No kidding Wamako: All in the interest of the Caliphate on march 23, 2014 at 12:00 am in features By Bashir Adefaka Governor Aliyu Wamakko, according to many Sokoto State people, has transformed the state to Makkah of a sort. Were those people talking out of sentiments? The former Director-General, National Broadcasting Commission, NBC, Mallam Nasir Danladi Bako, who is currently the state Commissioner for Information, said, “By the time I take you round, what you see will be the answer to what you seek to know on the part of the government.” Like an ordinary man in the street, Bako, a world class veteran broadcasting journalist, personally drove this reporter from his Mabera Guest Inn (hotel) round Sokoto metropolis and made sure that the tour did not end until he had taken him to at least three local government areas including Wamakko Local Government Council, some 6.5 kilometres away from the city. At Wamakko, we found a governor’s idea of how to keep elected council officers and staff within their areas of responsibility for discernible performance and tangible output. Wammako did this by building an executive chairman’s lodge, fenced, which consists of everything that a leader of that status requires to settle to work. Not far from that compound is another residential area built for other elected officers and officials of the council. A new NYSC Camp that has been adjudged one of the biggest in the country was also seen to be set for commissioning and a new orthopaedic hospital equipped and staffed with five foreign doctors, who had resumed and were being accommodated in the doctors quarters, was also found on ground in Wamakko. “As for the chairman and council officials’ quarters, this is how it is in all the 23 local government areas in Sokoto especially the ones that are in remote areas. It was discovered that before Wamakko came to office, chairmen of those councils came to office only once in a month to share allocation from the Federation Account, and the moment the sharing is concluded, they would leave till another month end. But Aliyu said no. This must stop. He rolled out a riot act, ordering all elected officers of each council to stay and live with their people because that is the only way to truly give service and achieve delivery,” the commissioner said. On Kalambaina Road sits the industrial nerve centre of the state where Sokoto Cement Company, Sokoto Aluminium Company, a foam making factory, groundnut oil industry, among others operate. Their operations are made possible by the infrastructure put in place by the governor. Sokoto transformation Coming from the Sultan Siddique Abubakar III International Airport on the left is the new Sokoto State University, an intervention by Wamakko to ensure that the lost glory of the state as an education haven in the pre-colonial and colonial era is restored. Sokoto, records revealed, had been exposed to books on geometry and other aspects of knowledge as far back as 1817. It peeved Wamakko the extent to which the state had gone backward in education as a result of misgovernment of successive administrations especially after Shehu Kangiwa’s. He then swung into action and began to liberate Sokoto State through education, which led to his voting of huge sums to expand of primary, secondary schools and the building of the university in addition to the existing polytechnic and college of education. Today, Gov. Wamakko appears to have truly transformed Sokoto in the sense of infrastructural excellence which now drives growth of the state economy and general development in and around the state and, two, in the sense of attraction which now has planted Sokoto in the hearts of many groups, organisations and even government agencies, outside Sokoto, which think Sokoto for venues of their conferences and other kinds of meetings. This has added to the human traffic that attracted two major privately owned airlines to now fly in and out of the state. Good access roads, federal and state; 500-unit low-earners housing project scattered all over the place to cater for the housing needs of his people; a 20-million gallon capacity water project at Azare, because of which former President Olusegun Obasanjo, who commissioned the project, had said “Wamakko’s effort is miracle.” The governor has currently embarked upon a 40 megawatts Independent Power Project, IPP, which will soon be commissioned, mainly to power the economic growth and general development of the state. Bako, pointing to the Sokoto Cement Company factory site, said, “This company you see, like those other ones, was moribund before. But Governor Aliyu Wamakko did not only inject money into resuscitating it but also built the roads to create accessibility. And you can see trailers queuing up to load cement products here now for supply within and outside Sokoto State.” People who say Wamakko is a Khalifa of Sardauna or that his administration is the second coming of the Shehu Kangiwa administration may therefore not be wrong considering the level of development he has been able to put on ground since 2007. The Giginya Coral Hotel, built by Shehu Kangiwa in 1981, which was later let to die by successive administrations, has just been resuscitated by Wamakko. The five-star hotel, according to Danladi Bako. “The governor injected N2.5 billion into the hotel, got experts to manage it and, now, the state government has recovered its investment and has started making good profit.” Wamakko, who, sometimes, move around Sokoto unannounced, even extended his infrastructural development gesture to federal projects in the state, which include the construction of quarters for judges of the Court of Appeal near the Federal Low Cost Housing Estate area and the 11-kilometer Airport Road. “He would have done the judges quarters a long time ago but, because he had election case with the court, he wanted to avoid a situation where people would say he was doing it to influence the judges. But now that the case, which got to the Supreme Court, is disposed off, the governor decided to build the judges quarters. He said he knew that those projects are federal but that they benefit the people of Sokoto State,” said Bako. Encounter with governor Appreciating Sunday Vanguard for coming to Sokoto, Bako insisted on taking this reporter to Wammako. “How can a journalist from Uncle Sam Amuka’s media organisation come to Sokoto and he would go back without seeing the governor?”, Bako asked. The information commissioner took me to the Gaunama area private residence of the governor.. On getting there, the Sariki Yamma had left for the Government House. But Wamakko does not stay in the Government House. He lives in the private residence among his people. We headed for the Government House, where we met, in a three-man meeting, the governor who quickly picked my first name and called me with it throughout the time the meeting lasted. Wamakko, appreciating the three numbers roll-up banners, took his time to explain his areas of interest to me in the banners. “Bashir, you see this IPP project? It is a project that we have embarked upon, not only to light up Sokoto but to also boost the electricity needs of our industrial areas,” said the governor, who added, “I am no longer a kid. With the white hair here,” touching his moustache, “I know what I am doing, where I am going and that is exactly what I am going to continue to pursue, especially for the good of Sokoto State people.” It is however not clear whether that statement by the governor was an indirect reaction to the rumour in town the day before that President Jonathan had come to town to drag him to the Sultan of Sokoto, Alhaji Sa’ad Abubakar, to be prevailed upon to return to the PDP. However, a government source told this reporter, “Jonathan needs Wamakko but Wamakko does not need Jonathan.” Although the governor was not scheduled to be interviewed during the visit, information revealed that Wammako had vowed to operate a government driven by transparency and accountability. That, the governor attested to during the short meeting with him. Wamakko has lived up to his word, considering the number of projects he has executed that today made Sokoto State an emerging economy in Nigeria.
Posted on: Sun, 23 Mar 2014 01:43:05 +0000
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