Date Published: 02/06/10

Gaya: Deliver Legislative dividends first: A Rejoinder

Please, allow me a space in your popular and objective newspaper to respond to the above mentioned article/critique published in one newspaper (not yours) on Thursday 14 th January 2010, on it is opinion page. And also find another attached articles on Kano Politics for your kind noting and publication.

       It is obvious that there is no accounting for tastes, and Kabiru Sani Gaya is entitled to his own opinion. The world is made up of friends and enemies. Every human being is loved by some, hated by others. It is easy to make human scapegoat in every thing if you are a cynic. A cynic considers others’ aptitude and latitude as mere precocity when compared to his own.

  I am not holding briefs for Senator Kabiru Gaya but your article attempted to portray or put at bay the obvious imprints, the moral legacy, the noticeable difference of substance and sequence of development projects planned and implemented by Kabiru Gaya as a governor. And to visa those projects into oblivion by detractors would not be the most gullible or sham thing that ever happened. Some people behave as if the world owes them a living.

       I am not deifying Senator Kabiru Gaya. I have never mistaken him for a saint or infallible but like other politicians, he is also a deceit, and I am not a hero-worshipper, nor am I trying to cut ice with Senator Kabiru Gaya. I believe Senator Kabiru Gaya gathers around him pedestrians, venal and mercenary politicians, jesters and empty vessels who could not be good political materials and demagogues. He has no good organization and advisers, only people who turned him into goldmine of which some of your siblings, town folks and brothers constitute the largest portion, always trooping to Abuja and Kano concocting all sort of semantics to derive sinecure token money. Ninety eight percent of the people trooping to Senator Kabiru Gaya’s residences in Kano and Abuja are your brothers and siblings from Gaya town, a scenario which makes even the Angels weep. Hardly a day goes by without receiving people from Gaya in quest of money and assistance; (Namu ya Samu, Mu Muka Zabe Shi). Senator Kabiru Gaya has no helping hand, no abettors, no volunteers, only venal and mercenary crowd. Murtala Fate Gaya is the only demagogue who used to go on media to defend and promote Senator Gaya’s interest and political ambition. But Senator Gaya never protested or got tired of always being generous-munificent, despite the fact that he has no allotted grant/subvention from state or federal government. People will not dare try this on Tafida Tijjani, Usman Adamu and the unworthy gladiator Danladi Kademi Chairman Gaya Local Government.

Senator Kabiru Gaya is a doyen of Gaya politics and beacon of hope, because if you cannot get what you want, want what you got. In Gaya town praising and adoring Kabiru Gaya is a must as a sort of virtue rewarded. Senator Gaya is an exceptional though not a Martian. Obviously, there was nothing discarding and rubbish about Kabiru Gaya’s past administration except that like every other human being Kabiru also has his failings. Some points/weaknesses I can concur with you Kabiru Sani Gaya had it to say you raised them that like every other Hausa and Hausa-Fulani at the helm of affairs, or once they obtain a measure of education, position, wealth, or installed in any office, or clothed in a brief authority, they characteristically suffer from an inflated sense of their own importance, and are often aggravatingly rude and complacent to the poor fellows. The Distinguished Excellency Kabiru Gaya could be exonerated from the above mentioned behaviours but only to have been drawn into an analogue of a distanced-shade tree literally, in which the far away is overly overwhelmed thus you find parasitic, miasma people like: Miko Bako;a babur by tribe, Suleiman Account; a Kukuruku by tribe and one detribalized Hausa-Fulani opportunist a.k.a Michael, as the people milking the cow, while a nobody like James Shu’aibuGaya (Doctor), the menial workers at the services of the Distinguished Excellency are just mere lackeys, errand boys and distasteful like Geckos, although such an attitude is common place, common knowledge, common culture and tradition in the north, especially to Hausa and Hausa-Fulani. Senator Kabiru Gaya is also good at deceit, misplaced priority and/or sadism, cryptically.

The Distinguished Excellency Kabiru Ibrahim Gaya always has upper hands from the electorates because he is our local champion, local notable, a scion, easy going, amenable and munificent to those he intended to use or impress, and God willing he will continue to lord it over all the Nicks. James or Harry within and outside Gaya politically. Because long ago before the Distinguished Excellency Kabiru Gaya became a governor, he designed, mustered support, organized funds raising appeal foundation, supervised and oversaw the construction of Gaya Central Juma’at Mosque which is at the threshold of Unguwar Mahaukaci, Gaya. 

And a word of caution for you Kabiru Sani, it will amount to blasphemy to ridicule “Insha Allah mannerism” of the Distinguished Excellency because it is imperative upon any Moslem to pronounce it in all his intention. It is better a political prostitute than to be ungrateful, disgruntled spectator and entrepreneurial critic. You should know that man is not a slave to his environment but is free to move to greener side (Kaura Wajibi ce) and thus why the parties are in legion. It is not a blasphemy to switch over to any party if you have reason to do so, it does not amount to infidelity or blasphemy but lack of integrity of a fickle mind and opportunist. How would you rate Isa Yuguda of Bauchi State and Zamfara State Governors, etc? They are worst examples than your kindred Senator Kabiru Gaya. Your critique will serve as hindsight to Senator Kabiru Gaya if by alchemy of election in 2011 he emerges Governor of Kano State. And we earnestly pray for that, because to live with the Devil you know is better than to live with unknown one.

The ideal state of society requires that the wisest men rule the pleasure seeking masses. Senator Gaya has the benefit of hindsight and he is as good as new but is very cunning, deceitful and sadist to his nearby. This is not a matter of conjecture-that when the righteous are in power, the people rejoice and the country prospers and progresses with growth. The worst the critics would say about Senator Gaya is, “If they were the ones there, they would do the right thing, would pay workers salaries timely and promptly and would not be too generous and down to earth”.

If we kept the rough dude Senator Gaya at bay or visa him into oblivion, who then could we consider as our fortunate, workaholic and successful governor so far; the sanctimonious, impostor Shekarau, or the apolitical rubberneck Kwankwaso, or the pedestrian late Bakin Zuwo, or the uncompromising Rimi? If not during Senator Kabiru Gaya reign workers monthly Salary was paid belatedly on 45-50 days of the elongated days of the months, Senator Kabiru Gaya as a governor supposed to earn your sympathy because he operated under a diarchy system with a mammoth crowd of Sixty (60) thousand civil servants, a meager federal government grant/subvention and slim internal revenue generation, because the big shots and wealthy people in the society escaped paying their obligatory taxes as it is wonted in Nigeria because they are friends of the leaders/governors.  

“Kasar Kano, which was noted for its prosperity, had one of the largest concentration of poverty stricken and disease-ridden people in Hausa land in the Nineteenth century. Therefore, the few were enjoying the prosperity at the expense of the actual producers”/masses-AbdullahiMahdiPhd Thesis Vol. 1 (P 435). The above situation is still binding in the contemporary Kano. The masses still find themselves on tightrope and in abject poverty, while the leaders revel in squandermania and snob appeals.

Conclusively, a criticism can either be a challenge or a roll-over, and Kabiru Sani Gaya might have imbibed the idea that adoring and praising an individual/government will make him/it feel like a woman with a common fault of a beautiful woman vanity-just like BathshebaEverdene in                       Far From The Madding Crowd. Bathsheba is beautiful, and she knows it, such knowledge is dangerous. It opens its owner to all kind of abuses and ill-usage by those who know how to flatter. If such is his point of view, I will concur with him but politicians like Senator Kabiru Gaya dotting the political scene may have contrarian’s view and take recourse on E.M. Foster’s saying in his Book; PASSAGE TO INDIA: “One grows accustomed to being praised, or being blamed, or being advised but it is unusual to be understood” as food for thought.      

One may take Senator Kabiru Gaya seriously with this his philosophical/political magnum-opus: “When you stand for what is RIGHT, you increase your REPUTATION. When you give HELP to others, you increase your INFLUENCE. When you add to the WELLBEING of your people, you increase your LEGACY”. And is it not a gimmick? Search him.

Right , Reputation, Help, Influence, Wellbeing, Legacy, there is no gainsaying that they are the recipe and pre-requisite for any foundation of good leadership. It is said that “whoever writes, has exposed him self to criticism.” But remember that the petty done, the undone vast.

And for the Distinguished Excellency Senator Kabiru Ibrahim Gaya, I have the honour and privilege to say: may you, your family and the State continue to enjoy health, posterity, prosperity and happiness. 

HAPPY READING