The 2023 general elections have come and gone and like every set of elections there have emerged winners and losers. Typical of Africans, those who lost allege rigging and those who won hail the process.
Reflections
The page of Professor Abdussamad Umar Jibia
Wednesday 12 April 2023
Why Nigerians should thank Peter Obi
Sunday 5 February 2023
Letter to my Igbo Compatriot
Sunday 7 August 2022
How did Keyamo arrive at N1.2 trillion for ASUU?
It is well known that members of the Academic Union of Universities (ASUU), the umbrella body of academic staff in Nigerian Public universities have been on strike for some six months. Specifically, the strike began on February 14, 2022. Typical of the union of academics, it made sure that all means of avoiding the strike were exhausted before declaring the industrial action. Other university unions followed suit to avoid being left out in case ASUU emerged successful.
The issues are many and not all of them have to do with money and in fact not all the money mentioned in the dispute between ASUU and Federal Government goes to the pockets of ASUU members. No money goes to the union at all except the monthly dues it collects from members. It is not the duty of a trade union like ASUU to collect and disburse funds. That is the duty of university administrations.
Let me explain in plain language. But before I do, certain facts are important.
Although licenses have been given by the Federal Government for the establishment of many private universities in Nigeria, only about six percent of Nigerian university students are currently in private universities. More than 90 per cent of university students are in public universities owned by both states and Federal Governments.
Another important note is that there are currently more supporting staff in public universities than operational (academic) staff. Consequently, there are three other unions in public universities apart from ASUU. People usually do not differentiate between ASUU and others, largely due to Government propaganda. All of these unions are now on strike.
Nigerians may also wish to note that undergraduate students in Federal universities do not pay a Kobo as tuition fees as long as they are Nigerians. The very little they pay as registration fees are for services like ID card, Games, hostel, etc.
The issues for which members of ASUU are on strike are the same issues for which the immediate past Government of Jonathan Goodluck commended the union for being patriotic and selfless. One of them is the proliferation of public universities. Does it make sense that the same Government that persistently complains of not having enough funds to run its existing universities is continuously establishing new universities in every nook and cranny of the country?
Revitalization of public universities for which an agreement was reached by the immediate past Government to release N1.3trn in six installments is what the Federal Government has been using to misinform the public that ASUU is looking for too much money. Thus, any time the FG releases some paltry sum of N30bn for example, it tells the world that it has given additional money to ASUU. I think that is why some patriotic Nigerians once agreed to “donate the sum of N18b to ASUU” to call off its strike. This money does not go to ASUU. It is used to carry out projects by contractors appointed by Federal Government or its appointee Governing councils.
The only other thing that involves cash is the renegotiation of 2009 agreement. In case you do not understand this, it is about the condition of service (SALARY AND ALLOWANCES) of academic staff which the Government promised to review every four years and the promised was not fulfilled for 13 years. In 2020 after an ASUU strike, the Federal Government set up a committee to renegotiate with ASUU and other unions. The committee finished its work and submitted its report in May 2021. The report was dumped and, despite ASUU’s constant reminders and follow-ups, was only dusted when ASUU began its strike in March this year. That is when this Government realized that it could not pay what was recommended by the committee. The same Government set up another committee the report of which it is not willing to disclose.
As a student or parent you are aware of all of the above if you have been following engagement of ASUU with Federal Government. I am only reminding you in case you have forgotten.
I am particularly shocked to hear the Minister of State Labour calling on parents to appeal to ASUU to end the strike. The reason is that they cannot afford N1.2tr ASUU is asking for. When did ASUU ask for this amount? Is it the revitalization fund Keyamo is talking about which ASUU never requested the FG to pay in bulk? If that is the case, why does it have to take FG six months of ASUU strike to state it? Or is it the result of renegotiation for which the FG never called ASUU and stated what it can pay? It just doesn’t make any sense.
What about other issues like the UTAS for which the FG has been meeting with ASUU and making claims of having conducted tests with xy results? Is Keyamo also appealing to parents to beg ASUU on it?
And who are these parents? Please let all the Government officials involved in this ASUU/FG negotiation mention the number of children they have in public universities and the programmes they are following. Of course I know the children of Mr. President, the person we elected, were schooling in UK. I wrote to advize him against it when his family celebrated the graduation of one of his daughters in December 2019. Whether or not the advice of nonentities like me matters is a different thing. It is the ordinary we that casted the votes anyway.
Finally, let me remind Mr. President that he has only less than a year to leave office. Unfortunately, nearly all his diehard supporters I know have been disappointed. This is largely due to the people he entrusts with very important issues like Security and Education.
On the particular issue of ASUU and sister unions, Mr. President seems to be overconfident in the Labour Minister, a southeast politician who was expecting you to anoint him to take over from you next year. When you refused to do it, one of them who is also in your cabinet stood before you in the last convention and accused you and your party of injustice. With that, can you rule out sabotage?
Mr. President Sir, please use the little time left to correct the mistakes made and avoid making another regrettable blunder. Nigerians did not elect Ngige, Keyamo, Zainab or any of those. In fact, if not for you these names would have long disappeared into obscurity. Please remember, Sir, that most of the APC politicians who won 2015 and 2019 elections especially in the North won because of you. So, the expectation is high and the performance is dismal.
I hope Mr. President reads this.
Friday 14 January 2022
Remembering Dr. Ahmad Bamba
It was a Friday, specifically the seventh of January 2022 in the official salary calendar of Nigeria. Even if you are not Gregorian in your personal timings once you are a salary worker in Nigeria you cannot afford to ignore the Gregorian calendar. Even Islamic schools use it to pay their workers. Traders are always conscious of it because their sales are higher at the end of the month. Employers feel relieved when they are able to pay their staff before or on the last day of a Gregorian month. Nigerian politicians list payment of monthly salaries as one of their achievements.
But this piece is not about salary payment or the Gregorian calendar.
In one of the Whatsapp groups I belong, someone had just posted that Dr. Ahmad Bamba was dead. Dr. Ahmad Muhammad Ibrahim was, until sometime in the late 1990s, a tenure staff of the Department of Islamic Studies Bayero University Kano. After some misunderstandings with the then administration of Bayero University Kano, which he narrated when he was alive, he voluntarily withdrew his services from the university only to be reabsorbed many years later when Prof. Abubakar Adamu Rasheed assumed the Vice Chancellorship of the University.
Before I could react to the news of Sheikh Ahmad BUK as many people called him, I must verify its correctness. In 2020, I went to the extent of calling the Deputy National Chairman of the Izala group to condole him about the death of Sheikh Abdullahi Bala Lau announced by an online newspaper and it turned out to be a fake news. Before he died, fake news reporters had once killed Alhaji Bashir Tofa, the erstwhile Presidential candidate of the defunct NRC and publisher of the first Nigerian Islamic newspaper, The Pen. Much earlier, Dr. Nnamdi Azikwe was killed many times before his death, even without social media at that time. With all these in my mind, I decided to verify, and I thought the best person to ask was my neighbor and one the most senior students of the Sheikh, Professor Ahmad Murtala. After the confirmation, I began to pray for Dr. Ahmad.
I do not personally know any of Dr. Ahmad’s children except for one of his daughters who is a classmate and a close friend of one of my two wives. But my wife was in Bauchi for the marriage ceremony of a cousin in her mother’s family. So she could only immediately phone. Of course, she visited Insaaf Bamba after her return. As for me, the best thing I could do was to pray. As an ordinary person, I have always avoided gatherings of people who matter in the society. Allah answers prayers from whichever location and even from ordinary people like me. So, in sha Allah we shall continue to pray for Islamic scholars like Dr. Ahmad Muhammad Ibrahim. Of course, the best way to remember a scholar is first, to practice the message he propagated and to continue to spread his teachings. The Messenger of Allah (May blessing and peace of Allah be upon him) listed a knowledge taught by a Muslim as one of the acts of virtue that continue to fetch them rewards after their death as long as the knowledge continues to be practiced.
But who is Dr. Ahmad Muhammad Ibrahim?
Baby Ahmad was born in 1940 in Kumasi, Ghana to a migrant family of Islamic scholars. Migration from Northern Nigeria to Ghana is age long and Dr. Ahmad’s family is one of those Nigerian families who migrated to join the Hausa community of Ghana. The child of Fatima and Muhammad began his early Islamic education from home and at the age of 14 he was taken to a tailor to learn the art of making clothes while still attending his Islamic lessons.
The turning point in Sheikh Ahmad’s life came with his journey to Saudi Arabia to study. I heard him confess several times that before he made it to Madina where he met world class Islamic scholars he had begun to see himself as a leading Islamic scholar. That was understandable given the environment in which Sheikh Ahmad was brought up. However, according to him when he arrived Madinah he was reduced to a beginner struggling to learn.
And he learnt well. Soon after collecting his letter of admission and registering as an undergraduate in the prestigious International Islamic University of Medina, Ahmad Bamba excelled to become one of the best students of Hadith. That was the time when the University was headed by the famous Sheikh AbdulAzeez Bn Baaz, and had lecturers like Sheikh Nasiruddeen Al-albani and Sheikh Hammad Al-Ansariy. These are some of the best Islamic scholars of their generation and it is a pride for any student of Islam to come in contact with them even if they didn’t teach him. They directly taught Sheikh Ahmad.
Ahmad’s scholastic aptitude earned him a good degree in Hadith before he left the Prophetic city of Madina. He assumed duty as a lecturer in the well respected Department of Islamic studies of Bayero University in 1981.
For the first one decade of his sojourn in Bayero University, the people who mostly benefitted from his vast knowledge of Islam were the students of his Department. For the rest of us in other faculties of the same University, we only heard about him when we discussed with his students. This is not to say that other people did not discover him early enough. In addition to teaching at the Aminuddeen’s Da’wah Islamiyya School many people, including some influential businessmen, privately visited the Sheikh’s house for Islamic lessons.
After the death in 1992 of Sheikh Abubakar Mahmoud Gummi who served as the de facto leader of the Salafis in Nigeria, the private students of Sheikh Ahmad Bamba thought that there was the need to raise their not well-known teacher to serve as a replacement. And it worked perfectly well. The first open lessons of Hadith by the Sheikh began at a location provided by one of his students in Gandun Albasa Quarters, Kano.
The lessons in Gandun Albasa did not last long. The promoters of the Hadith lessons thought further that better results could be achieved if the lessons were moved to the University, after all Dr. Ahmad was a staff of the only University in Kano at that time. That is how Dr. Ahmad began his Hadith lessons in the Bayero University Old campus Jumuah mosque. And because the lessons were holding in BUK and Dr. Ahmad was a staff of BUK, he came to be known in many circles as Dr. Ahmad BUK.
As planned by his students and with Allah’s permission, Dr. Ahmad within the blink of an eye became the scholar everyone respected in Northern Nigeria. Many people from all over Kano state and the neighbouring Katsina and Jigawa states made special arrangements to attend his weekly lessons in Kano. Those who could not attend would not miss the cassettes. He was teaching the Nigerian public a knowledge that was hitherto restricted to the circle of select Islamic scholars. He was questioning unIslamic traditions of Sheikh-worshipping. He openly exposed disbeliefs packaged and given to Muslims as Islam. Naturally, this would not go down well with those who benefitted from the status quo; hence the many enemies of Dr. Ahmad.
Younger Sunni scholars accepted Dr. Ahmad as their leader and respected his interventions. For example, he prevailed on the Late Sheikh Ja’afar Adam to rescind his decision to impose niqab as part of the compulsory uniform for girls in Uthman bn Affan College. For those of us who attended various lessons of different Salafi scholars in Kano, we noticed that salient issues raised by Dr. Ahmad were always amplified by other scholars as a mark of respect for the late leader scholar.
Books of Hadith are categorized. The best are the collections of Bukhari and Muslim. Any hadith reported by both scholars is considered as unquestionably authentic. The next set of books are the Sunan. These are the collections of Abu Daud, Tirmidhi, Nasa’i and Ibn Majah. The six books put together are known as “The Six Collections (Al Kutubus Sitta)”. The six collections plus the collections of Imam Ahmad (Musnad), Imam Malik (Muwatta) and Imam Addarimiy (Sunan) are known as “The nine collections (Al Kutubut tis’ah)”.
In case you don’t know the level of Dr. Ahmad’s contribution, he is the only African scholar known to have read, translated and interpreted the nine collections to public.
Dr. Ahmad was charismatic. Perharps that was what made many people feared approaching him thinking that he would be too tough to deal with. They were always surprised when the Sheikh received them with smiles and an open mind.
Like the Late Sheikh Abubakar Gummi, Dr. Ahmad was generous. As donations kept coming, he kept giving. This has been attested to by people very close to him. At a point when someone spoke to him about it, he said, “keeping this one will prevent another one from coming”. This is a statement that could only be discerned by a person who understands the saying of Allah, “Whatever you spend (for Allah’s sake), Allah will provide its replacement” (Q34:39)
If your habit is to carry gossip from one point to another, Dr. Ahmad would never welcome you. His time was for teaching and learning. He encouraged productivity and urged youth to be focused until they excelled in the one thing they choose to do in life.
When some people began to question his nationality, Dr. Ahmad stated in his characteristic smile that he had a “productive nationality”. And it is so. After he temporarily withdrew his services from Bayero University in the 1990s Sheikh Ahmad accepted to teach in the Islamic University of Niamey. Soon after, his Nigerian students arranged for him to come back and continue with the work he started. There was a mild rejection, by his Nigerien students. The Nigerians had their way and our neighbours gave up when they understood that more people stood to benefit from his knowledge in Nigeria.
Wednesday 30 June 2021
So what if Kanu is arrested?
On Thursday June 24, 2021 I stumbled on a viral video from Zamfara state. In the four minutes clip, a notorious bandits’ kingpin could be seen boastfully confessing in front of senior security officials of the atrocities he committed against the Nigerian state and its people. The man, popularly known as Dan-Karami is said to be one of the senior gang members of the deceased Buharin daji, a bandits’ general who controlled the rural areas of Zamfara until his death in 2018 in the hand of one of his other gang members, Dogo Gide. Dogo Gide had ‘repented’ and submitted himself to the Government of Zamfara state under Abdulazeez Yari and Yari decided to use him to kill his boss. Gide had since resumed crime and is operating from his base in the vast forest reserve spanning several North Western and central states. He and Dan-Karami were among the many gangsters that sealed and breached several peace agreements with Governments of Zamfara and Katsina states.
I watched the video clips several times and upon enquiry I came to know that the senior Government officials were there to beg him to allow people to go to farm in the areas he controlled now that it is rainy season. The areas he controlled, as he stated in the clip are south of the Jibia-Gusau highway where he claims to be responsible for “any crime you hear of”. It is noteworthy that a week earlier 53 people were killed in the area. That is many times the number of Nigerians killed due to IPOB activities since it started.
Going by what he stated, the Nigerian Government has no other option except to go and beg him since, according to him, he has victoriously repelled all attempts by the Nigerian Army to defeat him. In one of those attempts, he stated, he was attacked by a combined team of Nigerian and Nigerien security forces and he defeated and killed more than half of them. He also confessed of kidnapping forty children from Zurmi township at another point in time.
Another thing he stated worth examining was the initial rejection by the now deposed Emir of Zurmi to dialogue with him or any other terrorist for that matter. If what he said was true, the Emir only agreed to speak to him after it was clear to the Emir that Government could not defeat him. The question to ask here is, if the Emir decided to be communicating to the outcast in order to protect his people, was he doing or not doing the right thing? Why was he deposed by the same Government that now decided to go and smile with a confirmed criminal who has admitted killing several people including our soldiers? When has the Nigerian Government become a coward that aims only at soft targets?
After watching that video, I began to wait for a statement from Federal Government. None came, at least not to my knowledge. The expectations of any citizen who watched that video would be the Government would now launch a major manhunt for the criminal to face charges of murder, treason, kidnapping, etc. Alas! The attention of the leaders of APC and PDP is not there. Their concern is not how Nigerians can sleep with their eyes closed or how many criminals are brought to justice but how many politicians from one party defect to another. Unfortunately for the people of Zamfara state the next thing they heard is that their Governor was now defecting to ruling (sorry “governing”) party as if that is what would solve their problem.
But there is one thing I did. After watching that video I decided to send it to the media aide of the Attorney General and Minister of Justice and requested him to give it to his boss in case he had not seen it along with our message of disappointment.
My choice of Abubakar Malami is deliberate for two reasons. One. He is not one of those opportunists who only began to support Buhari with the windstorm of 2015. He has been the supporter of Buhari from day one and is thus a witness to all the promises his Oga made to Nigerians. Two. He is the Attorney General and Minister of Justice.
Nothing has changed. The Sheikh Gumis are busy going from one bandits’ camp to another and calling on Buhari to give salaries to Fulani criminals. The Kabiru Gombes are all over the place telling masses that Saint Buhari is not responsible for the protection of their lives and property since he has appointed Northerners to take charge of security. The Masaris are there blaming the masses for waiting for Government to give them protection. That is the very sad predicament Northerners have found themselves. You are on your own if fate makes you an ordinary Northern Nigerian.
On Tuesday June 29, while the rest of us were still waiting for action (although sincerely speaking most Northerners have lost hope), Malami appeared on our television screens to tell Nigerians that Nnamdi Kanu, the leader of IPOB was arrested “through the collaborative efforts of Nigerian intelligence and security services”. That is a good news, I thought, but it is no news. Kanu has never been the major problem of the rural farmers of the North. His arrest will never make Kaduna-Abuja, Kaduna-Birnin Gwari, Jibia-Gusau, Kankara-Sheme or any of those highways safe. It will never stop the harassment of our people killed, kidnapped and raped by bandits on daily basis. So what if he is arrested?
But Kanu is being “accused of instigating violence especially in the Southeastern Nigeria that resulted in the loss of lives and property of civilians, military, paramilitary, police forces and destruction of civil institutions and symbols of authorities.” Here is someone right here on the Nigerian soil boasting of having committed all these atrocities and daring Government. Yet, the Government is going there to smile at him. Is that not an irony?
Prof Abdussamad Umar Jibia
30/06/2021
Monday 14 June 2021
Banditry: My disappointments with PMB’s approach
Like many other weeks before it in the past several years, the past one week has been very tragic for the people of Jibia LGA. It was during this period that bandits sent a notice to the people of Jibia of an impending attack. Such notices are not unusual since banditry became the order in the North Western part of Nigeria. The criminals do normally not fail in their promises although it does not have to be on the day they mention. Thus, since Thursday the 10th of June 2021, the people of Jibia town have known no sleep. I partly blame them because when banditry was restricted to the rural areas, most people in the local government headquarters did not give it a damn. Some of them who were fanatical in their support for Buhari even claimed out of mischief that we were only speaking to show the failure of his Government even though they could not deny our support for him throughout the period he was doing everything he could to get to the Presidency.
Two things happened to the Jibia town people on Sunday the 13th. One. Three people travelling down south were kidnapped around Kankara and their abductors later called to ask for a ransom of N300m. Two. Due to their desire to go to farm and cultivate what they eat like they have been doing even before any politician came to advise them, four young people went to farm around Shabba village North west of Jibia town. Themselves and their two cows were later abducted from their farms and moved to the bush. Concerned community members later called in the Nigerien police who moved in swiftly to kill two and arrest one of the bandits. The abductees were freed to join their families. With many friends and relations in the Nigerian Army, Police and Air Force I cannot be against the Nigerian military. But they should not be angry if I say, and rightly too, that the local people around the border now have more confidence in the Nigerien military than they have in their Nigerian counterparts.
As a teacher, I have come across many students who worked hard to answer an examination question and filled so many pages with their beautifully written answers only to score a zero at the end. There are usually two reasons for this. One. The student did not take time to read and understand the question before he begins to answer it. Two. He read and understood the question but he didn’t know the answer. However, since he has registered for the course and told examiners that he is qualified, he has to provide an answer even if it is the wrong one. This phenomenon manifests itself among politicians who campaign and win elections. The second analogy is that of an unqualified and incompetent politician.
Again in the Arise News interview he emphasized on his meeting with security chiefs, the marching order he gave them and the reports he received from them. And I ask, does Mr. President have no other way of knowing what is on the ground except through those security chiefs? As a politician, Mr. President has his party leaders and ardent supporters in every ward of the 774 local governments of the Federal Republic of Nigeria. Is this structure not an alternative for the president to confirm what is on the ground and use it to surprise and issue orders and praise or rebuke his security chiefs? His claims that bandits are being decimated in the North West and that people are now going to farm show that he is not getting the correct feedback. The example I gave on people abducted on their farms is only one of those incidences. There are villages I know where people are paying taxes to bandits to allow them to go farm and nothing is changing.
Now, does the President understand the identity of our bandits at all? Mr. President was in power four years before Zulum became the Governor but it was Zulum who told him that Boko Haram members are Nigerians. I thought even as he was campaigning for elections he had a very good idea of the identity of Boko Haram membership, how they started and where they were. Those pieces of information were necessary for him to “hit the ground running” as he promised in 2015.
Wednesday 9 December 2020
How Daura people are being misrepresented
This morning (09/12/2020) I was confronted by a video clip of a legislator from Katsina state. The young man, who may be in his thirties or forties depending on his body type is supposed to be representing Daura/Maiadua/Sandamu Federal constituency in the House of Representatives. By implication, this man is one of the two people representing President Muhammadu Buhari in the National assembly. Without doubt, like most of his types from the North, Fatuhu Muhammed rode on the back of Buhari to convince the unsuspecting people of Daura, Maiadua and Sandamu that he will support Buhari to change their lot.
The man, who unfortunately is a member of Committee on tertiary education in the house rose to ask his colleagues to agree to tell the executives to sell public universities and retain the Polytechnics. His reason is that “we are having so much problems with ASUU”. He did not elaborate on the word, “we”. Is he referring to the people of Daura, Maiadua and Sandamu, in which case we should ask him the method he used to determine their opinion? We know that ASUU had recently embarked on nationwide parleying with Nigerians at which it explained it’s position and listened to parents’ views as major stakeholders. How many parleys did Fatuhu hold with the masses of Daura, Sandamu and Maiadua to have arrived at this opinion?
Or did “we” in Fatuhu’s submission refer to the committee in which he is only an ordinary member? We shall then ask, where is the report of the committee which would show the homework it has made to arrive at this position? Why is he the one presenting it, when, like he acknowledged in his incoherent submission, the Committee chairman was present?
While reacting to the clip, a colleague from Daura noted that Fatuhu is a nephew of the President. If that is true, the rest of us may wish to know, does “we” refer to the extended Buhari family? We know that some of Buhari’s children were educated outside Nigeria even when he is sitting in the villa as an elected President. Is it the opinion of Mr. President that public universities in Nigeria be privatized so that the “edupreneurs” who buy them would make them as good as those attended by his children in the UK? PMB is a key stakeholder in Fatuhu’s constituency but he has only one vote.
What is the “so much problem” that the Fatuhus know about ASUU that the rest of Nigerians do not that led “them” to conclude that the “best solution” is to sell the universities? I know many Nigerians who criticize ASUU for one thing or another but none of them has spoken so strongly about “privatizing” public universities like Fatuhu did. I am sure that in addition to myself, other Nigerians would love to know this problem that can only be solved by selling our universities.
For any arising matter that requires the attention of lawmakers, I would like to note that there are three questions a member like Fatuhu would ask before taking a position.
The first question is, how will it affect my people? Did Fatuhu ask this question? Poverty is one factor that characterizes our life in the far North. Daura emirate is one of the worst hit places in terms of poverty, hunger and backwardness in formal education. For example,for many years people from other parts of Katsina state rush to rural local governments in Daura emirate to look for hajj seats as in most cases the people there cannot fill their quota of hajj seats due to the high level poverty. If Government closes down its primary and secondary schools in Katsina state, one can be rest assured that majority of our children, and especially those from rural local Governments like the ones Fatuhu is representing, will not go to school. Right now, many children from the North are at the mercy of their state governments to pay for their WAEC and NECO registration. Then, how can a person representing such people rise on the floor of the National Assembly and advocate for the commercialization of education? This is silliness at it’s peak.
The second question is, how has this problem been solved in similar climes? As a legislator has Fatuhu taken time to find out how Malaysia, for example, is able to run it’s public universities and make them among the best? Today, no one goes to a private university in Malaysia except those who are not academically good enough for public universities. Malaysian lecturers are among the happiest set of people in that country. Why are our politicians so lazy to simply read or travel in order to help their people?
For anything a person wants to say, whether or not such a person is a legislator, they would always ask, how will it be received by other people? Regrettably, Fatuhu is so inexperienced to even discuss with his colleagues a priori, which explained why many of them were shouting him down when he was saying it. Of course, there is nothing wrong in being controversial if one is sure of one’s position and has sufficient facts to support it. Unfortunately, the legislator did not prepare adequate arguments to back his position which explains why he immediately sat down the moment his colleagues began to boo him. Did he not ask his “we” of their reasons to believe that the problem of ASUU is so much that there should be no public university in Nigeria?
But who do you blame? Just Fatuhu? I blame the political parties who nominate and send people without preparing them. Although seminars and retreats are organized for legislators from time to time, the emphasis is usually not on the knowledge. Otherwise, we would not be having people like Fatuhu.
Fatuhu as an individual is not worth my pen. I don’t write to vilify individuals. My concern is for the poor people of Daura, Sandamu and Maiadua who are being misrepresented.