My City, My State, My One-Year Disappointment in Ganduje

Two narratives sprang up in support of Ganduje during election last year. Those throwing weight behind him tried to convince us that his academic background as PhD holder and work experiences would make him a promising leader.

I have never been moved nor impressed by the blitz of this rhetoric. I would not allow myself to be voluntarily fooled by sterling résumé and impressive academic credentials of any politician or public servant. There are ways and ways and you don’t know which they follow to get their papers. That says, only a fool could beat his chest and vouch the competence of high-ranking officials. The achievements of our officials always seem to work against them. They appear more dullards and dunces than we earlier saw them before comparing their papers with their performance record. Very few of them have the track record of turning things around in public service, before transitioning to politics to descend further into the pit. We are wrong to assume that PhD-holding politicians would be anything good. Experiences have repeatedly show us how they end up “ineffectual buffoons” in office.  

People have been arguing that Ganduje would complete the projects initiated by Kwankwaso, his predecessor in office. I have been expressing dismay regarding this position since last year. Would that all he would do four years in office? It is wastefulness and under-productivity to complete what someone started in four years in the same range of his tenure. It is not a success, it is not an achievement to brag about. It is shame and hopelessness and insult against Ganduje himself and our sensibilities.

My hope for Kano before the election was to have someone energetic and progressive, equipped with cutting-edge ideas for social development and economic engineering, with the ability to harness and put to use the abundant human resources of the most populous city in Africa to take over from Kwankwaso and put us on the path to an ultramodern city.

But what one can do since politicians never have the citizens in mind while making decision? When it became apparent that Ganduje would be our next governor through Buhari’s popularity, I lowered my expectations. Let him go and complete the work of his predecessor but using every opportunity available to me to reject the proposition of his academic qualification and public service experience as a basis for deliverance and performance. In our public service tradition, the higher the position the more incompetence. In Nigeria, sadly, we don’t have a structural framework that takes in to account competence and merit for important positions in government.

We need to be forward-looking, with our eyes on ways of creating new projects and initiatives. We should never be satisfied with the existing situation if only we want to move forward. The technology industry is there to teach us some lessons, where improvement is constantly made on an already existing solution.

Often, when you begin talking about the sad and tragic performance of politicians and some individuals rise against you for being ungrateful, you will naturally begin to think whether your expectations are too much and too high. That is the basis of my opposition against our system.

But our people have already seemed to believe that Kwankwaso had taken us nearly to the last stage, and by completing his projects, we have ultimately reached the limit. We reached our destination and we should stop aspiring for high grounds. This is despite the awesomely horrible social, political and economic problems immanent in our society. Such line of reasoning often gets me to ponder on the degree of our hopelessness and understanding of what real development is. Because what we are familiar with, regime after regime, is looting, entrenched mediocrity, poor performance and severe underdevelopment from people who understand leadership as a means of accumulating more wealth, building more houses, bringing more wives and cruising luxury cars acquired through plunder to insult our sensibilities, for attempting to depart from the norm Kwankwaso has reached the status of sainthood. Never mind the money cornered, missed, mishandled and dubiously spent under him. I am tempted to declare with a degree of certainty that he cannot swear not a single kobo missed way in his government. For me to eat up my words, he should come publicly, Qur’an in one hand and declare, “By Allah, not a single kobo was illegitimately spent under me” then we would go after the file where he dipped fingers into local governments tills to finance his presidential bid and leave matter between him and his Creator.

Agreed Kwankwaso delivered based on our standards which is highly aided by the existence of non-performing governors all around us, whose darkness made him shine, made him stand out from their non-performance. But you would be shocked as things start unraveling when you begin to compare the money he loaned and the cost of the projects he executed. Three hundred billions in loan for few projects, uncompleted projects and abandoned projects. So many projects, at government price, and the 10% has gone forever. Jakara drainage is political swindling, everything stopped right after the man left office.

A year into Ganduje’s administration, he did not seem to do much to prove me wrong. He rather emboldened me to assert that he could not even complete the projects started by his predecessor. I can say now people are so considerate they did not expect much of him to burden him with completing someone’s assignment in addition to his own. The impression he’s dishing out is that he is there to collect salary and bonus. No clear demonstration of commitment and dedication. I cover my face in shame when I see other people ridiculing us on social media sharing photos of him sleeping at public events.

In fairness, I will be quick to admit the economic situation facing Ganduje, but the reason he is there is not to sleep. As a governor, he is there to find solution to our problems, to find ways for us when most of us are unable to find. By engaging his brain, he will be earning legitimate salary. But the economic situation is rendered useless since he is raining cash on politicians and buying new cars. He seems to exclusively devote his attention to the demands of silly politicians. That has been his approach since election time, taking people for granted and never attending to their needs.

This convinced me that Ganduje, as I have feared earlier on, is not that person I wished for. In every step he takes, Ganduje makes clear the kind of people his government is meant for. He shows that he is unapologetic in discriminating the rich against the poor. That is reason he never backtracks a decision that is hurting the poor. That explains why he has been able to undeservedly pay for the exams of few elite children while refusing to pay for the kids of the poor in public schools who really merited it.  It is totally irrelevant for the government to intervene financially in settling private matters affecting wealthy individuals.  We would be repeating this up to election time. Nobody did it but the governor himself and we presume it a right decision.

So far, he has made it clear that he is incapable and incapacitated for the job. We watch in anger how things spiral out of control. Refuse collecting and discoloring our streets, some streetlights left to themselves in disrepair and disfunctioning and nobody bothers to do anything as if nobody is paid to precisely be in charge.

He is too weak to be a governor as he shows apparent lack of self-confidence. The best way to defeat your fears is to confront it. Instead of confronting the problem, Ganduje canceled a subject in our secondary schools because of inadequate staff. For years we would lag behind in that subject. He alone caused us the problem and the effect and consequences would stay with us for as long as the situation remains.

His insecurity also shows in his desire to want to lean on another person. You can do it if you believe in yourself like the one you have been disgracefully chasing after. Once you deliver, and we get convinced by your commitment, because we would not accept half-heartedness and trick, you will easily sell at the poll and people will pine you when you left.

The disappointment also comes down to the manner of hiring and appointing people, people grossly incompetent, people with trouble at home, people with indecent character, appointing friends of “our sons” who schooled together in London. It is in in this government we have an actress appointed to as sensitive position as adviser in budget and a PA who went public to insult us but ended up embarrassing himself when he came to show us his letter of “a point man.” It seems like the fundamental idea of the regime is to provide food for the boys.

Whether you are providing food for the boys, in governance, you need to send a strong message to the direction of public image and perception. You need to show some sign of seriousness. You just don’t wake up and hurl every sort of people into your government. Tell me your friends and I will tell you who you are. We can assume you’re running partying and dancing government for seeing such girl around you. Have you exhausted every nooks and crannies you did not find a competent hand, a girl trained in relevant fields for hands-on approach to issues? It would like infatalizing  the business of the government. This is the impression we have.

We are not simply questioning your appointment for no reason at all. We need to know the qualification and capability of the people you have appointed since nobody briefed us yet on that. It is equally important if the person you want to hire is a man of clean slate, not someone whose father ate from Dasukigate.

Like people had peppered us during election time, against our wish, we will give you the benefit of the doubts for only short time. Only short time for we will not fold our arms and watch things go such bad. I will contest for governor in 2019.