It is unmistakable that Governor Nasir Ahmad El-Rufai has his job of transforming Kaduna State cut out even before the 2015 general elections.
With a cost-cutting agenda of governance, he could be said to have clearly taken off on a very strong note. I have yet to hear of any governor in Northern Nigeria today that has the courage to break away from the inglorious past, not minding what the custodians of the old order in Kaduna would think. And he has remained ever-blunt in making his intentions of panel-beating Kaduna, not minding whose ox is gored.
In the pursuit of welfare for the people, he has always entrusted the distribution of government’s palliative to the populace by shoving politics and politicians aside. On matters of public good in Kaduna, El-Rufai won’t let partisanship take precedence over public good. Few democratic leaders have such courage to stick to the goal rather than promotion of decidedly partisan wish.
In today’s Kaduna, it is no longer business as usual as the masses of our people participate actively in budgeting for the State. It is hard to come across a leader in today’s Nigeria with El-Rufai’s kind of fearlessness in daring the big goons who were licking Kaduna’s economy dry and even calling the shots on who should be made governor or commissioner. Political jobbers and hangers-on are still struggling to find their bearing under El-Rufai’s government, which has been peopled by productive men and women.
With a gender-friendly and cosmopolitan outlook, his administration has successfully launched a massive offensive against laziness and self-inflicted poverty in the State. As a consequence, politicians who relied solely on politics for survival in Kaduna, now have other businesses, thereby making politicking more of a voluntary means of supporting societal development than a means of survival.
Talk of ease of doing business: El-Rufai’s Kaduna has beaten many of its contemporaries to it. This is more so because The Presidency in Abuja once gave a trophy to Kaduna’s ‘ease of doing business’ policy.
With comparatively younger but brilliant young men and women managing the modern agencies that El-Rufai administration has established, the State’s revenue base has grown so greatly. What is more obvious is that Elrufai has broken the jinx of filling important government offices in Kaduna with ‘old cargoes’, who understand little or nothing about governance in a technology-driven age.
For the first time in the State’s history, we have seen 90 per cent of university graduates and professors holding forte as decision-makers in government. In this atmosphere of setting unique standards, it became so easy to notice a sharp growth in revenue, unprecedented in the State’s history. Just last year, Kaduna pushed the oil-rich Akwa Ibom State to the back burner in Internally Generated Revenue (IGR) and relegated Anambra,. Abia, Ebonyi to second place. A commentator also noted that even a peculiarly industrial Ogun state got an unexpected upset from Kaduna. “From a mid-table IGR State, to fighting the big boys for top four”, the commentator declared last year.
It will also be very difficult to draw up the long list of security and intelligence meetings that were held at the instance of Governor El-Rufai, in a serious bid to confront the over 40-year-old instability in Southern Kaduna and other parts of the State. He donated vehicles and other forms of logistics support to the security agents while simultaneously launching massive underground moves to get to the bottom of this nagging problem. For the first time in recent history, we have seen community leaders, opinion leaders, the clergy and others going into documented agreements for upholding peace in southern Kaduna.
Significantly, El-Rufai has launched series of successful raids and attacks on den of bandits and kidnappers in the three notorious local governments of Burnjn Gwari, Giwa, Igabi and Chikun. Many captives were freed and criminals routed and arrested. The culture of bloodletting has subsided, notwithstanding the desperation of his political rivals to portray Southern Kaduna as a Somalia of sorts.
With leakages in governance conveniently blocked, new money-generating agencies sprouting in the State courtesy of El-Rufai’s strategic focus in governance, it should not be difficult to see why the State’s revenue base has witnessed growth in leaps and bounds.
One legacy Governor El-Rufai will definitely bequeath is in the area of massive infrastructure. Many firtst-time visitors to the State have been surprised to find it turning into a virtual construction site. The street lights give the city a more modern outlook, especially at night. Roads were either constructed or are being constructed in communities that had suffered from bad or total lack of access roads for decades.
People got huge compensation where road construction had to takeover part of their houses and they also got unique opportunity to give unprecedented face-lift to their old abodes. Artisans were given a sense of belonging, as they got a special chance to earn a living at the construction sites across the State.
The cosmopolitan style of governance in today’s Kaduna has brought forth the very best of infrastructure, revenue, jobs; ease of doing business, participatory governance and cost-cutting policy thrust. The list is by no means exhaustive. And the people of Kaduna State can’t just thank their governor enough.
Jalal is Commissioner, Kaduna State Fiscal Responsibility Commission
