Kwankwasocracy: Government of A Saint

With the return of democracy, the child of Lincoln as we know by layman definition as government of the people by the people and for the people, another form of rulership exits. And the people of Kano were met with a brilliant person who would introduce and champion this course.

Moving into the Government House in 1999, before he lost 2003 gubernatorial election to a poor man  he humiliated from a permanent secretary position to being a “wretched” classroom teacher, he started working, spending all his time for the people, manning tractors to clear fields for projects. His has been an engineer. Out of some mysterious luck, the poor man in an old rickety Volkswagen emerged as his party flag bearer, but had no resources to carry out the task of Nigerian expensive electioneering. Old moneys and power-brokers intervened. The Alhaji ‘Tall’ and Alhaji ‘Short’ sponsored the candidature, mortgaging the State Government into the hand of some individuals. After the election, they turned the state allocation into a group personal saving where every contributor would come to collect his share. The regime cronies, political appointees and high-end contractors wined and dined with the state resources where they excluded masses from being part of the regime. The government was for all and the benefits were for the few.

Instead of being obeyed, now the chief Executive had to receive and obey directives. The elites surrounding him took the Mallam in as a docile and politically no-brain. Wasn’t it from their favour he became the state governor? The political appointees and their accomplice civil servants added ghost workers to the payroll of various ministries, and unlike the “rationale” Kwankwaso, they schemed a kind of expensive family-friends scholarship to send their children abroad. Lot of off-side scores and the referee turned away his eyes. Kanonians, elites and masses needed a laid-back regime.

When he lost his re-election in 2003, he went to serve a capacity in the Nigerian armed forces which the military training steeled his mind.  But it was not just that, Kwankwaso went into what one might call political sabbatical where he carefully observed and understood the circumstances that led to his loss. The ousted governor had been preparing and hardening to regain his lost throne. “Why on earth they voted me out?”  He was complaining why people refused to accept him of all his projects in rural electrification, education and health. Perhaps, the projects were of low-standard and awarded on inflated cost.  So he learnt the lesson, understood the rule and the psychology of the poor. “These people, I know what they want.” He muttered jn anguish, yearning enviously for the gubernatorial seat while experiencing the bitter and harsh humiliation the masses subjected him to.

First, he needed to be prudent with fiscal responsibility and had to make sure he write his name in gold, and punish all his enemies. He deployed any available means he had and demonized the incumbent as a careless regime run by the Halimas and Sadiyas surrounded by commissioners who disobeyed executive directives. Of course he would easily win the election “with a landslide” since the Halimas “were accused of adultery” in our fervent religious society. It was election eve and this strategy had worked perfectly.  But there were other hitches to be cleared from his way smoothly to the Government House. Kwankwaso went to Abuja and pleaded the abolishing of the White Paper that prevented him from contesting in 2007 gubernatorial election. White paper not black, now he would be a saint.

The white paper hampered his dream to be in the Government House during 2003 gubernatorial election. It was cleared and now the former governor had a perfect point to strike in 2011. Kano needed a leader, and that’s where the Kwankwasocarcy exists! The civilian dictator.

With the hysteria of free ganja and hard drugs, deluded  gangling marauders went to political rally around the forty-four local governments of the state, the ganja-smokers found a convenient resort free of law enforcement influence, and the entire electorates of female and shallow-minded young adults were easily wooed by a song. In this return, everyone should get into his right senses. He would not apply the method he used almost a decade ago. Instead, he would double his effort to outdo his predecessor and would categorically make a different government. He would not rule like the coward Mallam who allowed his cabinet members to influence his decision.

It’s a kind of government with bold, brave and strong leader, our own Pharaoh! - who is to possess and wield enormous power and impose his will without cabinet consultations, and at the detriment of the sovereign interest and opinion of the poor. The commissioners, PAs and SAs and other political appointees are mere ceremonial. The sole ruler knows it all and any political appointment is at the mercy of the benefactor. Members of the legislature are the biggest puppets; they cannot check his actions according to the Kano State Constitution where many of them was elected under the banner of his “legendry” Kwankwasiya ideology of which without it, most of them could not have won their seats.  Can’t you see now, the civil dictatorship?

High cabinet members and political beggars are obliged to identify with a red symbol like members of a mafia group and bow before the presence of the Chief Executive. Top government cabinets must also remove their shoes and sit on the floor while the Governor is luxuriating and wagging his leg on the executive throne.  His speech mannerism carries orders and bears aristocratic sensation, commanding and imposing. Kwankwasocarcy is a form of government dressed and presented as democracy with beneath layer of autocracy.

It is the rulership of a sole looter facilitated by cronies and family members, a system where the wife would not make public appearance like the Halimas but will go secretly to receive contracts for interlocking the sate from her construction firm with the renovation of the newly inaugurated projects subject to renewal, depending upon the targeted contract kickback her company wants to accumulate at a given time. This reckless and frequent demolishing of recent constructions is extremely disturbing as if the administration doesn’t have brilliant minds to foresee and design the whole process. Oh, I am a fool; Abubakar you just can’t understand, it isn’t a backdoor for the inflow of infinite commission. 

The Garos would be nominated market chairmen to stop the fifteen thousand Naira annual allowances of the poor markets workers. They are the contractors of fuel and food supply to the government house. They could be nominated party chairmen and later posted as respective chairmen of their various local governments.

The Deputy Governor is held with complete contempt and disdain, treated as a houseboy whose master can send him on errand from Kano to Kaduna and upon his return can instantly be sent to Abuja again. While the governor is travelling abroad, any executive responsibility would be transferred to an in-law, the unofficial deputy governor who is the only trusted person throughout the cabinet to oversee the state affairs. Every government projects that would fetch “big ten per cent,” the bridge, the Northwest University, the road and whatnots, are directed to his ministry, so that all the money would be shared among father, mother, daughter and the son-in-law and their grandchildren. Isn’t that a smart technique?

It’s in this regime that a road construction would be initiated with the surface intention, but beneath lies a hidden motive of punishing political adversary. They would destroy his home. That’s just it, while there are other places that are in much need of such constructions. They would never do them because a perceived enemy and member of the opposing camp will be using the road.

Of course there is free education on the executive papers and media reports. The primary and secondary schools which the government relieved the burden of collecting money from the parents, now have to struggle with maintenance,  fining the pupils to buy chalk, brooms, aerosol, sterilizer and other basic materials. They also have to beg residents to assist with the teaching. If you’re not a school teacher, please keep silent and hurriedly go ask one. Free education while teachers are nursing untold agony because making loud complaint could cause the termination of their contract. Can you please remember that under this regime, political criticism is highly tolerable? I’m afraid if they would not search me out and send me to Gwauron Dutse.

There is also this mistrust between parents and their children initiated by the government’s hypocrisy. Parents get confused when a son comes to ask for a university fee. They damn believe that education is free to every son and daughter of the state, so why asking for more even when government has paid? Unknown to them, because they only listen to radio programs where the political mouth-soldiers are stationed, those in BUK, ABU and Sokoto haven’t received bank alert for the refunding of their last year’s fees, and have to register again for the new academic calendar because the government is so much efficient and thrifty, the reason that has prevented them from releasing the money. You see, even the health sector has been subsidized where the pregnant must buy a razor and cotton while delivering. I think there is so much exaggeration at the expanse of reality. we are being used by someone  to sell currency across the country. What do you see, huh?

In terms of recruitment, the application procedure is designed in such a way that one must have not known somebody who is a card-carrying member of the red cap revolutionary group. The applicant must not also wear red cap or else he would be turned down. When being a member of a cult group became a requirement for job employment? This way, the government would prevent the recruitment of ghost workers and bring sanity to the civil service where people would be employed on fairness and justice, that’s, a system free of any political affiliation. If fortunately the applicant’s surname bears the name of an antagonist, you surely believe he (won’t) be admitted. This has unequivocally not discriminated many against their right of being eligible candidate. 

It’s prudent government that requires sizable employees of the in-law of Gwanis and sons of Garos where they enjoy whimsy transfer from ministry to ministry even when they prove notoriously incompetent. You could remember that lecturer who enjoyed such privilege. Who can enjoy this if not the son of somebody who has his mouth close to the government’s ears?

Kwankwasocarcy is the appreciation of autocratic adventurism, political corner-cutting and hypocrisy led by a former/serving looter who attempts, but fails, to delude the masses. A government where the ruler connived against the masses to remove fuel subsidy and attempted to stifle and destruct any media that sought to report the happening during the Occupy Nigeria protest. What is worrying is how he secretly and smartly corners the public fund and appears as if nothing has ever happened. The fencing of the government house at #655 million is outrageous, 4billion Naira for hotel bill, 800 hundred million Naira to renovate roundabouts and the extra-judicial sacking of the state university Vice Chancellor. Can we please talk about the cost of his presidential campaign? It will take a century to find someone so smart like Kwankwaso and yet dangerously witless.

We are robbed in a mysterious way and we’re jubilating while the culprit, a mistaken devil seen as a saint, turns around gladly and laughs at our naïveté. It is the same Kwankwaso who ordered the shipment of three SUV Toyota armored cars similar to Stella Udua’s, only that her case was in another country where corruption is not common stealing, and nobody talked about that because the governor casts a spell on our people. We only kept silent, because we want to encourage him, but that doesn’t mean we are stupid.

We are a society where people feel well satisfied from the “little they get from the status quo” and see any change as horrendous. I guess, people are jubilating because they see streetlights, overhead bridges, free education and sponsorship of Kano State indigenes to study abroad. Thanks to Kwankwaso, he had improved very little than other governors who could not curve their avarice from the loot of fuel subsidy scam. But what would he have done with the fund owned by all of us if he has not worked for us? I will apply for the scholarship, I am also a Kano indigene.

While Shekarau administration was crowded with nouveau-riche exhibitionists who emerged recently from poverty, they understood government as a means of primitive accumulation of wealth: as an opportunity of bringing more wives, building more houses and cruising expensive cars while unbearably conceited and uninterested in developing the state. Impartially, the kwankwaso administration had also passed through this phase. What we are witnessing in the present time is a next stage of the former case, which is equally another primordial way of wealth acquisition shamelessly brought to modern times, where the powerful autocrat lords it over the weak. Isn’t it medieval capitalism?    

He tries so hard to appear saint by shifting the blame upon opposition politicians who are also friends in another way. Kwankwaso accused Shekarau of selfish allocation of fund to build a mansion after the expiration of the latter’s  tenancy at Africa House, while the former could strike a deal to collect the selfish allocation. “Ok, Shekarau how much? I need that money too.” 

Other politicians accidently found themselves in unlucky circumstances, and because of the mass propaganda and politicization of the insurgency; the opposition are trapped in a tight corner. They are being painted to appear devil in the public eyes, using Jonathan and PDP as scapegoats and Buhari and APC as a smokescreen to hoodwink the masses and get away with their loot. Now he is in the height of sainthood, away from the PDP of OBJs and Kwankwasos where a whole big oil ship disappeared while serving as Defence Minister. Or was it reported it sunk without the death of her crew?

You know Abuja office is very seductive; one can easily be susceptible where anti-graft law is so lax. The interesting thing of life is its dynamism, to borrow from a linguist David Shariatmadari, “today’s mistake would be tomorrow’s rigorously defended norm” and that’s why we have mistaken devils we are celebrating today.

Now, he takes our collective intelligence so mildly for granted which he thinks will allow him do anything and easily pass because he is in the APC. We are awake and vigilant with our eyes open. The reason we voted the Shekaraus out was their haughty show of sole ownership of the state resources and mismanagement. Yours kwankwaso, I’m afraid, is beyond this because of your unreserved show of monopoly, unbridled contempt of our intelligence and total lack of empathy. You exercise an aristocratic and autocratic control not only over our resources but also our intelligence, and that’s the reason we are telling the world we aren’t in slave colony.

I’m not supporting his plan of maintaining firm grip on our politics. If only to be a governor requires you first to be a deputy governor, then many governorship aspirants with progressive mind could not realize their dreams. So what if only to be a senator demands that you must have initially served as a governor? Can you tell any difference which parts our beloved Kwankwaso of our darling APC from Babangida Mu’azu of PDP in their bid to relocate to the former governors’ forum?

Forgive me god, I have committed hellish sin. I know my reward is hell for such grave sin of abusing one of your prophets. Should I enter paradise if I don’t apologize? I doubt much. Let me do so quickly before violent disciples lynch me:

Please, I am also a die-hard supporter of Kwankwaso. I can even die because of him, can you? -  while his sons are there at Ivy League. I believe in his commitments towards human development, economic policies and other progressive initiatives. He would always be remembered for the good work he has done as a Kano State governor who sponsored thousands of Kanonians to study in and out of the country irrespective of their family background. The first governor who introduced various learning institutions and vocational centers. The first governor who built subways and the longest flyover ever in Nigeria. There are many achievements, the “first” is endless that he becomes the first governor whose stubborn stupidity only helps construct his coffin.

Happy New Year!