Right from his days as Minister of Federal Capital Territory, Mallam Nasir el-Rufai, has carved the image of a no-nonsense, incorruptible and industrious public servant who knows what he wants and goes for it without delay. When he held sway at the capital city, Abuja, and he worked assiduously to restore it to its original plan. He demolished illegal structures belonging to the low, the high and the mighty, including churches and mosques. He personally supervised demolitions of houses of Senate President, PDP chairman, the Inspector General of Police and those of prominent Nigerians and dared anyone who stood on his way.
When he offered himself to run for the governorship of Kaduna State in the 2015 General Election, he promised to turn the fortunes of the state for the better. He promised the people free education and creation of over 3,000 jobs, among others. He allayed their fears that he would not use his Abuja style to run the affairs of Kaduna since they are different.
The people believed him and overwhelmingly voted him into power. And on assuming office, he did not tarry a bit. He constituted his cabinet and hit the ground running when other governors were still basking in the euphoria of their victory at the polls.
First, he reduced the number of commissioners in the state from 23 to 13. He scrapped some ministries and merged some others. He banned all allocations of fertilizers to traditional rulers and politicians and distributed them to real farmers in the state.
El-Rufai blazed the trail in reducing his salary and that of his deputy by 50 per cent. He stopped annual Ramadan welfare packages and ordered biometric verification for civil servants in the state.
In no time, El-Rufai bagged Governors’ Performance Award from a Lagos based Centre for International and Professional Studies which conducts monthly performance review of governors in the country. The group used such criteria as readiness for office, innovation in office, ability to be in tune with the mood of the nation, security and leadership to score him first.
But one thing that has pit Governor El-Rufai and the ordinary people of the state is his decision to take beggars off the streets of Kaduna. After the bomb blast of June 11, in the midst of civil servants crowded for the biometric verification in Sabon Gari Local Government Area which left 26 dead and 35 injured, El-Rufai perhaps thought that the beggars posed a security risk, that terrorists could use them to cause mayhem and so banned begging in the state.
Since then the state has known no peace as beggars staged public demonstration and challenged the governor to a contest of will. They threatened him with legal action to force their fundamental rights of freedom of movement and association as well as spiritual attack. The people lamented that contrary to El-Rufai’s promise during campaigns to stamp out poverty, he has visited them with hardship and misery. They accuse him of threatening their livelihood, demolishing their shops, houses and their businesses in the name of making Kaduna the Dubai of Africa. They therefore swore to bring down his government unless he rescinds his decision. The physically challenged persons dared him and returned to the streets.
El-Rufai seems to have come to terms with the implications of the obnoxious policy and reversed himself by appointing a visually challenged man as Special Assistant to the Governor on Disability. The beggars returned to the streets.
Even then, the people seem not to be assuaged by that action. And one man who has consistently challenged El-Rufai is Comrade Shehu Sani, the Senator representing Kaduna North Central in the National Assembly. Comrade, an APC Senator, is also President of the Civil Rights Congress of Nigeria, a human rights organisation based in Kaduna.
Comrade Sani insisted that El-Rufai must understand that he is presiding over human beings that have suffered enough and must not add to their hardship. “I do not mean anything harmful or bad to him. I feel pained; in some parts of Kaduna today, you will see groups of people sitting down and saying they regretted voting for APC and even some of them came out to be praising Ramalan Yero (former governor) and other PDP people. It gives me a lot of pain…There is no way I would like to see my people saying that if they had known they wouldn’t have voted for us because, we came in and that we were oppressing them, denying them, demolishing their houses and all that we said we were coming to do, we refused to do,” he said in an interview recently.
Some have said he is attacking Governor el-Rufai because he wants to be governor in 2019. But he said it is only El-Rufai’s supporters who could say so because he knew that if he (Sani) had wanted to be governor when he came out to contest, El-Rufai could not have become governor.
Sani insisted: “Our people need socio-economic liberation. Our people need jobs, they need medicare and education; they need to be freed from economic bondage which they have found themselves in. So if you are in government, your priority should be how to make life better for people, from the position you met them.”
He said that El-Rufai’s programmes and policies are clearly alienating the people and attracting anger and condemnation on APC and anybody associated with the party.
But whatever is the motive, the point has to be made that while trying to develop Kaduna he should not sacrifice the very people who voted him into power. He should provide alternative means of survival for the victims of the quantum demolition, alternative markets for traders, and rehabilitation centres for the beggars. He should provide shelters for handicapped, create jobs for those adversely affected by demolitions and pay compensation for those who have lost their houses of abode.
This reminds me of a story I read recently about a blind boy. The blind boy sat on the step of a building with a hat by his feet. He held up a sign which read, “I am blind, please help me.” For hours only few coins were dropped in the hat. A man passing by noticed it; he took the sign, turned it around and wrote some words and put it back so that any passer-by could see it. Soon many people started giving money to the boy.
The man who wrote the words came around to see what was happening. The boy recognised his footsteps and asked,” Are you the one who changed my sign this morning? What did you write?” I wrote, “Today is beautiful, but I cannot see it.” The first sign simply said the boy is blind but the second told the people that they were so lucky they were not blind. We could have been like any of the less-privileged. Their condition is no fault of theirs. We should have pity and provide solution to their problems rather than compound them.
- Okafor writes from Lagos.
