by Mustapha Ramalan

One doesn’t need the services of a clairvoyant to painfully admit that our beloved state has been reduced to a mere puppet state with no purposeful or people-inclined leadership.

A friend of mine cracked a joke, saying “lets assume the great late Sardaunawas resurrected today in his beloved Kaduna just by the Zaria-Kaduna toll gate. Do you know he will easily find his way to the Arewa House (his official residence) because everything is the same with virtually little or no changes for the past few decades?”

That made me laugh, and my reply was at least he would be welcomed by that disaster of a bridge at the KawoMarket, another of the many “legacies” of the PDP reign in Kaduna.

In the past 16 years of PDP rule, there is no gain saying that good governance is missing and development is on accelerated reverse in the heartbeat of Northern Nigeria, Kaduna.

The political headquarters of the North has lost its glory, beauty and influence, courtesy of a combination of successive poor leadership that has since lost touch with the average people.

A two-hour drive to the neighbouring Kano or Katsina State is a testimony to the fact that Kaduna state has been left behind in the current trend of infrastructural development, economic diversification, health & educational reforms, rural development etc.

One doesn’t need the services of a clairvoyant to painfully admit that our beloved state has been reduced to a mere puppet state with no purposeful or people-inclined leadership. In short, purposeful leadership has taken its flight from the state if it ever existed in the past 16 years.

Despite its pride of being a centre of learning, with the highest number of tertiary institutions in the North, it’s populated by one of the highest number of illiterate youths roaming the streets hawking or begging as a way of sustenance.

The present governments nonchalant attitude toward education is evident when it intentionally starved the only state owned university of funds leading to many courses losing accreditation of the National University Commission (NUC).

However, the same PDP – led state government expended a whopping sum of N9.8 billion taxpayers’ money to build an office complex for the governor.

While Kaduna state wasted a whopping N9.8 billion on a yahoo project, Katsina State government built a brand new state-of-the art government house (complete with offices and accommodation) at the sum of N8 billion only.

Please note also that a world-class new Government House in Ekiti built atop a hill with superlative luxury ‎was built at the cost of N2.1billion within this dispensation.

But unfortunately, Kaduna spent N9.8 billion to build an office extension for our Dallatu.

Apart from that fiscal impropriety, it seems the government house office complex is the only capital project initiated and completed since 2007.

Of course within the period, they have initiated and completed many personal capital projects to fill their pockets.

The Kaduna State University (KASU) suffers neglect forcing its medical students to be transferred to Uganda to complete their studies.

The medical students of the university had to embark on a procession not long ago to protest the wanton dilapidation of the Barau Dikko Specialists Hospital, which is supposed to be KASU’s teaching university.

But those at the helms of affairs in the state seemed unperturbed. Their only development signature can be seen from the littering of our public space with photo-shopped posters and billboards.

The Millennium City project initiated by the PDP regime since 2006, to de-congest Kaduna and create 10 additional districts with mass housing, light rail, road networks, shopping malls, 300-beds hospital, among others has remained a mirage.

Comparatively again, in neighbouring Kano, three brand new cities of Kwankwasiya, Amana and Bandirawo were initiated and completed in less than four years.

What exactly is wrong with us?
Again Kano, which hitherto was like a  ‘rural’ state compared to Kaduna, is now home to a brand new state of the art university, schools, hospitals, and new infrastructure including unprecedented fly-overs the likes we see only if we travel abroad, among others.

In this same period, the Kano Government sponsored and graduated 100 pilots, 100 female gynaecology doctors, over 3000 PhD and Masters degree graduates. All the above was achieved in less than four years of purposeful and efficient leadership.

The lamentation is endless. The Zaria water project has remained a fantasy for decades despite guzzling billions.

I dare not even touch on their primary responsibility of securing lives and property since in a campaign rally recently the chief security officer of my state has threatened to evict people from the state, demolish their homes and stop them from entering Kaduna for daring them.

For us, indigenes born and educated in the city of Crocodiles, it is painful to be watching novices toying with the commonwealth of the people with abundant impunity and total disregard.

With due respect to His Excellency, Governor Ramalan Yero, in 2015, you may wish to take a deserved leave and allow the established order to take the mantle of leadership. Mr Governor, you and your generation have already robbed my generation. We will not allow the same to happen to your own children and my children. Nothing personal, we just want change!

We are tired of the lame excuses and the cow and bull story justifying this administrations incompetence.

We need a governor who won’t be inundating us with stories that his failure is because he’s ‘paying off’ the debts incurred by his past masters for doing nothing. Can you imagine? Will they ever finish paying up these debts?

Sadly enough, the PDP government has been accumulating debts since 2007. Recent data from the 2014 report of the Debt Management Office revealed that Kaduna State had the highest debt per capita in the country.

That is not enough, the PDP Kaduna gang has squandered our business environment, to such extent that, according to the 2013 “World Bank’s Doing Business Report”, Kaduna lead the entire 19 Northern States as “the worst place to do business.” Haba!

Since figures don’t lie, the National Bureau of Statistics, report placed Kaduna as second in the poverty index among the seven states in the North West zone. In other words, we accommodate the 2nd poorest people in the most populated zone of the country.

Something must be done to arrest the cancerous decay by ensuring that we effect the right change in the February 2015 polls. It is high time for the people of the state to tell the PDP regime next month that the party is over.

I have never been more enthusiastic about a person I so much believe in. Have you ever felt like you do not have to ever meet a leader for his good work to touch you and yours? Have you ever realised why you feel safe in a plane, even though only one or two pilots have visible sight of the route on air?

Remember the game “who wants to be a millionaire”? In adversity, a contestant is allowed to call “a friend” to bail him out. Many a times, this “friend” is usually the most competent and intelligent person known to this contestant.

Well my friend in 2015 to rescue me and solve our collective adversity is a competent gentleman who has been tested and trusted – Malam Nasiru el-Rufai, the APC gubernatorial candidate in Kaduna State.

Malam is the catalyst to rescue us and give us back our fast fading glory and all meaning indigenes and residents of Kaduna must register, organise and peacefully vote for him and his deputy Bala Bantex in the February poll as the pilots to drive us out of this mess and fly us to greatness.

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– Mustapha Ramalan tweets from @mustafaramalan

 
Op-ed pieces and contributions are the opinions of the writers only and do not represent the opinions of Y!/YNaija