Shaming Bill MA Abubakar, architect of modern Bauchi By Bashir Ibrahim Hassan

Greatness is the product of both our choices and the opportunities open to us.
The choices we make are the key to realizing our potential and capacity for greatness.
Ultimately, capacity is expressed in the present, and its outcomes are immediate and palpable.
We can assess capacity for greatness when we focus on the present; on what is happening now, in terms of ground breaking policies and programmes ambitiously initiated and meticulously implemented across the length and breadth of a defined landscape that points to a brighter future for the citizenry.
A careful look at the present happenings in Bauchi state today will glaringly show the state is on the path of attaining its potential for greatness.
This is due to the capacity of its current governor, Mohammed Abubakar.
He has displayed a rare capacity to engender the accelerated development of the state through carefully chosen policies and programmes leveraging on the opportunities open to him at present.
The ascension of Governor Abubakar to seat of executive governor of the state came as a surprise to his political opponents, who had held sway in the state for many years.
However, they had to embrace the inevitable reality of his emergence.
Opposition elements were quick to employ mercenary tactics to scuttle the smooth take off of the nascent regime-such as employing rented crowds to boo the governor at public gatherings.
But no sooner had the governor’s mature thinking and fine judgment in charting the path the state should take to leapfrog into prosperity begun to take shape than the wise people of the state saw through the ruse of the tactics of the opposition.
The ggovernor displayed a huge dose of mettle in defying the antics of his opponents.
He was able to overcome opposition’s machinations and, today, his proud legacy is the peace that is reigning in the state.
Evidence of this was the daring visit of the US Ambassador in Nigeria to the state without prior notice to the governor.
Then there was the fact that the state was conducive enough to shoot an A-rated film by a Nollywood crew.
Governor Abubakar began his reform at the right place, the civil service, the engine room of the state executive arm, but also the hotbed of mismanagement.
He attacked, frontally, the overbloated civil service by trimming the number of ministries from 26 to just 16 and the permanent secretaries from 60 to 28, thus drastically reducing the cost of governance in the state.
He borrowed the federal government’s policy of tenure system for the permanent secretaries and directors and encouraged those with little time left in the service to take early exits, thereby stemming any potential negative uproar.
A slimmer government has led to firmer operations, leaving no rooms for duplication or redundancy.
The governor and his team of carefully selected commissioners were ready to start the journey of taking the state to greater heights in areas that it has comparative advantages.
Two sectors come to mind when talking about comparative advantages of Bauchi-agriculture and mining.
And those two areas have seen the bests of the governor’s sound judgments.
Bauchi occupies 1/5th of the total land mass of Nigeria and between 80-85% of her people practice one form of agriculture or the other.
As for mining, Bauchi is home to several solid minerals idly waiting underground to be extracted, including such money spinners as hydrocarbons and gold.
Pegging his development on these two areas of comparative advantages has portrayed the governor as in tune with the people.
It has enabled his government to take advantage of the opportunities available to him to achieve greatness — after all, what is greatness other than a passion and commitment to evolutionary change? Evidently, passion and commitment are the hallmark of Governor Abubakar.
The governor is well aware of the problems associated with mining communities in times of boon.
More often than not, mining is associated with migration, exploitation, and misery (in forms of poverty and scourge of STDs among the mining communities if adequate care is not taken).
In other instances, it fuels war like in Sierra Leone, Liberia and Angola.
The root of all these is exploitation and injustice perpetrated against the mining communities.
He has taken steps to address these challenges ab initio, by organisind the artisan miners along professional lines, to ensure maximum benefits to them, as he elaborated in a recent press interview.
Hear him: “I am in the process of engaging another reputable company called NOREAN…
that will do studies over some minerals and it will also help us to develop what is called buying centres.” Botswana’s Diamond Development Initiative (DDI), on which Governor Abubakar is modeling Bauchi’s approach, was established in 2005 with goal of addressing the poor living and working conditions of the people at the core of the diamond industry –estimated at over 1 million diamond diggers.
With DDI, wealth from diamonds have been re-channeled away from a means of war—as in other African countries— into a catalyst for economic development.
The other comparative advantage Bauchi state has is in agriculture.
Abubakar is revolutionizing the sector through mechanization.
In one fell swoop the governor ordered 500 tractors.
The scale of the procurement is unprecedented in the entire history of the state.
These tractors are being sold to small-scale farmers, big time farmers and agriculture companies operating within Bauchi state at subsidized rates.
Apparently the Governor has both manifest and latent goals for this project.
The manifest goal is mechanization of agriculture in the state for greater yields; while the latent one is to attract the teaming youth in the state back to agriculture, by removing the back-breaking drudgery associated with traditional farming.
Success after success recorded in the state in the past three years has put the governor in good stead to go about his business of steering the ship of the state unperturbed by efforts to frustrate his programmes by powerful forces in the state to whose selfish tune he has refused to dance.
What narrative about Bauchi state can be complete without mentioning Yankari Game Reserve-the bastion of the State tourism trump card? Despite misfortune of being part of the North-east sub-region that has suffered from Boko Haram insurgency, the governor is working in earnest to improve the game reserve.
The reserve now has an air strip.
Also, an 18-hole golf course is on-going.
All is thus set to catapult the state into modernity.
And the architect of this statecraft is Governor Abubakar, who is bringing his law and administrative acumen to bear on the administration of the state.
Hassan is a financial analyst