One
of the states the PDP took control of was Bauchi State in the North-East, which
was created from the old North-Eastern State in 1976. The Fourth Republic
ushered in for their fourth democratically elected governor in the person of
Alhaji Ahmadu Mu’azu, a quantity surveyor and the present National Chairman of
the PDP.
Mu’azu’s emergence was made possible with the
backing of a banker, Mallam Isa Yuguda, who held sway at the now defunct Inland
Bank, headquartered in Bauchi Town. His influence helped the PDP sweep the
state, for which he was duly compensated with ministerial posts, first serving
as the Ministry of Transportation for two years and then as Minister of
Aviation for another two years, both under the Obasanjo administration.
At
the end of the second term of Mu’azu, Yuguda made known his ambitions to
succeed him. However, his erstwhile protégé was not enthused with the idea and
he frustrated his ambition, forcing him to decamp to the then All Nigeria
Peoples’ Party (ANPP). He won the sympathy of the people of Bauchi State who
felt he was betrayed by Mu’azu despite supporting him in 1999, and that
combined with the massive popularity of now President-elect Muhammadu Buhari
who ran in 2007 as the candidate of the ANPP, Yuguda won his election.
However,
just like Mu’azu betrayed him, he has also turned around to betray the people
of Bauchi State. First, he defected back to the PDP and abandoned the platform
on which he was elected. He also went further to torment his then deputy
governor, Alhaji Garba Gadi, a respected elder who was the ANPP candidate
before he was persuaded by the party to cede his ticket to Yuguda and become
his running mate. Gadi’s crime was his refusal to defect to the PDP as he insisted
on being loyal to the ANPP; for this, Yuguda ensured his impeachment.
After
eight years, the best known achievement of Yuguda has been superficial: a
primary school, the Sa’adu Zungur Primary School which he spent N800 million
constructing and the construction of an international airport for N8bn, a
misplaced project considering the fact that Bauchi has an airfield which is not
used at all. His excuse for the airport has been that it is needed to attract
international investors and to make it easier for intending pilgrims going for
Hajj to head to Saudi Arabia.
However,
there is very little economic sense in having an airport that will be used
optimally for only one month in a year, especially when the Kano and Gombe
Airports which are also used for ferrying pilgrims to the Holy Land are within
4-hour radius of the state.
Even
worse, unlike his predecessor who is best known for building roads across the
state, scarcely any road has been built by the Yuguda administration.
Obviously, his predecessor knows the impact of roads on the economy – a
kilometer of road constructed is said to increase economic activity in an area
by 23% averagely. Sadly, not even potentially economic gold mines such as
Nahuta in Alkaleri Local Government Area which has a lot of illegal mining of
copper, zinc, lead and limestone going on there, even on a large scale has
accessible, motorable roads leading there.
One
would have thought that Governor Yuguda would have constructed such a road and
formalized the mining activities in the area, and other areas with economic
potential in order to raise the internally-generated revenue of the state.
However, his ideas for raising revenue has been limited to increasing the
signage fees of the few commercial establishments in the state, which are
mostly banks and led them to removing their signages for months at a time.
So
at the end of eight years of the Yuguda administration, what can then be said
to be his legacy? He has barely any tangible capital projects to show for it,
and he has not raised the revenue profile of the state. As a matter of fact,
the finances of the state are shrouded in opacity as the details of budgets
passed by the state legislature of the state are not made public. As such, it
is impossible to measure their execution.
This
is a question that we feel Bauchi people are best placed to answer: what will
you remember Yuguda for?
By Aisha Suliman
By Aisha Suliman
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