Letter to Jigawa State Governor,Alh.Ibrahim Saminu Turaki

LETTER TO JIGAWA STATE GOVERNOR, ALH IBRAHIM SAMINU TURAKI

By
Jibo Nura,

Jigawa State,
E-mail: jibonura@yahoo.com

(Hotel Elteroubi, Dakar, Senegal, 5pm)

Dear Sir,

How is life generally? How about your hopes, dreams and aspirations of turning Jigawa into mini America, United Kingdom, Singapore, Brazil or Malaysia? By now, we expect to reap at least, some if not all the benefits of your foreign businesses, because your tenure of seven and a half years in office, has fallen squarely within the management planning categorization, that is, short, medium and long term.

Your Excellency, permit me at this juncture to draw some salient points, which in my view have cumulative positive effect to both me, you and the general populace of Jigawa State. They are not significantly different from the very ones that I have been outlining to you since your inception into office.

Allah Subhanahu Wata ala in His infinite mercy said in Suratul Saff verse 2 and 3 that people promising what they cannot perform are sinners who can never back up their promises in words with fairness and just actions. The reason why I refer to these Koranic verses is to remind you about those colourful Weekly Trust pages that you printed with tax payers money for several weeks on shoddy projects, which you claimed to have executed for, but in reality not the people of Jigawa State. You even had the personal temerity to say that people have since started enjoying the dividend of your packaged brand of democracy.

A typical of such projects is the 6.2 million Dollar Broad band Internet access network that you alleged to have completed since 2001. This project according to your Commissioner of Information, Abba Kukuma, would cover 75% of the world population. But the cardinal question is: what percentage or fraction of Jigawa is enjoying this Internet access and connectivity let alone 75% world population?

To my own rational thinking, even if you are no longer interested in the 'Internet Hub' project, you are not supposed to abandon it, leaving people in doubts as to the reality of its execution. But sir, you avoided it and came up with the idea of Gum Arabic. Euphoria on Gum Arabic made you to spend ample sum of money on Nigerian Export Processing Zone Authority (NEPZA) for its establishment. We all applauded you especially when you told Obasanjo that your intention is to make the Maigatari processing zone an International Market, because it's situated at the border. This too, you abandoned it and focused all your attention on Research Institute. Upon its establishment, we were told that it is meant to conduct researches on various agricultural products such as Sugar cane, Beans, Sesame etc. Initially, the Institute started doing research in collaboration with EMBRAPA, a Brazilian based Institute, with sole aim of getting high yield seeds, seedlings and animal breeds. Ironically, the Sugar cane seedlings that you brought and distributed to farmers even without its processor are all cases in point that proved to us your misplacement of priority as a Governor.

Recently, in one of your foreign trips, you saw how the Brazilians are obtaining alcohol from Sugar cane, and the way they used it to fuel their cars and other vehicles enticed you. You then quickly went to the Director of the Institute and enquired emphatically if they could kindly research on, and see the feasibility of extending same to Jigawa, forgetting the fact that even Rome was not built in a day. Besides, you were not mindful of the fact that 95% of Jigawa people are rural hapless who mostly survive on subsistence agriculture. After all, we don't know how long it takes Brazil to reach that stage.

Moreover, fake and vague contractual arrangements such as the 42 room Hotel to be built in your own hometown at a cost of 90 million Naira, which was given to a company since 8th March 2001 with reference number: (GHS/A/5/SII/Vol. XIII/16), can never allow you to win our confidence. Another reason why people like me don't cherish a government such as yours, is the way you deliberately mishandled our state's funds by removing 10% of monthly allocation amounting to N50, 000.00 out of the local government grants, which is given to ANPP now PDP (?) members in each ward, popularly known as Kudin Akwati/ 'Yan goma goma.

Sir, you can see that in all the policies you brought and implemented, if not the face-lifted school of informatics, none has gotten close not to talk of touching the lives of the people of Jigawa State. For Seven and a half years we are neither here nor there.

In fact, the reason why I took the pain to write you this treatise letter is because of the strategic political deception which you have been championing over time. Recently, you made it clear that WE the ANPP members that gave you our mandate are nothing but your political appendages. That is why you covertly pursued and overtly declared your decampment to the 'ruling party'- PDP regardless of proper consultation and following due process, with sole intent of contesting for Senatorial seat in 2007.

Of course, politics is a matter of choice but it is as well a matter of principle. I therefore implore you to look at these advices no matter how irrelevant they might appear to be. They might also appear to you too philosophical because you are so powerful and perhaps have gotten your self acquainted with Robert Greene's rudimentary "48 laws of power", that you can bushwhack and manipulate us the way you want.
But even if you have acquired all the tactics and skills of power play, I still envisage that it is good to know that happily is an individual who has no political maneuverability and treachery, for such a maneuverability is generally the offspring of a nascent, or the symptom of an approaching revolution. During the quieter hours of the eighteenth century, Englishmen were good in playing with these political maneuvers and bogus theories than seriously address them.

Your Excellency, this kind of political culture and attitude can be traced to historical lineage, which were exercised with maximum level of restraint by Aristotle, Polybius, Cicero and Machiavelli, because they revolved around the idea that each of the mixed and impure forms of governance in a polity- monarchy, aristocracy and democracy-is subject to its own characteristic form of degeneration-tyranny, oligarchy and anarchy.

A mixture of pure forms might prove more stable and hence have greater chance of survival. But, like in all polities, maneuverability and double fascism are subjects to the process of decay. And one of the cheap means by which decay occurs is through loss of balance and direction as a result of the encroachment by one of the constituent elements comprising the polity on the others. Although, decay according to Leslie Stephen can take many forms and dimensions, but the genuine terms used to describe its process is unprincipledness, corruption, enfeeblement, mis-governance, executive irresponsibility, lack of commitment, zeal and loss of virtue. Corruption, however, is both a political condition and a moral affliction suffered by the generality of people. Indeed, the chief antidote to corruption is preservation and renewal of the public spirit or virtue of the state indigenes, typically typified by subordinating private concerns to the public good, encouraging active participation in public affairs, and preventing the pursuit of personal luxury from undermining such essential people's qualities as martial valour.

Sir, Robert Greene and all those who follow his school of thought goofed in this power game by failing and/or refusing to come to grip with the reality i.e. "Power is not everything but the only thing". And once the process of power play, maneuverability, corruption, lack of political principle and good human conscience etc are allowed to reach a critical point, the only means of arresting further decay and self destruction is to return to, and uphold strongly unto our principles as rule of law.

Therefore, I urge you to start seeking for Allah’s repentance on the way you carelessly spent and mismanage our parents and grandparents collective effort, which they spent years to build but you destroyed within a short period. Raise your hand and supplicate and ask Allah to forgive your sins, atrocities and the evil you committed to people of Jigawa State. Otherwise, Allah (S.W.T) has already described to us in Sura Al- Baqara verse 8 to 19 that people who deceive are those who declare that we believe in Allah and the Last day; yet they are not believers. They seek to deceive Allah and those who believe in Him, but they deceive none save themselves. Even though, they may not perceive this but Allah said there is sickness in such people’s hearts which He has increased and they should be sternly punished because they lie. When it is said to them do not commit evil in the land, they reply: we do nothing but good but it is they who are the evil-doers. Such are those that barter away guidance for error. They profit nothing, nor are they on the right path. They are like one who kindled a fire, but as soon as it lit all around him, Allah took away their light and left them in darkness-they could not see. Deaf, dumb and blind, they never return to the right path.

Finally, I wish you farewell to the PDP party jamboree and whatever happens, sooner or later we shall In sha Allah seek redress either here or in the hereafter on the way you handled our affairs.

Yours sincerely,
Jibo Nura, Jigawa State, wrote in from Hotel Elteroubi, Dakar, Senegal.