Kwara: Many ‘sins’ Of Governor Abdulrazaq

Repeat after me: “Whoever advised Governor Abdulrahman Abdulrazaq to go public on his faceoff with furious APC party elders is a sound consultant.” At a book launch last month, the governor, represented by his deputy, Lekan Alabi, laid everything bare and let people into the needless intraparty crisis that threatened to slow the pace of the administration. Since then, mum has been the word from the governor’s antagonists.

The crisis in Kwara state has nothing to do with bad governance or looting of resources, some of the offences that past governors of the state were regularly accused of. On the contrary, antagonists of Governor Abdulrazaq concede, without being prodded, that Kwara state has never had it so good and that the Abdulrazaq administration would not have inherited a mess of a state if all past governors, since 1999, did a fraction of what the Abdulrazaq administration has done in twenty-four months! What, then, are the sins of the governor?

First, let’s take a ride to Offa, the state’s second town. It is saddening that some so-called APC party leaders in Offa have joined forces with anti-Abdulrazaq elements from other parts of the state to waste resources and dissipate energy in the lazy attempt to make life impossible for the state government. Ironically, it is this same Governor Abdulrazaq who, from his first day in office captured Offa for infrastructural development after years of being scorned and neglected by past administrations.

Offa has a lot to thank the Abdulrazq administration for. The town never had it so good as township roads are being upgraded and new ones are springing up. Dilapidated school buildings have been captured in a state-wide school rehabilitation programme. Only last month, the governor was in the town to flag off a state-wide help intervention programme to bring health-care closer to the people. It is uncharitable for politicians in Offa to join forces with armchair critics who, for pecuniary reasons, see nothing good in the Abdulrazaq administration.

At the root of the crisis, strangely, is the refusal of the governor to allow a few party elders to squander lean resources of the state. Specifically, the governor is being opposed for reversing the former practice where a few hijacked resources and left the state and its residents in a lurch. As at today, a massive rehabilitation programme is underway across the state and the government’s insistence on competitive bidding is not sitting well with some party elders opened the governor to charges of being too rigid and unyielding from politicians who are long used to being ‘compensated’.

It is wrong for a people who, in 2019, complained of an overbearing and self-centred oligarch who cornered resources of the state to now want a governor they can push around. Fact is, in Governor Abdulrazaq, Kwara state has an ideal leader and the people of the state are getting quality governance. It was not the case in the immediate past when governance was reduced to fuelling the false lifestyle of a smooth-tongued privileged few.

The much angry party leaders mouth in public is that they are not carried along in the way the state is run! It took the composition of the first cabinet for the angry politicians to show their hands as those who expected to be ‘compensated’ for bringing APC to power in the state became inconsolable when they, or their handpicked nominees, failed to make the list. That, in the estimation of those who aspire to be Kwara’s new political overlords, was the first ‘sin’ of the governor.

Expectedly, the vultures have started to fly low in the vain hope of a major feast! Discredited political dealers and corruption high priests of the immediate past who made no distinction between Kwara state treasury and their private accounts have jumped into the fray. Unsurprisingly, they have succeeded in joining forces with some big voices in the earth-shaking “O to ge!” movement and, together, they appear on live radio talk shows all in their harebrained desperation to diminish Governor Abdulrazaq.

Amid the confusion, party national leader, Asiwaju Ahmed Tinubu who, for obvious reasons should show more than a passing interest in the confusion appears to be playing safe. If Asiwaju Tinubu has made any behind-the-scene effort to resolve the crisis, he should be reminded by his handlers that it is probably time to change tactics. Even in politics, where it is apt to play safe, there are times it becomes expedient to wield the big stick.

A few reminders to APC juggernauts now in cahoots with disgraced oligarchs of the immediate past: you labour in in vain because you face an invincible foe in Governor Abdulrazaq! The governor was elected by the people and, from all indications, he is nearest to the people’s idea of a leader they can call their own! But, since it is impossible for people to be compensated individually, the best the people expect from the sitting government is precisely what government has busied itself with since 2019.

It is also important to remind those who see themselves as the mouthpiece of the people that majority of the people of Kwara state are satisfied with the emergent Kwara state under Governor Abdulrazaq where public resources are not meant to be hijacked, where the majority, not a few politicians, are collectively compensated with state resources, and where the word of an overbearing individual is not law!

Kwara state never had it so good and the way forward is for the people of the state to sustain their support for a government that is executing life-changing developmental projects and upgrading decayed infrastructure! The State of Harmony can no longer accommodate another set of rampaging politicians who do not appreciate the demarcation between state funds and personal wealth! Kwara state is gradually getting out of the wilderness and the least politicians can do to enhance the process is to rise above petty pecuniary tendencies.

One final reminder: try as you may, you cannot stop Governor Abdulrazaq from winning a second term! Go, therefore, to make better use of your time and money and quit dissipating energy on radio to abuse a governor who is adjudged to be performing.

Magaji < [email protected] > is based in Abuja