It rings rational in the ears of the mindful majorities that, in every position of leadership, the best thing a leader can do is the right thing, while the worst he can do, is doing nothing to touch the lives of his followers in most positive way.
It’s well established that the cardinal responsibilities of a legislator is to make laws, perform oversight functions and more as the system requires. They don’t have budgetary allocations apart from the usual and ritual constituency projects.
In so many cases, some legislators have lost the essence of their representation and fallen below the radar of performance in all ramifications. Sometimes, even the largesse meant for the constituents is diverted for selfish reasons. The most despising side of some of them is that, after election, they hardly visit their constituency let alone having a good relationship with their people. Sadly, the trust is suddenly always eroded and wind swept between them and the electorate who gave their votes are left holding the short end of the stick.
It’s indeed true that, for every woebegone, there are silent few who have conspicuously distinguished themselves from the seeming ruptures. In fact, Hon. Yaya Bauchi Tongo, who’s representing the good people of Gombe/Kwami/Funakaye federal constituency of Gombe state for the second time, is one legislator who has practically defined what representative democracy is all about.
It is rightly agreed that, the central drive of any representation is for the constituents to feel the impacts and no doubt that the people of Yaya Bauchi’s constituency are reaping the benefits of democracy – and that is the essence of sending him to represent them at the green chamber of the National Assembly, the bounties are unimaginable and have traversed all the three local government areas in multifarious ways.
Hon. Yaya Bauchi isn’t like an executive who collect the ritual federal allocation on monthly basis, but his achievements have supplant that of some lie dormant executives or those who occupy higher elective position than him. No wonder, from state assembly, his people sent to him to the National Assembly and reelected him. What shows a great political kinship between the leader and the led than this?
In fact, days ago, Yaya Bauchi surprised many political observers, pundits and challenged those who have cultivated the attitude of running away from their constituency and enjoying the serenity of the Abuja environment at the expense of the people they are representing.
It all started like an ordinary event but at the end of the day it became enormous, well celebrated, and an unprecedented event prolonged for days with a plethora of projects’ commissioning, presentation of various gifts, unveiling of new projects, and visitations. It will be very difficult to chronicle what had transpired in this ordinary write up, but to mention the few; many people were presented with car gifts including the highly revered Gombe Emirate Council which was given a brand new 18-seater bus; 500kva transformers was given to Anguwan Shamaki, Anguwa Uku, Gadam, Kupto and Jurara to boost power supply in these areas.
In his educational intervention, he procured school chairs and books for some schools within the constituency, built blocks of classrooms at Wawa, Bello Tingabu, Tongo, Dukul and other parts of the local government areas.
Also, as part of community intervention, Hon. Yaya Bauchi bought a piece of land for the people of Anguwa Uku for the purpose of building a hospital. Another piece of land was given to the Tijjaniyya group for the purpose of Eid praying ground. He built and renovated mosques at various parts of the constituency, secured jobs for graduates, sank boreholes, built bridges and culverts, among others too numerous to mention.
The cheers and applauds received by Yaya Bauchi during the occasion at anywhere he went, show how he is being loved by his people and even those from the other two local government areas that make up the Gombe north senatorial district. They are praying to have him as their representative and with the way things are unfolding, Yaya Bauchi’s political wings will grow bigger than we are imagining and many fortunes are awaiting his people.
Ahmed writes from Gombe
