KADUNA’S ROUTE TO PEACE AND UBA SANI’S INTERFAITH PRAGMATISM

By Nasir Dambatta

“We are having problems. That is why I told you that there is poverty crisis in the rural areas; 80 percent of our people there are living below the poverty line. That is the fact of the matter” – Gov Uba

Governor Uba Sani’s efforts in promoting interreligious tolerance as a springboard for peace and harmony in Kaduna State dates back to his sojourn as Special Political Adviser to Governor Nasir Elrufai and as Senator of the Federal Republic. At both levels, his approach has been a straight jacket – more of interactive than academic. And this may be partly because he is more of a realist than idealist.

Thursday October, 2023 was yet another auspicious moment he seized for kick-starting a special committee with the sole aim of building bridges of understanding by way of religious tolerance for ensuring peace and security in Kaduna State.

He reminded the packed audience at the Yaradua Hall of Murtala Mohammed Square, that religious tolerance is a tool for promotion of interfaith harmony along with a sustained war against poverty — his familiar weapon against insecurity. He pointed out that the two are akin to Siamese twins.

Sani made a very inspiring speech, laced with experience in modern governance that Thursday, heralding the inauguration of the inter-religious harmony committee for the state.

He minced no words in stating that the committee, consisting of Muslim and Christian leaders, must work collectively to address insecurity in the state. Security is everybody’s business, the governor made it crystal clear.

But the governor is worried by the level of biting poverty in the rural areas of the State, warning that achieving peace and security would be impossible when “80 percent of the citizens live below the poverty line.”

But one striking thing about his determination to do the needful is that he never ceased assuring the people of his administration’s package for frontally tackling challenges of insecurity and widespread poverty in his domain. To paraphrase what he told excited attendees, government will roll out social intervention programmes. And that religious leaders would be involved in the implementation process, due to their affinity or proximity to the grassroots.

Hear him: “We are having problems. That is why I told you that there is poverty crisis in the rural areas; 80 percent of our people there are living below the poverty line. That is the fact of the matter”.

To lay the foundation for checking rural underdevelopment and the attendant poverty, he recalled that a month back his administration started construction of 32 roads across the state. The earmarked areas for these new roads are, for the records, rural communities.

Then came the revelation by the governor, that in few days time government will start a special project of building some 100 schools address the problem of out-of-school children.

In his characteristic manner of being poor-friendly, the governor queried: “Children of the poor who are supposed to be in the classrooms are roaming the streets and we say we want to solve the problem of insecurity?”

He then declared: “It cannot happen. Therefore, we must take them back to school or we forget it.

Senator Uba Sani, being the pragmatic governor he is, insisted unless government embarked on reducing the poverty rate from 80 percent to at least 30 percent, ” in the next few years, we will never be able to address the problem of out-of-school children.”

The first step for the administration must be revamp rural economies through job creation to because of the point of convergence between the two.

He then reiterated the point that it is necessary to work hands-in-gloves with all stakeholders, including the respected religious leaders, to get to the desired destination.

Significantly, he restated the administration’s commitment to work very closely with religious leaders, “to generate data on orphans in the state to benefit from the N5,000 scholarship programme of the Qatar Charity Foundation”.

It is now evident, that the Kaduna State Government under Senator Uba Sani has demonstrated its seriousness about enthronement of peace the stepping stone to crushing widespread poverty in the rural areas, while making the populace in that part of the world, true beneficiaries of a new economic and educational dawn.

Dambatta is Senior Special Assistant ( Print Media ) to the Governor of Kaduna State.