(OPINION) BAD GOVERNANCE: THE KATSINA EXPERIENCE

Gentlemen of the press let me welcome you to this press briefing. I was compelled by the happening across the country and especially the pathetic situation in Katsina State.

While hunger and poverty bite deep and hard on Nigerians in all parts of the country, it is worst felt in Katsina State where armed banditry, kidnapping, cattle rustling, hooliganism, drug abuse, and all forms of social vices are increasing the rate of poverty and unemployment among the people every day due to the huge leadership gap in the state.

The state government which came on board by virtue of the hundreds of promises it made to the citizens prior to the 2015 and 2019 elections has abandoned its promises and abandoned the masses to their misfortune which was mostly created by the administration.

Hunger, unemployment, poverty, and hopelessness have become the order of the day as thousands of internally displaced persons roam the streets hopelessly, having been displaced from their villages where they farm and rear animals for a living. When the administration came on board in 2015 the only security challenges facing the state were cattle rustling and armed robbery which were at a minimal level.

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However, from 2015, so many other vices began springing up which include armed banditry and kidnapping. These two acts of criminality started in only five local government areas of Kankara, Sabuwa Faskari, Safana and Danmusa but gradually it spread to Batsari, Jibia and Dandume. Now the manace which always seems to be getting worse has further spread to Dutsinma, Bakori, Funtua, Musawa, Matazu, Rimi, Batagarawa, Kankia, Malumfashi and Kafur.

The poverty suffered by the masses under this administration is mostly fuelled by this menace of banditry which has rendered thousands of farmers, cattle breeders and traders jobless and unable to feed their families, further breeding a cycle of poverty that is also further worsening the security situation. However the insecurity being suffered in Katsina state is different from that suffered in any other part of the country as it is being bred by corruption, absence of leadership at local government level and mismanagement of local government funds by the state administration.

In 2016 I blew a whistle on how the sum of N1.5 billion was blown on the so-called amnesty for cattle rustlers which started with a ceremony held in Kankara. I expected the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission, EFCC, to investigate that matter thoroughly to forestall future occurrence of such mismanagement and unaccountability on the side of the state government.

However the EFCC under its leadership at the time decided to put the case files aside which further emboldened the state administration to do more harm to the state’s resources in subsequent years. I made several attempts to use the Freedom of Information Act to elicit vital information from various ministries, departments and agencies of the state government on how the state’s resources are being mismanaged but I received no feedback. Despite this I was able to uncover gross mismanagement of public resources in various sectors.

As part of my investigation I was able to find out that at present, none of the 25 General Hospitals in Katsina State can afford a syringe or an ordinary painkiller like Paracetamol, or run the generator for 12 hours, or purchase insecticide treated nets for patients, or boast of simple pipe borne water. For instance, the most important General Hospital in the state, General Hospital Katsina, has been neglected without pipe borne water.

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Now patients purchase water from water vendors that wheel it around the hospital particularly in the mornings. Every resident of Katsina dreads having to take a relative or loved-one to the mosquito-infested General Hospital that has not been fumigated since the administration came to power.

A sad reality is that patients and caregivers that spend two or more days at General Hospital Katsina is sure of a malaria infection afterwards. Doing justice to this piece is taking a visit to any of the General Hospitals in the state especially at nights where during the heat season patients are compelled by the blackout to wheel their beds outside the ward — to pass the night as dinner for mosquitoes.

Those at the helm of affairs would rather allocate hundreds of millions for the maintenance of flowers at the Government House than care about the ordinary resident of Katsina, Daura, Funtua or Kankia who may be dying for lack of money to purchase a syringe to take an injection.

Even worse are the primary health centres in areas that are considered far from the public’s view where the health department receives less than N300,000 to maintain all the PHCs in an LGA for a month. Despite the billions of Naira allotted in the 2016, 2017 and 2018, 2019 and 202 budgets, the rehabilitation of the general hospitals and many of the road projects awarded in these ears have not been completed.

This cycle of incompetence is replicated in all other sectors of the state and its economy, like the education sector where billions have so far been released for the so-called renovation of schools, particularly schools that are within the travelers’ view. But in actual fact, the schools are merely re-painted; and after one or two rainy seasons, the paint is washed away and, with it, the N90 million ‘spent’ on the painting. Elsewhere in a so-called renovated school in Daura, most of the chairs, desks, doors and windows have now broken down and the ceilings fallen off.

Poor execution of projects is a sad reality across all sectors in Katsina State since June 2015; like the roads sector, with the embarrassing example of the Sheme-Daudawa-Dandume road which was started by the Shema administration, but some peculiar sections of the road completed by Masari in 2016 are no longer motorable, with deep pot-holes that get wider with every rainy season. A worst case scenario is the rehabilitation of the Marabar Kankara-Tsiga-Yar Kasuwa Road where the renovation tar was washed away in less than six months. Out of sympathy for road users, communities along the high ways have now resorted to sand-filling the pot-holes which is as durable as renovations by the State Roads Maintenance Agency.

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Masari rode to power on the promise of positive change in governance; but to the electorate’s shock, the only visible hallmark of change in Katsina from 2016 to date are the exotic mansions and companies erected by party and state government officials with stolen money and on stolen land, even in choice locations in Kaduna, Kano and Abuja.

A notorious policy that facilitated this is the illegal allocation of lands and government property in the state to politicians and friends of the government. A sad instance was the displacement of petty business owners along IBB Way that paid taxes to government for decades and the re-allocation of the land to the immediate past Katsina State APC Chairman, Shitu Shitu and other cronies of the Governor.

The Aminu Bello Masari administration had promised to perform better than the Shema administration but after six years, it is clear that both administrations are failures. Shema who won elections through massive rigging went on to spend eight years at governor which attracted so much wealth to himself and his family members.

The Judicial Commission of Inquiry report by the succeeding administration found out that Ibrahim Shema had stolen as much as N50 billion in those eight years which is a vindication of what I have been saying when Shema was in power. The administration also brought so much poverty and suffering to the people. At the day of the PDP presidential campaign in 2014, all security agents were deployed to the venue of the campaign rally and around some major streets of Katsina which enabled armed men to gun down 150 people at a village in faskari.

This makes the PDP and APC the same in terms of bad governance and insecurity. The two parties have grossly failed Nigerians even under the leadership of President Muhammadu Buhari who had pledged to make life better for Nigerians. Since he came to power life has become increasingly difficult, expensive, unaffordable for most Nigerians. The value of the Naira keeps dropping, more and more people are being pushed into poverty, hunger has become the order of the day, unemployment is increasing, inflation has shoot up and is still worsening. The price of every single commodity in the market has increased while the income of millions of Nigerians has dropped sharply; and very badly, and insecurity has worsened by far from the 2015 to date.

When Buhari came to power, only the north-east zone faced the security challenge of Boko Haram, but with him in power several other security challenges came up particularly kidnapping and armed banditry. Thousands of families have been affected by this menace from 2017. The administration is so lose that it never punishes armed bandits and kidnappers arrested by security agencies thereby encouraging criminality in deed.

The economic woes subjected to Nigerians by his administration is akin to that which Governor Masari has subjected the people of Katsina state which include among other blunders the excessive taking of loans without giving any consideration to the future generation and the kind of troubles they will be subjected to through debt servicing and the long term effects of these loans on the economy. The youth in this country must salvage their future from doom in the hands of the two corrupt political parties that have made life almost meaningless in the country from 1999 to date.

There is an opportunity around the corner in a few month time to choose the next cycle of leadership in the country. The Youth must participate in all stages of the process. They must offer themselves to serve in Party and Elective positions. They must demand from any aspiring person for a written document expressly stating his visions and agenda which they will subject for scrutiny and questions.

The elected and appointed officials must be taken to task and must account for the trust and stewardship conferred on them by the electorate. On our part, the self appointed (society watch guards),  we pledge to keep our ears to the ground and open up on any altercation between government officials, outright theft, abuse of office or any form of impunity by elected or appointed government officials.

God saves Nigeria and Kastina State.

By AbdulMumini Shehu Sani

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