By Musa Bala
In the complex scene and act of leadership failures and imperfections have become the order of the day, taking the center and critical stage in coterminous descriptions of the au courant leaders and their characters and perceptions towards pilotage and power.
Th ere seems to be a loss of hope and bright side by the multitude followers who live in despondency and despair, making the erstwhile leaders to be celebrated and becoming a yardstick to calibrate the nature and performance of today’s carte blanche political hegemony.
Grabbling with the roll call of selfl ess leaders in Nigeria, names like Sir Ahmadu Bello, Abubakar Tafawa Balewa, Dr Nnamdi Azikiwe, Obafemi Awolowo, and Samuel Akintola are always resonating with thunderous applause whenever they’re being mentioned. Today, decades after they’ve passed on, yet posterity is judging them right because their progenitors and the present political generation sees them as embodiments and symbols of good governance and archetypes of purposeful leadership.
In any ruptures, there’s also possibility of creating uncommon heroes as they’re silent few that write their names in the sands of history for their uncommon accomplishments in the services to humanity cum sustainable progress of the society and they aren’t only praised and adored but also taken as a model for those wishing to toe the line of success and accomplishment.
Th ere is an adage that gold fi sh have no hiding place; Bauchi State Governor, Barrister Muhammed Abdullahi Abubakar, has within two years of his stewardship distinguished himself as a selfless and altruistic leader who sees leadership as an act of giving back to the society the needed devotion for the betterment and the common good for all to thrive. In spite of the paucity of funds and dwindling revenue, Gov. Abubakar has superlatively recorded remarkable feats in all the sectors of the state’s economy.
Befi tting and strategic roads have been constructed in all the nooks and cranny of the state and the 20 local government areas. Th is has suitably opened up rural roads for transportation of goods and services, increased accessibility to health care services, reduced traveling time, reduced accident rate, and equally buoyed up the economy of the state.
Hospitals and procurement of drugs have been accorded utmost priority as 20 health care centers have been constructed in all the local government areas of the state while health related educational institutions have either been upgraded or reconstructed accompanied with viable policies and strategies for their effective utilization and sustainability.
Equally, like education, security, agriculture cum human capital development are parts of the government prioritized areas. In fact, it will be interesting and a point abutment to discover that, while many states including the oil rich Niger Delta owe backlog of workers’ salaries despite collecting humongous bailout from the federal government, Gov. Abubakar has gone beyond prompt payment of civil servants’ monthly emoluments to settling all the huge salaries debts he inherited from the previous administration of the state.
Th at has earned him recommendations from the Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC) and Trade Union Congress of Nigeria (TUC) as a civil service friendly governor. For these reasons, there has been a deluge of encomiums, honors, and recognitions from diff erent angles on Gov. Abubakar. Suffi ce to say that, it’s putting a square peg into a square hole. Recently, history was made at the 2nd Annual Conference of the Inter-Party Advisory Council (IPAC) where Gov. Abubakar was honored with a prestigious Certificate of Excellence in recognition of his steadfastness and outstanding achievements in delivering the dividends of democracy to the good people of Bauchi State.
During the last Abuja 2017 Housing Show, and in justification of his commitment to housing development, Gov. Abubakar won the award of the ‘Best Governor on Urban Renewal’. Th e award came after a team of housing and urban development professionals were dispatched to Bauchi and independently inspected the state urban development progress under the leadership of Gov. Abubakar. Basically, these awards are to celebrate the uncommon people and their unique and outstanding performances in entrenching good and corporate governance cum democratic sustainability.
Th e nomination of Gov. Abubakar lies in the fact that, he has remained the personification of courage and resilience under immense and daunting pressure occasioned with higher demand amidst dwindling revenue and meager resources which would have ordinarily overwhelmed a lesser man or a less tenacious personality. In two years of his stewardship, Gov. Abubakar has performed creditably in all spheres of socio-economic reckoning in Bauchi State.
His sterling achievements on road construction, provision of affordable health and maternal care, revolution in the education, manpower development, potable water to urban and rural communities, agriculture, youth and women empowerment and the beefing up of critical security apparatus across the length and breadth of the ‘Home of Tourism’ have endeared him more to his supporters.
Beyond Bauchi State he’s always recognized by agencies of government, private and non-government organizations and lots more. Th erefore, with him, Bauchi is in safe hands. More and more projects will surely beehive the state while more of the awards and recognitions of selfl ess service to humanity will also follow. All of these and solid projects he has executed are clear testimonies that will be used to adjudge Gov. Abubakar even for the generation yet to come. Truly, Bauchi State has never had it so good. Bala writes from Bauchi
