Tag: TANKO AL-MAKURA

Human rights activist Jonathan Ubandoma, who highlights the issues that will shape the next governorship election in Nasarawa State, contends that Governor Tanko Al-Makura deserves a second term.

Four years ago, Nasarawa State was one of the most backward states in the federation. Roads were bad. Social amenities were inadequate. In Lafia, Keffi, Nasawan Toto and Akwanga, people thirsted for dividends of democracy.

That was the situation in the 12 years of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP). Strife, barbarism, backwardness, discord, disharmony and an indolent work-force stagnated the progress of the state.

The picture was indeed, made worse by the acrimony that ruled the political firmament. People were generally unhappy. Those were lucky to lean on the government by executing jobs contracted out to them did it in good faith but were treated like slaves because the jobs were done but the governors refused to honour their part of the contract and so left people to go hungry.  A hungry man, they say, is an angry man. The state, from Lafia to Keffi, Marraraba, Akwanga and Doma, was inhabited by nothing but angry people.

This discontent continued, until the 2011 elections when a messiah in the name of Umar Tanko Al Makura stepped up to the plate and offered to drag the state out of the economic, political and social doldrums in which it found itself. Then resistance to change began to manifest. The core establishment in the state was not in the mood to give up power to a caring and responsive government so it stood firmly in the way of what seemed like a silver lining at the end of the Nasarawa tunnel. At a point, when the presidential candidate of the CPC Muhammadu Buhari, to which the agent of change Umar Tanko Al Makura, alias Taal, belonged wanted to visit the state, the entire civil service and indeed the entire traditional institution in the state was ordered to look the other way. Those who the gods want to destroy, they say, they first make mad.

The people of Nasarawa are very progressive people. They are also a very rational people. They are well endowed in both human capital and natural resources and their accomplishment in several fields since they existed in the old Benue Plateau State leading to Plateau State from where they were created knows no bounds. So, the masses of Nasarawa are not about to be blind-folded into believing that the spook works better than the mannequin. That singular resistance to change by the traditional institution as dictated by the state government became the game-changer. Nasarawa people read the handwriting on the wall and decided to stand by the truth. They voted en masse for Taal.

The beautiful cosmopolis that is emerging in Lafia and other towns in the state today are not an accident of history. They are the fruit of the germination of an idea that was about to be buried with the decent and dedicated citizens of a state that would have lived under a perpetual bondage as designed by the PDP. When he began to vie for the governorship of the state and was asked why he was so determined since he was a man of means who did not need the state to live in opulence and luxury, Taal said just one word transformation. It is argued in many academic quarters that the word transformation was synonymous with the Taal campaigns before the Goodluck Jonathan administration adopted it. One man jocularly said in a debate that the word did not originate with Goodluck but the “Goodkid” from Nasarawa, Umar Tanko Al-Makura. And it is so carried. When asked to buttress his argument, he said the good kid Al Makura or Taal has over turned the sorry situation in the state which was soaked in poor infrastructure, unemployment, dearth of economic opportunities, deliberate falsehood and poor service delivery to a state full of hope and promise which is gradually imbibing a human face.

In the past, the state was a ghost. Today, Nasarawa is evolving as a face that its people could be proud of. In fact the first civilian governor of the state Dr Abdullahi Adamu has thrown his weight and total allegiance to this achiever whose drive to move the state forward has no rival. Already, just three years into his administration, there are well-paved roads in all the major towns of the state. There are also health care facilities that are equipped with modern tools and affordable drugs. This situation has also begun to attract qualified medical personnel and auxiliary workers who would once desert the state like a plague.

Agriculture, the mainstay of the state has seen a boost. Improved seedlings are everywhere and the fertilizer scarcity that used to be the bane of the average farmer has become history. While agric is getting a boost education is being embellished. A walk across the state shows that several schools have received a make-over and the quality of teaching is looking up. The feeding of wards in the states schools have improved because learning is not as easy on a hungry stomach. To show that this is a socially responsible government, the downtrodden in the communities like women and people living with disabilities have since endorsed this administration as the one that serves their interests the most. It is a testimony of greatness and a large heart.

But, while all these are home truths more palatable is the decongestion of the city by the restriction imposed on commercial motorcyclists who used to swarm Lafia and surrounding towns like bees to honey. Worse even are the atrocities that used to be associated with them in the areas of street violence and petty crimes. These are gone with the decisive action of the governor who put his foot down to deal with the menace regardless of whose ox is gored. Today the once inclement traffic situation caused by these cyclists has been turned to a marital bliss between two wheels, tricycles and automobiles, something that once looked impossible to boot.