For the Sokoto state government under Rt. Hon Aminu Waziri Tambuwal, it is a wishful thinking to contemplate that the PDP will retain power in the state after him. In a recent interview with the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN), one Hon. Abubakar Balarabe Kakale, a Reps member representing Dange/Tureta and Bodinga, boasted that the PDP would retain power in Sokoto. He forgot that both the governor and his party are burdened by lackluster performance in the last seven years.
Besides being burdened by very bad image, for an unenviable record of being the worst government in the state in recent times, the governor and his party have both lost the trust of the electorate who are eager to pay them back in their own coin for deceiving and failing them in the last seven years.
It is really laughable that the outgoing administration of Tambuwal can only rely on discredited ex-officials to attempt an image laundering as it struggles to give account of its stewardship. In the interview, Kakale, who was a commissioner for health for three years under Tambuwal, shamelessly declared that the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, would retain power in the state in 2023, because, according to him, the Tambuwal administration has done exceptionally well.
He tried unconvincingly to justify his position by putting up a litany of achievements recorded by the Tambuwal administration, failing to match the so-called projects with the amount of resources expended on them.
Surprisingly, Kakale failed to mention a single major project initiated and implemented by the Tambuwal administration in its seven years of misrule. Although, he tried to show off a long list of phantom achievements, the former commissioner failed to disclose the humongous revenues and the federation account allocations to the state, within the last seven and half years of the Tambuwal administration, to clearly show whether the government has effectively managed those resources.
The recent report by the World Bank on poverty ratings in Nigeria, Sokoto state is listed as the poorest states in the country.
Where then is the euphoria of showcasing a government whose state has been grouped among the poorest of the poor, except for the befuddled minds? Statistics of release of funds from the ministry of finance show that Sokoto state has received about N300b since inception of the Tambuwal administration in 2015. This is aside the internally generated revenue, which is also well above N100b within the same period, but, with no clear record of how these monies were expended.
It is double jeopardy, that an official is the one now engaged to launder the image of the PDP administration of Governor Tambuwal in Sokoto state.
It must be that the governor, thinks that the people of Sokoto are so unthinking as to fall for such cheap propaganda. For anyone with a modicum of good conscience to contemplate, not to even wish, for a continuation of the PDP administration, after the woeful performance of the outgoing Tambuwal administration, is to hold the good people of Sokoto with the highest degree of contempt. For the information of Governor Tambuwal and his party, that is struggling to break loose from the deathrow of internal contradictions, the people of Sokoto have decided to bury whatever may be left of the party in the state, by voting massively for the All Progressives Congress, APC, under the leadership of Senator Wamakko, and the party’s governorship candidate, Alhaji Ahmed Aliyu Sokoto.
The most sincere advise that we can give to Governor Tambuwal and the PDP supporters in the state, is for them to either join the progressive train, or, prepare to move into political oblivion next year because despite forcing himself on the electorate in 2019, Tambuwal has failed to live up to expectation. In the last seven or so years of his administration, no sector can boast of experiencing upliftment or development. The human capital development Kakale mentioned is the worst record of this PDP administration under Tambuwal.
Apart from increasing the poverty rate in the state with zero performance in the area of curbing unemployment, the PDP has also politicised the civil service so much so that civil servants who enjoyed getting their salaries promptly during the Bafarawa and Wamakko administrations, now spend almost 50 days to get paid. Before Tambuwal took over, the civil servant was sure of getting his payslip on the 25th of every month but the PDP under Tambuwal has changed the narrative.
The business community is not left out of this PDP infection as more businesses have collapsed in the last seven years than all previous administrations put together.
Education has collapsed despite the compulsory levy imposed on civil servants in Sokoto. Health institutions have become mere consulting clinics like Abacha said in 1983 and worst of all, the entire state has been impoverished with poverty written on the faces of both PDP supporters and non supporters alike.
In 2023, change is inevitable in Sokoto because Tambuwal and the PDP have betrayed everyone that voted for them. Hon. Kakale is already drowning and seeking cheap popularity for his lost re-election bid and it would be suicidal for the PDP to retain power in Sokoto.
Muhammad writes from Abuja.
