Saminu Turaki and bliss of delusion

By NURUDEEN MUHAMMAD
Posted: Sunday, July 25, 2010

The whole world must still be in shock from the extraordinarily bizarre statement in the newspapers last Monday by the immediate past governor of Jigawa State, Senator Saminu Turaki, who declared the incumbent, Alhaji Sule Lamido, to be incompetent. I am certain that many people, both within and outside the state that were and are still observant of Senator Saminu’s eight years of unmitigated absurdity, had a good laugh when they read the statement.
However, those of us who are active victims of Saminu’s misrule cannot possibly gloss over the callousness and thoughtlessness of the statement of the disgraced chief executive. It amounts to joining the former governor to doing violence to our humanity if the statement is not challenged.
The first observation to make is Saminu’s attempt to use the sanctity of religious rituals and principles for mischief and self gratification. When an individual simply wants to emotionalize issues or escape from moral predicaments and burdens, he mischievously turns to religion. By embellishing any issue with the religious flavour, at least two or more people might care to taste.
But I know Islam has elaborate literature on leadership, public trust, justice, fair play, morality and honor. Saminu’s eight years in office as a governor is a testimony to his willful disobedience of these cardinal principles of the religion. How he came up with a fatwa last Monday in Kazaure about leadership would certainly continue to amaze people.  That he specifically commanded his people to recite a portion of the holy Koran, fast for four days and then wait for forty days before he announces his candidate for the 2011 gubernatorial elections means that Saminu still thinks he has the capacity to cheat even God!  Subahanalillah! But since every statement is a product of its own consciousness, that statement is certainly Saminu’s consciousness, which translates to what he did while a governor for eight years.
When Saminu called Lamido incompetent, I quickly looked up for the meaning of the word incompetence from an English dictionary, thinking that the word probably has a new meaning. I was disappointed because the word still means bad at doing something, lacking the skills, qualities, or ability to do something properly. I concluded that even by Nigerian standards, it is only in a place like Jigawa that someone like Saminu (the absentee governor extraordinaire), would have accused anyone of incompetence.
May be, Saminu was referring to Lamido’s incompetence in doing evil! If he is referring to competence and lack of it in this sense, then let’s hear him out.
I am Saminu Turaki, I’m very proud of my competence unlike you, Sule Lamido. Doesn’t it take competence to engage in e-revolution with out a single computer in the schools or, in fact, anywhere else in Jigawa? How is it my business even when most of the class rooms were blown up and dilapidated? You, Lamido, you are building expensive concrete classrooms when competent people like me would have used similar or more money to build schools with interlocking bricks. Anyway, Governor Sule, where are the interlocking brick classes anyway and what became of the brick making machines I imported from South Africa? Don’t bother to answer me, my senior brother, Sule. I remember I told you how I can award a contract for a hundred blocks but then produce only a few and end it there. Don’t also forget what I told you about the machines. Each stopped working after producing a few blocks. Before you ask whether they are fake, substandard or anything, let me tell you, that is how I do my things. I am Saminu Turaki and I know my ways.
As far as I was concerned, if the classrooms were blown off, whether by the elements or whatever, the students could take lessons anywhere, after all our instructional materials were in the cyberspace. Those who could not withstand the harsh learning environment could stop coming to school. That was always a great relief for me. As it were, I didn’t have the chance to pay their NECO/WAEC fees for three years. Don’t ask about the money, it is somewhere safe, it has always been. Who said you even need examinations to proceed to the next level of education? No, you don’t! If you like my model, I can teach you, my senior brother, Sule. In 2005, the primary school pupils in my state didn’t sit for the common entrance examinations and the JSS III had no placement examination too. But are they not at school now and who is dead? Nobody, except probably people like you, worries over qualitative education. Don’t dare me; Saminu and I can tell you more.
If you think you can match my records, then ask the sugar cane farmers. I brought an industrial brand of sugar cane to them and they swallowed the bait. Who told them I was serious with the sugar factory? In any case, what did I need it for? Already the sugar was in the market, courtesy of cyberspace farming. Didn’t everyone see the advert in the African Independent Television?  All I know is that I didn’t tell them not to grow their food. I only told them to grow sugar cane for a cyberspace factory that would have nominally operated from somewhere around Hadejia. Instead of listening to me properly, they just went haywire, producing sugarcane as if the United Nation was about to outlaw it. And when no factory was there to absorb their products, they went on an illegal riot all over the state. Anyway, it didn’t bother me since I was far away in Singapore around that time even though I was watching their irritating, embarrassing but equally entertaining riots in cyberspace. Don’t dare me, I am Saminu, and I can do worse.
Lamido, you are busy constructing roads in Dutse, beautifully lit macadamized thoroughfare, with green growing in the middle. Did I hear you say aesthetics? And do I like look someone with such a taste? Go and ask my junior brother how I gave him three billion naira to cut an existing one kilometer road into two in the name of dualisation. You are obviously envious of my style and achievements in road constructions. Hence, you are rebuilding all such roads, leaving only a relic of my ingenuity in road matters. I am referring to that five hundred meter stretch of road from NNPC mega station to the Three-Star Hotel Junction in the state capital. Although I don’t go to Dutse anymore, I have informants who told me that the relic is still there. Whatever you think of that relic, that is my own idea of a dual carriage way, and I intend to pursue it. I am Saminu and competent too.
As things stand now, you have made it impossible for me to be going to Dutse because there are so many people and street lights too. As you do know, I am allergic to too many people and bright lights. Go and ask how I ran up to forty six ministries, almost all of them out of the state’s capital to eliminate such imperatives as well as associated accommodation problems. And it worked, didn’t it? After all, you don’t need physical infrastructure to run ministries. For example, of what use are offices for a ministry like that of parks and gardens? Lamido, what is your obsession with constructing hundreds of kilometers of world class roads network in Jigawa? What do you stand to gain by burying my legacies and leg aches by, for example, by reconstructing all my non-starter or poorly finished interstate roads? Let me tell you, it is because you had buried my legacies that I am talking. You see, you are incompetent, I may have to come back myself to help you. Ask my contractors how we merely cleared grounds for roads and share the money. If we must construct, then we made sure it developed pot holes within months of completion. What happened afterwards would not be my business. Would I be around to ply the roads? Even the accident I had last year wasn’t within Jigawa territory. I am Saminu; I couldn’t care less.
I learnt that you have built houses for your deputy, the speaker of the state house of assembly and his deputy, the chief judge and the grand Khadi. You have also constructed a staff development center, offices for the SSG and just about every fella out there with you. While the construction of the ultramodern state secretariat is going on, you have completed about one thousand, five hundred units of houses and there is the international market too. The other day I sneaked in to the School of Nursing Birnin Kudu. I must confess that the structure is awesome. Let me commend you for doing what I should have done at least nine years ago, but then, what the hell is a school of Nursing? Let me tell you, for all I care, if all these structures are not going to add value to my dubious ways, then they should all be buried in hell. I am Saminu Turaki, you may not understand my dubious ways. That is the reason I do not give a damn about you, Sule, the son of Lamido building what even my agents admitted is a medical wonderland. But that doesn’t mean you are competent.
But jokes apart, don’t you have the record in your office or somewhere in the report of the debt and contract verification panels the details of how I withdrew five hundred million naira twelve times in a day, totaling six billion naira. Hahaha, I am the original mister smart and must continue to call you incompetent. If you are oblivious of that, you cannot possibly pretend about the boreholes contract? It was worth twenty one billion and I made an advance payment of seven billion to the company. Don’t ask me if I were the company or if the company was me. Does it matter? Does it matter whether the boreholes were eventually sunk? You may have to find such fine details yourself but before then, you remain incompetent for daring to out do me. May be, searching your office a little bit would do you a world of good even when you have distorted it because of your taste. The roofs were sagging when I left it. I learnt you have fixed that. Well, probably you were busy doing that while my little secrets in the office went missing. That, indeed, is stark incompetence since it means I can continue to enjoy my loot.
But seriously, look at me very well, do I talk and look organized? And must our offices look good? In fact, things don’t need to exist at all, certainly not clean, brilliant things. Probably, only dull and haggard senators need to exist or do exist. It is better that way. In any case, of what use is an organized office to a globe trotter like me? Even as a former foreign minister, you cannot match my record of global tour. I can engage the globe for six months and still govern my state. Yes, I was the only governor who was not around to hand over to his successor but did you not receive all the bad debts and other liabilities that I had left for you? I am competent, you are not.
You know I gave fifty thousand naira or so monthly to each of the polling units in the state and, as you may know, things could really get nasty while poor people shared such money. But I enjoyed it while it lasted, and it is the same people that I urged to pray against you, so that they can fight one another again at my pleasure. I am competent, you are not.
The EFCC said I stole only thirty six billion naira from the Jigawa treasury. They couldn’t have possibly meant it because even from my confessions above, they could have a better deal than a paltry thirty six billion. Anyway, did I care? I got lucky with a woman judge, pulled my little tricks and it worked. What is wrong with crying in front of Her Lordship to secure a bail? That appealed to the weakest part of her. Bode George, Aminu Dabo and my very good friend, James Ibori, were not that lucky. You can see that I have always been competent in my ways.
Mr Governor, I know you very well. Remember, I made a governor of you out of nothing (even when you fought me to a standstill while I was a sitting governor and you were a mere former minister). I know you may be tempted to think I am deluded and praying the pranks that all those on their final descent to ignominy must play. You won’t be too far from it. Deluded or not, I want to return to the Senate in 2011. If pranks do not click it for me, I might employ other tactics. If you see me in front of the Government House next time, it means there is a change of tactics, from antagonism to competitive co-operation. Competence is so much in my blood that I may even go further than that. All I am saying or all that I want you and I to be saying is my return to the Senate in 2-0 -1 -1, irrespective of whatever Jega and Jonathan plan to do or not do about free and foul election, concurrently. It is after the results are declared that I may look up the meaning of competence in the dictionary again. So, Mr. senior brother, you know what to do to get this charge of incompetence off your gubernatorial cap. It’s up to you now. The ball is in your incompetent court.
DR MUHAMMAD, the coordinator of Jigawa Development Network, wrote in from Hadejia in Jigawa State and can be reached on nmanku76@yahoo.com