Kaduna Will Be Great Again - 318 by George Makeri

This business of making Kaduna great again is becoming more and more interesting by the day. Those in government employment are not properly paid, some are paid half salaries, some not paid at all, some laid off; yet rumours has it that a group of persons are going from village to village to collect list of hundreds of unemployed youth each for the purpose of employment.
Not only that, they are collecting 2000 naira per person for processing purposes. By the time you do your mathematics, you will see that Abba Moroa with his immigration exercise scandal is more of a saint than a sinner. This is not mentioning how the governor's fulani kinsmen have turned the farms, which are the natural source of employment for these village youth they are presently fleecing, into an abattoir of death for farmers. At a time when we are encouraging people to return to the farm, government is collecting 2000 each from gullible village youth, who are the bedrock of farming, in the name of employment in the township, while his fulani kinsmen plan a systematic occupation of these lands in the name of grazing reserve. Not only that, government refused to subsidise fertiliser, claiming it's not compulsory to do so. This is coupled with the violent activities of herdsmen against farmers. Fertiliser that used to sell for N2500 earlier now sells from N4000 to N8000. The fulanis that used to supply cow dung now supply knives for the throats of the farmers and bullets for their bellies. The government that used to subsidise fertiliser and other farming accessories not only is not doing that anymore, but also luring the active youth from the village to the township in the name of securing a job that is never there.

Even the newly recruited teachers were taken from their areas of comfort and thrown across the states in remote places without the necessary allowances that should go with such. KASTELEA staff payment are rumoured to be going to be strictly based on what they could generate. And just recently, a notification from KADGIS was making the rounds, threatening underdeveloped property owners to proceed with development within some specified period or face revocation. This the government is doing at a time the government itself cannot generate IGR that is even half of a dwindling monthly federal allocation, not to mention double the federal allocation as it earlier boasted. If the government cannot do it, why does it think individuals can quickly develop their properties? We are aware of the initial 'gragra' of the governor where he swore to be on half salaries with his deputy until such a time that the state IGR is twice the federal allocation to the state. Today, not only is the governor not going on half salaries, government officials are developing palatial living quarters for themselves while the masses go hungry. Not too long, I put up an update of the spokesman to the government, Samaila Aruwan's property in Buwaya. We are also aware of many of Aruwan's building for other government officials in northern Kaduna, while the masses go hungry. Unfortunately, some mal-informed persons in southern Kaduna feel blessed with only one of such houses built for Aruwan. It never crossed the minds of those disgrace in southern Kaduna, who fancy they are friends of Aruwan simply because Aruwan is in government, how many other of Aruwan's kind of houses were built for even non-officials in northern Kaduna.

If you go through CEDRA's hundred days report again, you will see that even the supply of chairs to schools was to be done by a company whose ownership is traced to people related to El-Rufai. Mr. Governor cancelled the joint local government account with a pledge to grant local government autonomy of funds, only to personally sit on these funds and become the sole person to issue out contracts. If Mr. Governor can not allow his commissioners and IMC chairmen free hand with funds, why did he choose them in the first place? If the people could trust him to manage the state, why couldn't he trust the people to manage their localised areas? The people of Kaduna state trusted him and gave him their mandate. He, in turn, should have picked trustworthy persons to serve as his commissioners and IMC chairmen - people he can trust with funds and not people he cannot trust to the point of dishing out funds to them in piecemeal. The governor's nepotism is not only in the award of contracts, it reflects in his appointments too - in Chikun, it is a non-indigene female friend of his for the IMC chair; his foster sister was made the minister from Kaduna State; his associates form the bulk of his strategic aids with a criminal Jimmy Lawal in the middle; his female associate, Hadiza Bala Usman, became his chief of staff and became more powerful than even the deputy governor. Just yesterday 13 July 2016, it was confirmed that the Kaduna State Chief of Staff, Hadiza Bala Usman, has been saddled with a federal appointment as the Director General Nigerian Port Authority. This appointment should have gone to the southern people of this country, but no, Mr. President's cronyism won't let it go there. Coming from Kaduna, it should have gone to the southern Kaduna people given that the governor's sister is made the minister, but Mr. Governor is more interested in his ethnic chauvinism and religious bigotry. What about the lacuna this Hadiza federal appointment will create in Kaduna State? One will think a southern Kaduna person will take her place, but all we hear are rumours of Uba Sani taking her place instead. Nobody is considering any APC faithful in southern Kaduna worthy of such appointments because a bulk of the APC legboys in southern Kaduna have shown they are more interested in running errands that in dishing out instructions. They have shown that they are more interested in running their own brothers down to the entertainment of governor El-Rufai than uplifting their people by prompting El-Rufai to give such appointments to their people. They have shown they are more ready to tell El-Rufai that every of his critic in southern Kaduna is a nobody and they have such persons' profiles at the tip of their fingers than to tell El-Rufai to listen to the yearnings and aspirations of their people. They have shown that they are more interested in preserving Aruwan's job and being friends of Aruwan than to push to secure more of Aruwan's kind of job for themselves. Thus why would they be ever considered for any elevation? We have seen how the southern Kaduna APC ragamuffins also tried to run the Zone three Senator Danjuma Laah down claiming he could not express himself and making people like me who have heard him talk earlier, before even the campaign period, to begin to wonder whether there was another Danjuma Laah. These southern Kaduna APC errand boys consider it a privilege to put up campaign of calumny against any of their brothers who dares to criticise the repressive policies of this government.

With a government squealer leading the pack, they conspired to victimise Dr. JD in his place of work and eventually got him suspended and incarcerated hiding behind a so-called hate speech to which the governor had done worse. Today, these pack of southern Kaduna APC weasels are happy that Dr. John Danfulani has resigned from KASU. Rumours has it that some of them even threw a party after hearing the news of the doctor's resignation. However, one thing the doctor's resignation went on to prove is; "if you think you own me because I am working in a state institution; now I am not - so who is the dummy?" Squealer is notorious for attacking dissenting voices against El-Rufai through their sources of livelihood. My brother Steve Kefason is in Port, we are waiting for when Squealer will go to Port to attack his source of livelihood too. We are also aware of how southern Kaduna persons who identified with us were repeatedly pressured to back off. Even those suspected to have any dealings with us are under constant pressure to hide from us. What squealer and his hoard of retrogressive elements are unaware of is, we don't need anybody: we are self-sustaining and self-sufficient. He can go on with his campaigns against our activities while his government continue with their grazing reserve plans. Our people are not good for federal appointments, but our lands are good for federal grazing reserve. What an irony.

Indeed Governor El-Rufai knows just how to make Kaduna Great again.