MAKU, JONATHAN’S TRUSTED ALLY SEEKS HIGHER SERVICE Category: - TopicsExpress



          

MAKU, JONATHAN’S TRUSTED ALLY SEEKS HIGHER SERVICE Category: Opinion Published on Thursday, 06 November 2014 05:00 Written by Idang Alibi idangalibi@dailytrust (08050795253 SMS only) Hits: 345 View Comments I wrote this piece without a title and sent a small note to Ibrahim Auduson, Editorial Page Editor of the Daily Trust, requesting him to please kindly supply it with a suitable one. This is because the few headings I thought of sounded very much to me like ones more suitable for an obituary when the man in question to whom I want to pay a tribute just merely resigned his position as spokesman for the government of President Goodluck Ebele Jonathan in order to pursue his political desire. Former Information Minister, Labaran Maku, is a vibrant old youth (as opposed to what the doyen of Nigerian comedy Chief Zebruddaya Okorigwe Nwogbo calls a young youth) and is very much alive and could very well become governor of Nasarawa State come May next year. It will therefore be unfair to head a piece about him which sounds remotely like one was trying to mourn his demise. God forbid bad thing. The titles I thought of are: ‘’Labaran Maku: Exit of a Passionate Spokesman’’, ‘’The Departure of Labaran Maku, an articulate Salesman, ‘’Labaran Maku: Exit of a Convinced Spokesman’’ and ‘’Labaran Maku: A Believer in Jonathan’’. From these headings which I conceived of for the piece, the reader can see the drift of the compliments I wish to pay this former student activist, convinced patriot and articulate salesman of an administration whose policies and programmes he passionately believed in and sold with consummate gusto. I got to observe the former Minister of Information at very close quarters during the National Good Governance Tour which he led from September, 2012 to early this year in which a group of journalists, civil society organisations and other stakeholders in the Nigerian Project went round a good part of the country to see for themselves what has so far been achieved by the various democratic governments since the beginning of this dispensation in 1999. During the tour, I discovered that Maku hates authoritarian rule with a passion and believes that whatever the inadequacies of democracy are, this form of government is superior to any other one and that it dispenses more tangible and intangible dividends to the governed than, say military rule. He thinks Nigerians, therefore, have a responsibility to ensure that democracy survives warts and all and that undue partisanship will not help us. His decision to leave government to contest for position of governor is, therefore, not surprising. I discovered four things about Maku. One, he loves Nigeria with a deep patriotic passion. He believes Nigeria has been good to him and has the potential to be good to all Nigerians. He always talked about how he was a small village teacher and headmaster when destiny propelled him to where he is today. He believes in the quality education he got from the University of Jos and attributed it to one of the great favours Mother Nigeria did him. He is truly proud of Unijos and how it moulded him; he oftentimes said he was ready to take on any one from any other university in the world on any academic challenge in any forum anywhere in the world. He believes he has a duty to bequeath to the next generation the kind of opportunity Nigeria afforded him to become what he is today. Two, he loves roads, and beautifully constructed ones at that, with an almost child-like glee. He often quoted to us that the Romans said roads bring development. When last year we visited a portion of the Benin-Ore-Lagos road which had been exquisitely completed Maku felt like kissing the smooth road to convince everyone that something good was being done by the Jonathan government. I noticed a similar devotional attitude when we also inspected the Vom-Manchok road in Plateau State. He is passionate about the general development of Nigeria. Whenever we went to any project site where a good development project had been done, you could see and touch the joy on Maku’s face In such places, we will spend an inordinate amount of time there as if Maku wanted all in the entourage to worship the projects executed, much to the grumbling of some members of the touring team. On the obverse side, where we saw a shoddy job or a project whose progress has been criminally slow such as the one on that bad patch of the Akwanga-Lafia road nicknamed morbidly as ‘’Many Have Gone’’ and which seemed like it will never be completed before Kingdom comes, you could also see the great irritation on Maku’s face. Three, some PR persons see what they do as mere professional work detached from their true feelings. Maku did not see his work with Jonathan as mere work. In the discharge of his responsibilities, he came across as a convinced patriot and not one who was merely grateful for the job given him and who, therefore, strove to show his loyalty and gratitude. He was fully aware of the deep cynicism that has become second nature to many Nigerians. Nigeria is a very huge country and is basically undeveloped. Many appreciable efforts at development may not be readily known to a good many people. But Maku was in a privileged position to see what policies and programmes were been formulated and implemented and what challenges were being encountered. He therefore felt it was his duty to let Nigerians know that some very good things were being done to change our situation and that things were not as bad as was being bandied about. He was not a minister who just wanted to put a fine face to something that was bad or below standard. He believed in Jonathan and what he was saying Jonathan has been able to do for Nigeria. I have watched many government spokesmen some of whom defend the actions of the government they speak for in plastic language. You can read from their body language when they themselves did not believe in the things or actions or policies they are trying to defend. Not so with Maku. He was different. You could see in his passion that he believed in what he was defending. He wanted all Nigerians to know what good the Jonathan government and other democratic governments before Jonathan’s has done for them. Four, Maku is a man with sanguine personality traits and all sanguine people love people as they love clothes and talk. He has been one of the ablest, most articulate government spokespersons we have had in recent times: ever well dressed and always in well- tailored native dresses, personable, passionate, eloquent and absolutely believable. He has a heart and spirit for service in favour of the downtrodden. In light of all these, when Maku signified his intention to vie for the governorship seat in Nasarawa, my prayer was that God should grant him his wish. I believe that he has the spirit, the capacity, the ability and the heart to serve his people with great distinction. If he can carry the kind of passion he has for overall national development to Nasarawa State by thinking, planning and executing policies, projects and programmes that will translate to the good of Nasarawa, the people will, surely, be we
Posted on: Thu, 06 Nov 2014 11:53:26 +0000

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