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Home to Sokoto
By McNezer Fasehun
Pakistani by the name
………………… was the principal of the
Federal School of Arts and Science in Sokoto in the late 70s. My uncle, Dr.
Gilbert Oladejo Ogunfiditimi, a micro-biologist who had secured appointment
with the Federal Ministry of Education and had been initially posted to the
Federal School of Arts and Science, Victoria Island, had on the preference of
his wife for a less congested place unlike Lagos, sought transfer to Sokoto and
had been granted. I had had to travel to Sokoto to see the prospect of doing
Form Six there out of adventures since there was FSAS in Ondon from whence we
came.
The journey to Sokoto
was quite lyrical and poetic particularly driving from Gussau (now capital of
Zamfara State) to Sokoto between 2 a.m. and 4 a.m. To your left and right the
conspiracy of the dark sky and the sea-like but shrub-less savannah conjured
the image of a railway in the heart of the Atlantic. Nevertheless, a good
breeze and the wave of the moving car did quite accelerate a good sleep.
Two incidents created
lasting impressions in me about Sokoto.
One, my uncle had gone
to America on holidays. Before he came back his school’s Pakistani
principal had re-allocated his quarters to another staff, an expatriate, and
then an Indian or a Pakistain, I cant remember now. My flabbergasted uncle had
come back to his country, Nigeria, only to find a non-Nigerian subjecting him
to the kind of racial subjugating he would experience in America where he was
coming from. A staff meeting was held, and a resolution was passed that my
uncle should be given another place for accommodation. He had vehemently
disagreed with the ‘nonsensical’ arrangement in his father’s
land. Rather, he insisted that it was either Kalinaukas vacate his own apartment,
then at the Gussau Road GRA to go and search for another place and so be
displaced for a while so that he too would know where the shoe pinched, else he
would have to move into Kalinauka’s apartment so they could share common
inconveniences. All entreaties to take a third lane had driven into a deaf
wall. At last
…………………………. had to
share apartment with Kalinaukas to prevent what was ballooning into a racial
scandal.
Two, we had taken time
out at Sokoto Hotels (I guess on Gussau Road, too) and as pedestrians we were
on the sidewalk, while this expatriate was driving into a major road without
minding us. He had expected us to walk past much faster so we wont be hit by
him. My uncle had thought otherwise, saying (as it obtained in the US where he
trained) that apart from the fact that we have the right of way, car owners
must give ultimate respect to pedestrians, being the less privileged. Whereas,
from the reckless conduct of the man behind the wheels, he had almost run into
my uncle’s legs, my uncle stamped several bangs on his bonnet. The man
was forced to apply brake. It dawned on him that the man in front of him was
not just one of those ‘walking moneys who paraded themselves as human
beings’. As he wound down trying to add insult to injury, my aggrieved
uncle turned round held him by the collars and began to tutor him about how,
even in America, it was time the Blackman shook off the shackles of undue
subjugation. He took his hard lessons quietly and drove away. And in retrospect
I supposed that he obviously cowed before a superior intelligence.
All these had fired in
me the irredentism that was to make me do my first essay upon being admitted
into the university on the topic ‘The Weaponry of Poetry And Fiction In
the War Against Apartheid’, and my subsequent proclivity for South
African authors like Alex La Cruma, Peter Abrahams, Athol
……………, Alan Paton, et cetera.
It is heartwarming,
however, that, in spite of years of military misrule and the reins of nepotism
in this country, Nigeria, at last, has woken to a new dawn in a nascent
democracy.
A couple of days ago, I
had watched the Aisha Lazai Musa’s presentation from the Sokoto Zone of
the Nigerian Television Authority, NTA, on the achievements of ANPP’s
Sokoto State Governor Alhaji Attahiru Dalhatu Bafarawa, and I must say I am
impressed with the level of development in the State. More importantly, one is
impressed by the efforts of the Obasanjo administration, which has, through the
highly ingenious television regime, created zonal stations through which
Nigerians could watch and see the various developments in the country, in and
out.
Some of the achievements
of Alhaji Attahiru Dalhatu Bafarawa include a seven-kilometre laid pipe-borne
water; about six-hundred bore holes sunk in various local government areas of
the state; about one hundred tractors supplied to the tune of N306 million;
computer equipped classrooms to the tune of N121 million; fertilizers supplied
to farmers in good time and at affordable, subsidized rates computed at some
2000 metric tones at N1,300 per bag, whereas each bag costs N1,700 per bag,
hence a regular subsidy of N400 per bag, an average of 3,000 metric tonnes
annually making it possible for his regime since 1999 to have supplied over
20,000 metric tones of fertilizer; over N700 million spent on chemicals
supplied to the farmers from 1999 to date; some N36 million spent on
anti-locust programme against the back drop that some of these locusts migrate
from neighbouring countries like Niger and Mauritania; and these funds were
given to the farmers as loans within reasonable time and interests.
Bafarawa has also
connected more than 48 towns and villages to the national grid. His regime had
earmarked some N4 billion for electrification. He has also done so much in
respect of ecological problems. Attention is being paid to the issue of
desertification as the ministry of agriculture is involved in active tree
planting and green belting; just as seedlings are nursed and distributed to
farmers free of charge and across a number of local governments to address the
issue of desertification. And whereas Nigerians were to think that the problems
of erosion are peculiar to the southern part of the country, the Bafarawa
administration has shown that Sokoto State also faces the problem of erosion.
His government has been involved in erosion control.
In Sokoto State, under
Dalhattu Attahiru Bafarawa, some 500 constructed, built and commissioned.
Markets and roads have equally been constructed. Both the state newspaper and
broadcasting houses have benefited from the Bafarawa administration. Aminu
Tukur, the MD of Sokoto State Media Corporation speaks eloquently of
………. Rima Radio and the State TV have sophisticated
equipment; procured lately; how engineers travel to Italy to acquire skills and
broadcasters go to FRCN training school, Lagos and TV College, Jos to acquire
more skills, and how there is a regular contracts with the suppliers of their
equipment so that when they require new ones they get them in a jiffy.
President Obasanjo had
had to commission roads, hospitals to the glory of God and the use of the
Nigerian children in Sokoto State. His Universal Basic Education took off from
there, and the state, with well-equipped laboratories and computer rooms are
catching on with the vision. Nigerians can see it all with their eyes.
Bafarawa is a good
advertisement for his political party.
Where is my state
governor? Where are the other governors? Where are the roads? Where?
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