Opinion: Suleiman Abubakar and Kwara politics, By Olasunkanmi Abdulkadir
Anyone who has read the recent interviews by our newly appointed Minister of National Planning, Dr. Suleiman Abubakar, will come out asking several questions.
True, as a Nigerian, he is entitled to his personal hopes and aspirations, and can even join others in a group or association to express such views. But as a minister of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, I think Mr Suleiman needs more circumspection in thought and speech.
I am particularly harried by the minister's recent outburst that he has been given marching orders by the president to dislodge the so-called Saraki dynasty in Kwara State. What that means, Suleiman needs to tell the public. While not holding brief for the Sarakis, the claimed directive by the president, not for a sound sustainable developmental plan and economic growth from the minister, calls for apprehension.
We are yet to forget the several vituperations of a minister of state who practically left his official engagement to become a Minister Against Amaechi; focusing on personal political vendetta while his major responsibility took a nosedive. It took the appointment of a more matured politician as substantive minister in his ministry before sanity could be restored to the sector. One can only hope that Suleiman will not follow the same script because we were thinking, and we still want to risk thinking, that Suleiman has better intellectual pedigree.
The nation can ill afford federal ministers who leave their duty posts to engage in unnecessary political activities.
While one is not really bothered by his claim to political sophistry in Kwara State, or that the present gang-up against a structure that predates his biological existence will be swept away by a group of political renegades, Suleiman, like his ilk in the PDP, is entitled to dream dreams. We shall wake them up after the election has been fought and won squarely by the man who has what it takes to win a political battle in Kwara.
One wonders why in the exercise of his right to speak, our minister should expose how shallow his understanding of governance is. Simply put, it is a tragedy for a Minister of National Planning, whose main schedule is to see to the smooth execution of national policies and projects, to declare that an administration that continues with the projects of its predecessor is a failure.
Fellow Nigerians, our minister has clearly missed it. Hear him: "PDP is going to win in Kwara more so, as the government in Kwara state now has not done anything serious in term of development. The roads he has been working on are inherited ones. He has not come out with new roads. He has not come out with new schools. He has not come with new hospital."
This is bad advertisement for the PDP. The man they so much celebrated recently is not living up to the basic requirement of political knowledge. So PDP will win Kwara in 2015 because governor AbdulFattah Ahmed decided to complete the roads which his predecessor started? That he refused to abandon them and leave the people hopeless and rejected?
So, PDP will win Kwara in 2015 because the governor refused to build new schools but decided to complete the ones his predecessor was working on before his tenure expired? So, Ahmed should have abandoned the schools and left the pupils and parents forlon just to prove that he is a governor? This is simply disastrous.
Minister Suleiman said the Ahmed administration has not come up with new hospital! Is he in Nigeria at all? At least when he came to Ilorin the other day, he must have passed through the 'General Hospital' area. The changed landscape should have caught his attention, after all, until this new season of political vendetta, he was not used to coming home in grand ways, so he should have noticed that there is now a brand new General Hospital where the old one used to be. Or, is the hatred for anything Saraki and the Ahmed administration so great that our minister was actually blinded from seeing the beautiful layout and structures on ground by the road? There are five of such across the state sir, Minister Suleima, and as a man in charge of Planning you need to have such statistics so that you don't talk off point next time.
But sir, in case you don't have records in your office, which we believe you should as befitting your official duties, the administration you claimed has not achieved any new thing in the last three years has constructed a number of road projects, built an international vocation centre, employed 10, 200 youths, and empowered artisans among other projects too numerous to mention.
And lastly sir, when we were in the trenches campaigning in 2011, the party made one simple promise to the people of Kwara to wit; that we shall not abandon the projects started by our predecessor because we know that such attitude has been the bane of development in Nigeria and which the poor people of this country would expect the like of our minister to correct.
We have not abandoned that promise and we shall not abandon it. We promised continuity and we have delivered. Kwarans are proud of us because we have not abandoned them.
Olasunkanmi Abdulkadir is a member of O'Legacy group, a political association based in Ilorin.
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