KADUNA: A JUDAS IS HERE AGAIN

By Maxwell Bako Dogara

To be sure, a Judas is anyone who betrays friendship and trust. In Kaduna State, a new one (Judas) has emerged, after making great fortune out of taxpayers’ funds when he served the state government. He has now turned around to attack the state with mischievous opinion articles on print and online media. I read one of such nauseating opinion articles in THISDAY Newspapers and in a relatively unknown news platform. From the style of writing, it is easy to notice that he is a strategic communicator with years of experience in government image management, who should have been quietly enjoying his retirement by now, but probably envy and mischief won’t let him rest.

Few days ago, the truth was told about a strategic communicator in the immediate-past administration of Governor Nasir Elrufai, who approached the Kaduna State Governor, Uba Sani, for a consultancy job, instead of proceeding on retirement. The governor was busy putting together his new cabinet when ‘Judas’ came with the consultancy proposal. When the consultancy bid failed, Judas devised several means of creating misunderstanding between Governor Uba Sani and his predecessor, Elrufai without success. Now he has resorted to mischievous opinion articles in a bid to have a go at the current administration in Kaduna State. At the appropriate time, we shall start mentioning his name in order to set the records straight.

In every human activity, most especially governance, the precipitation of attacks, especially very infantile and ones completely based on controvertible, fragile or waning evidences, in all forms and from all angles, gushes against a governor, and it is usually deliberate.

However, no governor, let alone a determined one like Sani, would get ruffled by such attacks because they are signs that he has started on a sound footing and well-positioned, and he is navigating the desired direction according to the prevailing needs and aspirations of his domain and its people.

Such attacks are glaring signs of envy, and they often take subtle forms, but with wickedest forms of mischief ensconced in them. Mr. Judas is now desperately seeking ways to create a rift between the immediate-past state Governor, Elrufai, and the incumbent.

Typical examples of such attacks against the 10-month administration of Governor Sani of Kaduna State recently oozed from this Judas, who intensive investigations have glaringly revealed, was the same strategic actor in the administration of el-Rufai.

This Judas, who hitherto commanded enviable respect as a well-doing media and communication strategist of Governor El-Rufai, bewilderingly chose to fall from those enviable heights to the pathetically low level of mounting the most-infantile campaign of calumny against the highly-welcomed administration of the successor of his principal.

Firstly, in a published analysis, he conjured up a saying that: “El-Rufai has moved to Katsina and Masari has moved to Kaduna,” insinuating that the current Katsina State Governor, Dikko Radda, has adopted what he, the Judas, assessed as the bold policies, projects and programmes of El-Rufai, while his successor, Uba Sani, has adopted what he assessed as the ‘lackluster’ approach of the former Katsina State Governor, Aminu Bello Masari.

In implication, while Radda is delivering governance to the Katsinawa according to their needs and aspirations, in the style of El-Rufai, Sani, in the style of former Katsina State Governor, Masari, is not delivering that type of governance according to the prevailing needs and aspirations of the people of Kaduna State with the boldness of El-Rufai.

To every stakeholder in Kaduna State politics and affairs, and fair and dispassionate assessor of democratic administration in today’s Nigeria, this assessment is glaringly unfair, mischievous and treacherously aimed at distracting, frustrating and confusing the purposefully performing Governor Sani to lose focus from his groundbreaking rural transposition and inclusivity projects and programmes, which have fascinated the estimated 10 million people of the state.

When one juxtaposes the devastating infantile and pessimistic assessments of this Judas with the numerous positive impacts of the Sani style of governance on the lives of especially millions of the rural dwellers, who seemed to have been completely excluded from the bold policies, projects and programmes of his predecessor, one would dismiss the assessments as mere laughable blabbering of a child who should be excused for immaturity in gentlemanly and dispassionate assessments of personalities different from his ‘bold’ principal.

As someone who packaged the image of his principal and strategically communicated to the public about his administration, this Judas should have acquired the simple rudiments of seeing and assessing governance through the eyes of the millions of the governed, not through his own devastatingly subjective eyes.

The estimated 10 million people of Kaduna State see good governance delivered to them by Governor Sani. How this Judas sees it does not, and will never matter.

Secondly, the Judas, in another published article, assessed the administration of Governor Sani as poorly performing due to what he mischievously claimed as paucity of funds.

What Mr. Judas glaringly implied in the write-up was that Governor Sani is sourcing excuse for a slow or lack of performance from the paucity of funds, which Judas claimed was widely blamed on the massive quantum of loans his predecessor heaped on the state before handing over power to him.

From what he conjured up as the paucity of funds slowing down or disabling the performance of Sani, he glaringly implied that Governor Sani is taking an escapist posture for what he, the Judas, sees as Sani’s incapacity on the grounds of the massive financial liabilities he inherited.

This is utterly laughable, as Governor Sani has never complained of any paucity of funds to finance the desired good governance delivery in the state.

Governor Sani has never cursed his predecessor for bequeathing a state that Judas described as languishing under massive foreign debts. Such styles of blaming predecessors by successors have since become attitudes too uncivilized to be associated with by any governor who possesses the desired focus and capacity to serve his people according to their needs, and to hit the ground running, doing so.

Every governor inherits liabilities from his predecessor. Therefore, no governor wants to be seen as unable to perform due to any liability.

In this regard, Mr. Judas has miscalculated in his bid to set Sani against El-Rufai on the grounds of inherited debts, and to, by extension, portray Sani as the complaining, indolent and incapacitated governor in the eyes of the people of Kaduna State, instead of a governor exploring hitherto unknown and unexplored regions to generate revenue to augment his statutory earnings.

On the needed revenue generation, we don’t believe Governor Sani should have waited for Mr. Judas to suggest to him how to fashion out revenue collection from the riding population of commuter service motorcycle riders that have flooded back to the streets of Kaduna.

Governing a state is not such a joke that 10 months after assuming office, Sani has still not explored more expansive and impeccable regions for huge revenue collection, that he has to wait for Mr. Judas to childishly and mischievously suggest to him how to roam the streets collecting revenue from commuter service motorcycle riders.

It is the most-brazen insult on the intellectual capacity of Governor Sani that a very pessimistic and very unintelligent Mr. Judas should advise him on how to go about generating revenue before he does so.

We have restricted ourselves to puncturing Mr. Judas assessments of Sani’s performance and exposing him to public ridicule, especially on the scale of his honourable position and his strategic participation in the administration of former Governor El-Rufai.

We didn’t bother to take him on figures because doing so would send him crashing down from the enviable heights of respect and awe he commanded, and would plunge into the depth of obscurity with regard to his image-making and strategic communication profession.

We strongly hope he doesn’t provoke us to do so.

‘Dogara lives in Kafanchan, Kaduna State, Nigeria’