Re-There’s total infrastructure collapse In Gombe

It’s always expected that, whenever elections approach, desperate politicians surface with diff erent foxy and crafty activities designed to either bamboozle their gullible supporters or achieve simple and cheap publicity to fake relevance within a particular political environment.

It’s on this note that, with the 2019 general elections getting much nearer, the good the bad and the noxious politicians would be occupying and saturating various media platforms with all sorts of interviews, write-ups to mislead people, especially the gullible ones as well as the typical Nigerian politicians, for selfish gain. One of these jaundice and gadfly was an interview granted by gatecrashed and selfimposed All Progressives Congress (APC) chieftain and governorship aspirant in Gombe state, Jibrin Barde.

The interview, with the headline; There’s total collapse of infrastructure In Gombe, was published on the online platform of the Blueprint Newspapers on Friday and in its print version of Saturday, March 17, 2018. It is worrisome and laughable that this kind of grossly misguided utterance could be made by anyone moreso a governorship aspirant.

It is clearly lacking in objectivity and an extreme misrepresentation of truth aimed at misleading the general populace for selfish political reasons. Ordinarily, I shouldn’t have glorified such a wild shot with a response. But my silence and those of other Gombe state indigenes who are in the know about the political calculations in Gombe state and the true transformation the state has witnessed under the purposeful leadership of His Excellency, Governor Ibrahim Hassan Dankwambo (Talban Gombe), may be misconstrued to mean acceptance of the Barde’s blind-dive into issues that are clearly aspersions and political hyperbole.

In his vilifying commentaries to trickily chart a course of his au courant and strange political agenda, Jibrin Barde has denied all the out of the open achievements of the Dankwambo administration which have undeniably turned the state into the beehive of state of the art infrastructure cutting across all the sectors of the state’s economy. Is it because Barde was a banker that he became obviously benighted and birdbrained to know what infrastructure means? How could someone whose family house is sandwiched by two different dual carriage asphalt roads constructed by Governor Dankwambo deny that fact and accuse same administration of collapsed infrastructure? Maybe it is because Barde hardly visits the state.

This is because from wherever he may come from, he must drive on beautiful and smooth roads into the city built by a cosmopolitan accountant and it is mischievious for Barde to deny this fact. According to Barde, he has reached the pinnacle of his career as a banker and it is time to give back to the society and the only way he can do that is to take the position of leadership and he has a clear vision of empowering youths.

I vehemently disagree with his position because in Gombe state today, we have countless number of people who have excelled in their career and businesses who have helped either in building the state or getting jobs for our teeming youths without occupying any seat of power.

As the former managing director and chief executive officer of the SunTrust Bank, can Barde tell us how many citizens of Gombe state he has employed in the services of the bank or what is contribution to the development of the state? Let me remind Jibrin Barde that, the only branch his bank has in Gombe state has been closed down denying our citizens any benefit therefrom. Interestingly, we have sons and daughters of the state who provide scholarships, sink boreholes in the communities, provide electricity transformers, provide medical care, and lots more without occupying any elective position. So, what is your own contribution, if I may ask Jibrin Barde?

It’s laughable enough that, Jibrin Barde as a banker doesn’t have any idea on federal allocations to states when he compared Gombe state with other states in terms of allocations from the federation account. Let me imbue and edify Barde that, Gombe state is second to Bayelsa state in terms of lowest allocation even though, Bayelsa is collecting 13% oil derivation funds, Dankwambo has utilized the lean resources to develop Gombe state and pays workers’ salaries promptly and regularly.

I can’t believe that, a banker who doesn’t have knowledge of the federal allocation may have statistical knowhow to tell us what we spend annually in buying water. In fact, what Dankwambo inherited was a water project that wasn’t reticulated to other part of the state and his administration has successfully done that to the major areas.

On the education and healthcare sectors, Barde is either quick to forget things or he might be imbecilic of the development in the state. Dankwambo has constructed model primary and secondary schools, renovated the dilapidated ones. He built cottage hospitals and supplied dialysis machines to the specialist hospital, and many more. To verify these, Jibrin Barde can trek from his house to the newly upgraded IDI women and children hospital fully equipped with modern healthcare facilities, and the renovated Idi primary schools.

It amounts to underrepresentation of reality to give account of Dankwambo’s infrastructural development in Gombe state. While on his political ambition, Jibrin Barde should know that we are students of history and let him bear in mind that, Gombe is not Enugu and painting people’s houses in the state and doling out money doesn’t measure one’s political strength but cluelessness. His political godfather will surely have a flourishing business in 2019 and succeed by imposing him against others but we’ll reject all their scheming and machinations orchestrated to bring an interloper into our state’s politics, let it be in Enugu state.

I could go on but it will be pointless, the bottom line is, we’ll not allow someone to succeed in insulting the kinesthesia of the high pitch intelligence of Gombians with his fabrications and I dare say deliberately skewed comments and if there’s any shred of decency still about him, he will tender an unreserved apology to the present government, and the good people of Gombe state whom he has so disrespected with this political missive. Nasiru, a public commentator, writes from Gombe

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