Perhaps, the trajectory of HadizaBala Usman, in the last few years, is akin to that of Okonkwo, the lead character of Chinua Achebe’s ‘’Things Fall Apart.’’ At 40, through solid personal achievements, the lady has soared to great heights within a short time. However, unlike Okonkwo, HajiyaHadiza is a blue blood, she also has name recognition and the lady is from the upper middle class family of intellectuals. In Nigeria, these attributes open doors for people, making most of them laid back and indolent in typical Aje Butter fashion. With Hadiza, the story is different as ‘struggle’ has been her way of life from the cradle.
Significantly, the mustard seed was sown in Zaria, at the Samaru main Campus of Ahmadu Bello University (ABU), where she was born, nurtured and groomed. Specifically, HajiyaHadiza’s character was forged in the furnace of idealism, when ABU was the hot-bed of radical scholarship. More so, Dr YusufuBala Usman, her late father, was the leading light of the leftist ideology. At that time, ABU boasted of the best and the brightest minds in the intellectual world. From primary to secondary school, up to her first degree, Hadiza had lived and schooled in that environment, and naturally, the constant search for the truth, which is the essence of scholarship, has rubbed off on her over the years.
So, with a degree in Business Administration, Hadiza went to the United Kingdom, where she bagged a Master’s degree at the University of Leeds in 2009. However, instead of securing a cozy job in the banking or oil and gas sectors, she opted to be a researcher at the Centre for Democratic Development and Research Training (CEDDERT). Thereafter, she went to the Bureau for Public Enterprises (BPE), where she met with Malam Nasir El Rufai, the then Director General of the agency.
In 2003, when El Rufai became Minister of Federal Capital Territory (FCT), Hadiza joined him as Special Assistant on Project Implementation. Afterwards, she plunged into full time activism and politics.
Significantly, HajiyaHadiza and a few patriots, across geo-political and religious divides, formed the Good Governance Group, a policy think tank that was committed to accountability. Severally, the group had x-rayed policy issues, critiqued state and federal budgets as well as highlighted abuse of office. Hadiza, according to reports, was the engine room of the group as she and her colleagues, on several platforms, have held governments to account and criticized sundry infractions.
Thereafter, she crossed over to politics and, along with like minds, teamed up with General Muhammadu Buhari to form the Congress for Progressive Change (CPC). Specifically, she contested for the House of Representatives, especially in Musawa/Matazu Federal Constituency. However, the PDP candidate defeated her in a controversial manner. But instead of contesting his victory, she moved on to other party engagements. In particular, HajiyaHadiza and other CPC stalwarts, including El Rufai, midwifed the historic merger with Action Congress of Nigeria (ACN) and the All Nigeria Peoples Party (ANPP) as well as a rump of All Progressives Grand Alliance (APGA).
Ironically, in spite of all these, HajiyaHadiza had remained largely in the shadows but for the Chibok school girls’ saga, where female students of Government Secondary School Chibok in Borno State, were kidnapped. Hadiza, Ms Oby Ezekwesili, former Minister of Education and other activists had teamed up to form the Bring Back Our Girls(BBOG) campaign, an advocacy group that raised awareness on the plight of the Chibok girls. The activists, at that time, risked their lives and limbs to protest the inertia of the Jonathan administration over the abduction. Regularly, the group held vigils, addressed the press and staged peaceful demonstrations around Unity Fountain Abuja, sometimes with tear gas canisters flying over their heads.
Significantly, after President Goodluck Jonathan’s defeat, Hadiza became the Chief of Staff of Governor El Rufai, where she took charge of the goings on of Sir Kashim Ibrahim House, as Kaduna Government House is referred to. In that position, she re-organised the seat of power, drew up an elaborate organogram and insisted that political appointees deliver on their assigned schedules. Particularly, she led by example and instead of threatening and throwing her weight around, Hajiya rebuked erring staff in private. In fact, the former Chief of Staff, according to reports, was the voice of restraint within El Rufai’s kitchen cabinet. Always, Hadiza resorted to the force of reason, instead of forcing people to be reasonable. In my opinion, this attribute will help Hadiza in her new national assignment. However, even before settling down, several projectiles are being fired at her.
Specifically, critics have picked holes on her appointment and in summary; their arguments can be reduced into three points. First, they argued that Hadiza lacks the experience to head NPA and that her Curriculum Vitae is not rich enough for the appointment. Second, her appointment is seen in some quarters as another example of the president’s nepotism as both Hadiza and Buhari are from Katsina State. Third, some critics prefer ‘’an insider’’ who knows NPA through and through, instead of a ‘neophyte’ who will spend years learning on the job.
In short, some ‘’pundits’’ have dismissed her as a square peg in a round hole, on account of her age, academic qualification and experience.
First and foremost, Section 2(a) and (c) of the constitution, the supreme law of the land, states that any Nigerian who is 40 years of age and has been educated up to at least school certificate level or its equivalent, can aspire to be president of Nigeria. At 40, with two degrees in her kitty, HajiyaHadiza is qualified to be president, let alone the Managing Director of NPA. As for nepotism, the accusation is not supported by facts because it was RotimiAmaechi, the Minister of Transport, that nominated Hadiza to the president for the post. The Minister is from Rivers and not Katsina State. In making the nomination, Amaechi was guided by the need for geographical spread in his ministry. Right now, the Nigerian Maritime Administration and Safety Agency (NIMASA) and the Nigerian Railway Corporation(NRC) are both headed by southerners and NPA, Ameachi had argued, should go to the north for equitable distribution of appointments. In any case, Alhaji Habib Abdullahi, the immediate past MD is from the north, so were his predecessors, Alhaji Sanusi Ado Bayero and Architect AminuDabo. Similarly, those who favour an insider for the top NPA job miss the point. Right now, the agency needs someone with fresh ideas, who can think outside the box and not an MD who has spent donkey years doing the same thing and expecting different results.
Above all, NPA needs a steady pair of hands and someone with integrity, in order to reposition the six major ports under it. In this regard, Hadiza has earned her spurs as an Administrative Secretary of the Buhari Presidential Campaign Organisation, a member of APC Strategy Committee and the Director of Kaduna State APC Campaign Council. As Achebe noted in Things Fall Apart, ‘when a child washes his hands, he can eat with a king’. Clearly, HajiyaHadiza’s clean hands are needed to turn NPA around.
Bayero, writes from Kaduna State.
