In this piece, Yakubu Lamai reflects on the achievements of Nasarawa State Governor Tanko al-Makura and justifications for his second term bid.
For many Nigerians, our most fervent prayer in 2015 is that the political campaigns and elections should be hinged on issues rather than insults and violence. A quick flashback will remind us that the 2011 election in Nasarawa State, which brought Umaru Tanko Al-Makura to power, had the trappings of a revolution.
Remarkably, it proceeded without any form of violence. Once upon a time the ordinary folk of Nasarawa were seen as docile, weak and without voice by the political elite but then in 2011, they rose against all odds to cast, escort and defend their votes thereby burying what they rightly felt was “the politics of false promises!” At that time, the will of the people was that change must come to Nasarawa State and they were resolute in their choice of Umaru Tanko Al-Makura who offered himself as the candidate who had broken away from the status quo to lead the march to positive change in the state. The masses believed and propelled him to send packing a sitting Governor in the person of Aliyu Akwe Doma. Till date, the flight of Umaru Tanko Almakura to victory in 2011 has remained as jolting as it was revolutionary. A day after INEC announced him as Governor, on Tuesday 27th April 2011, Umaru Tanko Al-Makura declared: “May I use this opportunity to thank my fellow contestants, most especially Governor Aliyu Akwe Doma OON, Madaucin Doma, for a very interesting and vibrant contest. There are no losers in this victory. It is a victory for the entire people of Nasarawa State!”
From 2010, when he threw his hat into the ring to wrest Nasarawa State from stagnation, there was an evident sense of mission about Umaru Tanko Al-Makura. As at 2011 there was a corrosive level of infrastructural decay in the state and the near absence of facilities in urban and rural areas. There was no single asphalt road in Lafia. Some popularly referred to the capital city as a glorified village. Streets were locked in sand and no traffic light existed in the entire state. At the time of Al-Makura’s coming, doctors were on strike and teachers in the state polytechnic and Nasarawa state university were also on industrial action and inspite of the fact that the state was mired in staggering financial debt; the new minimum wage had not been implemented. The electoral victory of Al-Makura became a symbolic expression of the courage and sacrifices of struggling people who were tired of being tired and the explosive spill-over of the pent up frustration of disaffected young men and women who were dissatisfied with the lacklustre performance of government in Nasarawa State.
Undaunted by the task ahead, Umaru Tanko Al-Makura noted in his inaugural speech that Nasarawa state since its creation “has been held hostage to the excesses and folly of its rulers” and his ascendance represented “a decent burial to the politics of pettiness, division and false promises” that had plagued the body politic of the State. Consequently in the three and a half years of stewardship that has since followed, Umaru Tanko Al-Makura took a clear stand to which he made no apology: the old order and the vested interests that sustained it had to be swept aside for the sake of conducting a people oriented style of governance where leadership must move decisively to change the face of Nasarawa State! This stance put Tanko Al-Makura in direct firing line and confrontation with the elite, who were used to partaking in the spoils of power.
Since its creation in 1976, the laws of Nasarawa State have not been compiled and documented until Al-Makura came. With the administration’s hands-on approach, the state government procured and distributed earth-moving equipment to each of the three senatorial zones, for the construction and rehabilitation of rural roads. To boost the morale of workers Governor Al-Makura was among the first to fully adopt and implement the national minimum wage of (N18, 900) and ensure that no child pays school fees in public schools, while government also took on the added responsibility to pay for NECO exams on behalf of all graduating students in secondary schools. Al-Makura has also revived the moribund policy of paying scholarship allowance to all students of Nasarawa State origin in Tertiary institutions and made medicine available to the poor through the long dead initiative of drug revolving scheme. Under the sterling leadership of Al-Makura, Nasarawa State has continued to set the pace by being the first to fully digitize its state owned broadcast organization, the first to employ its youth in a state owned security outfit christened NAYES and the first in a wide array of landmark achievements attained by his administration. In summary, Umaru Tanko Al-Makura has within three-and-a half years changed the discourse about the flourishing of worthy political leadership in Nasarawa State. He has lifted the bar for development and set a new standard to which others who aspire to become governor cannot fall below. He has exposed the lie that government does not have enough money, means and resources to develop her state and better the lives of people. Without being a magician and without borrowing loans, Umaru Tanko Al-Makura has applied the most stringent economic approach to manage the little resources at his disposal and has affected a turnaround that will be permanently etched in the annals of history.
2011 is gone and now we are at the doorstep of another cycle of elections in 2015 and as the storms gather; observers have paused to see if 2015 will turn out to become the second chapter in the “Umaru Tanko Al-Makura Revolution”, or has fatigue gradually chipped away and eroded the revolutionary turncoat of ordinary people in Nasarawa state? One thing is certain though, Nasarawa State will be a hot spot during the 2015 elections for the singular reason that Governor Umaru Tanko Al-Makura has exceeded every index of development and surpassed the performance of every other administration since the creation of the state, and since there is nothing to fault about the quality of his performance; the opposition will hammer on the twin facts that Al-Makura did not share the state’s money among the political elite and point out that the spate of ethno-religious and communal conflicts as well as politically orchestrated violence increased during his tenure.
With such an enviable bill of health, those who are determined to uproot Al-Makura will seek to avoid campaign on the basis of “issues,” but hinge their mudslinging and attack on the slippery slopes of religion and ethnic sentiment. Their game-plan will be to inflame passions so as to sway constructive logic and becloud the truth of the matter. This strategy they believe will detract the attention of electorates from evaluating and focusing on the exemplary performance of Governor Umaru Tanko Al-Makura, but instead they will be swayed to vote on the basis of religion and ethnic sentiment. To achieve this goal these power mongers will put at risk, the fragile peace which the people of Nasarawa have fought so hard to keep. On the altar of political ambition, they will take for granted the lessons of history that good and bad events occur and violence may erupt but peace is not the product of a victory or a command. Peace building has no finishing line, no final deadline, and no fixed definition of achievement. Peace is a never-ending process, the work of many decisions and unless they as leaders of society set aside the coloration of their political parties and reach across the aisle to engage in a campaign that is issued based and centred on development, rather than mired in sentiment; then Nasarawa like many other parts of Nigeria is likely to breakup into permanent divisions and ranks of hatred.
The philosopher Avishai Margalit who wrote the book: “On Compromise and Rotten Compromises” reflected deeply upon human values and described compromise to mean a meeting of the minds, striking a balance, finding a happy medium between two extremes, or meeting someone halfway. In political life, compromise is often used in the context of furthering one’s goals. But knowing when to negotiate, when to be accommodating, and when to resist can have far-reaching consequences. However a rotten compromise is a compromise one should not sign under any circumstances.
