By Festus Adedayo
Accepting to be in Zamfara State a little over a week back appeared to me as the harmful dalliance in between the hawk and chicken chicks. Yoruba Sakara music lord, Yusuff Olatunji, succintly painted the risk I felt. When the hawk (Asa) turns the chick into her friend and the chick enjoys this pseudo unity, the chick is playing with fire, so sang Olatunji. As we landed in Gusau that torrid afternoon, in my subconscious, Yusuff Olatunji continued singing about the risk that lay ahead of me. Àsá ńb’éyelé se’ré, eyelé ńyò, eyelé ńfi’kú seré …” the caution, like a weapon’s ricochet, bounced off constantly in my brain.
I had actually remained in Gusau 26 years previously. Guv Sani Yerima had actually simply cut off the hand of Bello Jangebe as martyrdom for his Sharia experimentation. I was among the reporters who talked to Yerima at the Government House over this burning blaze. Because that unconscionable choice, Zamfara had actually used the badge of a severe Islamic fundamentalist state, a no-go location for any good development of one of the most High God. The couple of individuals who understood of my approaching travel to Gusau recoiled as if stung by a rattlesnake.
Thirty-four years earlier, I resided in Yelwa-Yauri, Kebbi State and as such, Northwest Nigeria was not weird to me. Here I was in Gusau as part of a six-member team that would talk to Governor Dauda Lawal on the event of Zamfara’s 30th anniversary. The Gusau I saw had actually altered significantly. The brand-new airport was my very first enjoyable shock. I had actually hitherto followed the big opposition from Lawal’s predecessors, Bello Matawalle and Abdulaziz Yari, to this concept of a Gusau airport task. Witnessing the enforcing, visually colonizing structure of the airport, with reports that the runway and centers, consisting of the control tower, were cutting edge, made me to get in touch with Lawal’s persistent pursuit of the job. In a state marooned by awful federal roadways, with a journey linking Gusau to the next airports of Sokoto and Birnin Kebbi a tourist’s headache, Lawal appeared to have actually drilled a course for financiers to ply to his state.
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At night of our arrival, Lawal asked to satisfy those who would barbecue him. And therefore, we drove round Gusau till about midnight. Night life bubbled. Commerce went on unabated as we drove round town on dualized roadways built by his administration. Slowly, the location of dissent to Zamfara started to be recalibrated in my mind. Buoyed by this environment of a tranquil Gusau, the women on the entourage even participated in church service in Gusau the 2nd day, Sunday.
We quickly got to Lawal’s personal house in Gusau’s GRA It was my very first encounter with a Northern Nigerian guv in this dispensation, which showed exciting. Younger, contemporary in idea and trained in universities outside Nigeria, this child of a fabric giant appeared like a departure from Northern Nigerian trend of transferring Acheulian characters with little education in Government Houses.
We later on checked out the Ahmad Sani Yerima Bakura Specialist Hospital along Zaria Road/Tudun Wada, which is the state’s main tertiary health care center. We saw a spick-and-span health center environment, recently acquired healthcare facility devices like MRI, CT Scan, ultrasound devices and so on. The entire health center was totally off-grip, with nearly a kilometer-long solar farm. I quickly ended up being a professional photographer, taking pictures of all the eye-stopping devices.
With his classic recall of what Gusau utilized to be, Lawal bridged the North-South share history. He took his reporter visitors on a historic journey of Gusau-Southern Nigeria user interface of his maturing years. Gusau was traditionally connected with standard crafts like blacksmithing, weaving, and leather, along with mid-20th-century agro-allied production like cotton fabrics and grease extraction, he informed us. With train’s arrival in 1927, Gusau ended up being a significant collection and processing center for cotton, culminating in the significant Zamfara Textile Industries plant. Gusai delivered fabrics to Lagos and fuel was pumped from Lagos and Ogun depots to this primary northern financial center. It likewise had centers like the historical Gusau Oil Mill processed groundnuts and farming seeds.
For many years nevertheless, things went cumulatively bad for Zamfara. It fell back so terribly that it takes pride in not even a single befitting hotel today, other than the 7-storey hotel Lawal is presently building in Gusau.
I was nevertheless not one to fulfill the Lion in its burrow, be terrified of its hair and enable him eliminate my composure. I asked Dauda Lawal: “You made so much hoopla about the supposed corruption in Zamfara when you came on board, specifically over the enormous quantity hitherto invested on the airport by your predecessors, funds which you stated you could not track that ran into billions of Naira. It was likewise declared that you calculated the books and sent out information to the EFCC to check out. Considering that you decamped to the APC, we have not heard you speak about acquired corruption, particularly now that a political leader in this state, who was hardly making ends satisfy, purchased the Geregu Power Plc for a billion Naira. What has altered?”
The guv tried to parry the concern. He didn’t prosper. I prospered in seeing Zamfara State from a brand-new telescope.
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