Very few governors in the current dispensation are privileged to belong to the inner caucuses of the government they succeeded let alone getting to know its real assets, concealed baggages and the nitty gritty of the administration like Governor Uba Sani of Kaduna and Similayi Fubara of Rivers.
Most of the governors in the current dispensation are those who, against all odds, were opposition figures who defeated the choices of the outgoing governors or those who were plucked from outside and have little or no knowledge of what they were going to face.
But Fubara was Wike’s accountant general and knew where the books were either cooked or smoothened while Sani was El-Rufai’s right hand man who took control of the politics in the state.
This he did both as political adviser and even when he left for the Senate.
In fact his going to the Senate was a strategic way to block Shehu Sani, who was not cooperating with the government, from returning to the Red Chamber so on the whole, the move was in itself a hatchet job to protect and defend the interest of the Elrufai administration.
More than Fubara, Uba Sani could be considered luckier because his relationship with El-Rufai was not strictly that of a boss to an aide but was something of an equal partnership.
To many, Uba Sani was the defacto deputy governor of the state as his influence was second only to that of the governor what with the free reign he enjoyed dictating the political pace and tempo of that administration with what he does and suggests to the governor.
He was so influential in that administration that those who knew the inner workings of government knew whom to contact when looking for something in government if they cannot have direct access to governor.
Unlike other appointees of the government, it mattered to many when he was in town and when he was not around so much so that on election days, it was not where the governor went but where Uba Sani was that mattered.
An insider once informed me that Uba Sani was the only one that could call El-Rufai by his first name at meetings of his inner cabinet and the governor would not feel offended.
To protect his untramelled interest, he did everything to defend and protect the administration and to secure a second term for El-Rufai probably more than any other as he threw all he had in the project and made it a policy to antagonize anyone that opposed his boss that he had no qualms making El-Rufai enemies his enemies.
As political adviser and one who nursed the ambition of succeeding El-Rufai, he was well aware of every single step taken by the administration including major ones like the loans the administration took.
It was therefore surprising that Uba Sani would be the one to cry about the debt incurred by El-Rufai in the manner he did at the Town Hall meeting over the weekend.
Except he was trying to reaffirm what was already in the public domain, his rehash of the debt he inherited from his predecessor which he said is to the tune of $587m, N85bn, and another 115 contract liabilities appear more like an attempt to point at a direction the citizens of the state are not looking at when it comes to assessing the immediate past administration in the state.
Politically, this may seem alright because no administration wants to be seen as underachieving. But it may turn out to be counterintuitive because Uba Sani, more than anyone else, should be abreast with these fine details even before he started campaigning to the governor.
He was in the government even before the deputy governor and he had the compliments of El-Rufai’s retinue of staff including the deputy governor whom he inherited from El-Rufai to understand all these.
More than any other person apart from El-Rufai himself, Uba Sani was well aware of the loans he is complaining about; the controversy it generated; and the extent the governor went to take them as he was one of the staunchest defenders of the loan and owed his election to the Senate on the note that he was going to facilitate their access.
Armed with this information and how the loan was used should have either discouraged him from running as governor or prepared him to one of the biggest challenges he was going to be confronted with when he wins and thought of the necessary arrangements to make to in order to meet other financial obligations as governor.
If it were the PDP candidate that won and he is coming with such lamentations, perhaps one would have excused him on the basis that he did not know the depth of the debts incurred by his predecessor.
But for someone who has been a part and parcel of the last administration, one is at a loss what Sani is trying to achieve by his lamentation.
There is more.
For several years, the El-Rufai administration has been hailed for revolutionising the process generating revenue internally.
In 2019, the deputy governor, Hadiza Balarabe said the state doubled its internally generated revenue from N11.9bn in 2015 in less than two years to about N22bn in 2017 and was on the way to doubling the 2017 revenues again by the end of that year.
Let’s even assumed that that was not achieved and the IGR stayed at N22 bn then both the internally generated revenue and the remainder of N3.6 bn from the federation account would have been more than enough to settle the states monthly wage bill of a little over N5 billion.
To paint a different picture would be to suggest that either the El-Rufai administration had been lying about improving the states IGR or there is something Uba Sani is not telling us about what it does with the IGR even after payment of the N600 million Zenith Bank monthly deductions for the N20 bn the bank was said to have loaned the state.
Besides, one thing, that was repeatedly said about Sani when he was campaigning, is his famed ability to mobilize resources at the snap of a finger.
He was said to be the engine room for the financial buoyancy of the El-Rufai administration who had contacts in the financial circles and who also mobilized enough resources for his campaign way ahead of time even when he wasn’t sure of getting the ticket of his party to run as governor.
So, what exactly is the man crying about?
- Agbese wrote from Abuja
