that their salaries would be paid before the Eid-el-Kabir celebration, saying “we won’t wait for Federal Government’s monthly allocation.’’
El-Rufai assured the labour unions in the state that he would forward their demands to President Muhammadu Buhari on Friday, Sept. 11.
In a joint statement, the unions called on the President to ensure that all funds identified to have been stolen from the common treasury were traced and recovered to the last kobo.
The statement was signed by the Chairman, Kaduna Council of the Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC), Malam Adamu Ango and his counterpart at the Trade Union Congress (TUC), Malam Shehu Mohammad.
The statement urged the federal government to ensure that the recovered funds were kept “in a special account and are appropriated for job creation, funding educational infrastructure and upgrading the health-care infrastructure’’.
“We also support and call for the establishment of special anti-corruption courts to try corruption cases in the country,’’ the union leaders stated.
It recommended that all public officers, elected or appointed, should publicly declare their assets and liabilities upon assumption of office.
The statement said there was an urgent need to review and strengthen the nation’s anti-corruption laws to eliminate loopholes and allow for proper prosecution of offenders.
“Anti-graft agencies should be well funded and should as a matter of urgency, extend their searchlight to the other two tiers of government,’’ they stated.
The labour leaders commended President Buhari on his various actions against the menace of corruption in the country since his assumption of office.
Kaduna State government has partnered PAN Nigeria Limited in the area of youth empowerment.
The state governor Mallam Nasir El-Rufai said this when the board of PAN Nigeria Limited paid him a visit at his office.
The governor informed the team that his administration is committed to the development of the youth through skills acquisition programmes, and explained that the state is currently partnering capacity building organisations, such as PAN Learning Center (PLC) to train youths in automotive repair skills.
The governor, who was represented by the state Chief of Staff, Mrs Hadiza Bala Usman, said government will help in the advocacy for the legislation of the new automotive policy introduced last year by the Federal Government to ensure its sustenance and positive impact to the Nigerian auto industry.
He promised that the state would patronise Peugeot products as long as the products are competitive in terms of cost effectiveness and superior value for money which are part of the principles of the new administration’s policy.Earlier in his speech, PAN Nigeria Limited Managing Director Alhaji Ibrahim, took time to reel out the history of PAN, its status then and now in the Nigeria’s auto market
Boyi said it was painful to see the company that was thriving as the leading indigenous auto company both in terms of sales and employment opportunities, now strives to regain its position.
The implication of which according to the him, led to privatisation and so many job cuts from the initial over 4,000 workforce in the early 80s, to about 300 now on its payroll.
