What will Bauchi State remember Isa Yuguda for?

When Nigeria embarked on the transition to democracy in 1999, the party that swept away most of the elective offices was the ruling Peoples’ Democratic Party (PDP) which not only had the presidency and the majority of the National Assembly but also won 21 governorship seats.

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