Date Published: 12/28/09

Open letter to Governor Shema

Your Excellency, it is with due regard to your high office, but more so the need to address some pressing issues concerning the people of Katsina state that made me write this open letter. Similarly the issues concern public policy and decision making and are therefore not personal to me or to you for that matter, but concern your office and by extension your responsibility. However, and I think this is the most important point, the total disarray of the political opposition in Katsina and the failure of the elite as a whole makes the print and electronic media the only available means of telling truth to power.

Sir, you have succeeded in putting down some structures by dualising roads in some local government areas, housing estates, building secondary schools, hospitals, and even providing scholarships to some students to study in the Sudan and some cottage industries in paint and chalk making to counter youth unemployment. These are without doubt good efforts, more so if they can be pursued to conclusion. However, the most important area that requires Your Excellency’s attention concerns human development and the need to look at the issue of development in a Human centred perspective through the provision of social services that impact on human life. Education is always first, and this is not with bias to the recent payment of teacher salary increase, as the issue supersedes it, as it involves enhanced training for teachers and doing away with nepotism that characterises the current leadership of the state universal basic education board, SUBEB. The situation is not better in the secondary schools which are for example bedevilled by the problem of overcrowded classrooms. With all due respect, throughout your more than two years in office you have never visited a secondary school Sir, unlike Her Excellency the First Lady, I hope she has told you in katsina college for example, the average number  of students per class is more than 100, the maximum number according to UNICEF is 25. In such a situation Sir, I believe we have to resort to serious prayers first before we allow our children to start secondary schools. On the issue of health care delivery, the issue transcends the putting up of structures like the Turai Yar’adua children’s hospital, Orthopaedic hospital, recruiting Egyptian doctors, purchasing anti malarial drugs etc. In the first instance the provision of these drugs is at best controversial, while your government claims to have provided these drugs free, most if not all patients buy them from chemists’ shops. Secondly the most endemic disease in the state is malaria which is more of a public health issue than a drug related one. Your Excellency may wish to know that less than fifty years ago most of southern Europe suffered from malaria and it was eradicated through sanitary measures. A concerted effort by the state and its local governments committing an average of about two million naira monthly per local government on fumigation of drainages, refuse clearing and such related measures shall go along way in eradicating mosquitoes which carry the malarial parasite. So also the issue of potable water where your assumed closest confidant and fellow lawyer the Right Honourable Attorney General is in charge of a technocratic issue. It is a shame where the Minister for Agriculture and Water resources, i repeat water resources, not to mention the President are from Katsina and with Zobe Dam from your own beloved local government, most areas in Katsina can only dream of water. Some say it is to do with your sibling rivalry, both of you being the political children of the President, but with the President currently indisposed isn’t it time to move on? Or is it still better for the people to continue suffering since they don’t matter? The issue of your so called fiscal discipline is also questionable as it involves leaving the state’s share of the statutory federal allocation in some banks to generate interest. Whether it personally benefits you or not is not my concern as posterity shall be the best judge. But, of concern is that everybody involved in development economics or administration knows that this is a prehistoric approach to development in both developing nations and in developed nations. Governments sometimes borrow money to pay an unemployed person to dig a hole and pay another to fill it as was done during the great depression in the 1930’s in the US. The leading global economic power, which is also the US, is also the leading global debtor nation. Recent research we conducted in Kano state shows that most people remember the socially impacting policies of late Governor Bako and Rimi rather than their fiscal policies. These are on mass education, provision of potable water, irrigation, rural electricity etc. The emerging industrialised nations of Southeast Asia’s primary concern are on the development of Human capital, because it provides the key to all forms of social development. This is apparently obvious Sir, as most of your children are not benefiting from the state educational system inspite of your command of the state resources.

It is to my regret when I realised that such simple solutions cannot be proffered to you except through such a medium. Those who are privileged enough to work close to you complaint incessantly of your, I know it all attitude, intolerance, lack of simple trust even on mundane things, legendary temper and your Narcissism, remember Narcissus the boy in Greek mythology who was so beautiful, not handsome, that he kept looking on water to see his reflection and the Greek God’s turned him into a flower. Sir, no matter what you think or believe your numerous travels’ also constitute a serious impediment to your government, nothing gets done in your absence because of the highly centralised and autocratic nature of your administration and your inability to delegate power. Your Excellency I am not referring to the views of the civil servants, who were concerned about your success in 2007 here, or those who were not, and those who could not care, but your own political appointees! Your Excellency I wish you well, but wish Katsina better.

I remain yours’ sincerely            

Isa Mani

Dennis Bellamy Hall

University of Bradford

BD7 1DP, West York’s,

United Kingdom