This year’s Kenneth Kaunda Foundation African Consciousness Leadership Award to Mallam Isa Yuguda, the Bauchi State
Governor as Africa’s Best State Governor in Education and Infrastructural Development did not really come as a surprise but it threw the state into such frenzy that had never happened before.
Because the governor played host on Saturday, November 9, to Vice President Namadi Sambo who paid a two-day state visit to the state, he could not attend the event which took place at Mandela Hall, Burger’s Hotel in Pretoria,South Africa. But observers say that the award means everything to him as it came as an international recognition of his efforts at uplifting the human capital index in his state.
Hon. Farouk Mustapha, his Special Adviser on Inter Governmental Affairs and National Assembly Liaison was in South Africa to receive the coveted award on his behalf.
Two other eminent Nigerians who bagged the Foundation’s awards in other categories were the Governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria, Mr. Sanusi Lamido Sanusiwho got the Best Central Bank Governor while the House of Representatives Speaker, Aminu Tambuwal clinched the Best Speaker Award.
Past beneficiaries of the award were the South African Leader, President Jacob Zuma and Nigeria’s former Special Representative to the United Nations, Alhaji Yusuf Maitama Sule, among others.
The awards were instituted by the Foundation named after Zambia’s first post- apartheid leader, Dr. Kenneth Kaunda who personally attended the event. According to the Foundation, the awards are only given to deserving personalities who distinguish themselves in public and private endeavours. Such personalities are carefully chosen after a diligent assessment by persons of impeccable integrity.
Malam Isa Yuguda’s achievements in Bauchi State generally are so phenomenal that his administration has become a reference point in practical governance excellence and accountability.
Long before venturing into politics, he had a very successful career as a professional banker and administrator rising to be the Managing Director of the defunct Inland Bank (now FinBank) and NAL Merchant Bank. He came face to face with sordid details of several young men and women who could not even meet their most basic needs. He discovered that while some only needed an institutional platform to realise their life ambitions others resorted to thuggery and other vices as self-help. But he was able to center the needs around developing the human mind.
prestigious Dr.
Yuguda
thought he could sufficiently use the was comatose. The percentage of school-
opportunity to affect the lives but he realised that he still needed a people’s platform back home in Bauchi. By this time, agitations and moves to fully draft him into the governorship race in 2007 had become very strong. When he finally decided to heed the call, the people who were made up largely of youth and women instantly began to see the end of their misery. In fact, they massed together and formed a formidable shield around him to resist anti-forces. A people’s revolt soon emerged. It was perhaps the first time in Nigeria’s contemporary political history that an incumbent and his candidate got a nasty taste of the people’s power of rejection at the polls in favour of Isa Yuguda.
Backgrounding Isa Yuguda’s governance success story is necessary here to capture the essence of this award. He knew from the outset that he had a popular mandate and had no reason whatsoever to fail his people. It is that zeal that has dogged all his actions since 2007 when he emerged as the fourth democratically elected governor of the state.
He realized early enough in 2007 that his take-off point was to fix the state’s human capital index said to be very pathetic. The United Nations Development Programme, UNDP,CountryReportonNigeriaclassified Bauchi as the poorest State in the country. But just after a year of focused investment in priority areas by the Yuguda administration the World Bank rated Bauchi as the most investment–friendly state in Nigeria. This is just one outcome of a man’s visionary, dogged and articulate leadership.
To be sure, the pre-Isa Yuguda dispensation was scary and alarming. Infrastructure
age children out of school was about 52 percent between the ages of 5 and 16 years. 89 percent of them were unable to read. The general high illiteracy level put at 60.5 percent (49.7 percent male and 71.5 percent female) was lamentable.
Many communities lacked schools and classrooms for pupils who were left to study under trees while dilapidated boarding facilities and inhabitable classrooms without desks dotted the state. Primary school pupils and secondary school students sat on logs of wood and stones and wrote on bare floor. Teachers’ morale sank as motivation dropped. Unqualified teachers took the scene. Books and teaching aids were a luxury. General decay gripped the sector resulting in poor performance in examinations. The governor quickly declared a state of emergency in the education sector increasing its budget from paltry N2.6b it met in 2007 to N11.6b in 2008.
The governor turned to offer succor to the thousands of youths and women, fondly called ‘Yan Sara Suka” who were the vanguard of the revolution that ushered him into office. The move was not compensatory but compelling to re-engineer and re- orientate them from political thuggery towards unlocking their potentials for creative and decent ventures. Over 150, 000 have benefited so far costing over N10 billion.
He declared a free education policy in all public primary and secondary schools, gave free books and paid school certificate examination fees for students. He embarked on comprehensive renovation of schools,
Even when he became a minister, he in all critical sectors especially education provision of boreholes, increased feeding
allowances by over 300 percent, reviewed scholarship for students in tertiary institutions locally and abroad by over 100 percent at over N3b and built over 100 Sa’adu Zungur Model primary schools accommodating over 6,000 pupils thereby boosting primary and nomadic education in the State.
Vice President Namadi Sambo while commissioning two model Tsangaya Schools for displaced Almajiri children for integration into formal education praised the governor and urge other states in the North to follow suit. Over 20,000 malams mentoring the children are now in the state’s payroll while 620 more schools are being built to complement the existing 220 that have 35,531 pupils.
The girl-child education project is active in all 20 local councils of the state while 6 secondary schools for married women were established in all six emirates of the state to increase the literacy level of the women.
The agency State Universal Basic Education Board, SUBEB, has constructed over 250 blocks of classrooms, 19,567 sets of pupils furniture, 70,000 desks, 132 hand pump – fitted boreholes, 2,769 teachers’ tables, 130 boreholes and 75 library blocks. Enrolment of primary school pupils rose to over 737, 259 and 137, 280 in junior secondary school respectively with total teaching staff strength now put at over 20,434.
About 21 students have been sponsored by the government to train as pilots and aircraft maintenance engineers in the United States of America at N160 million annually while 23 females and 15 males of Bauchi State origin were sent to Egypt to study medicine.
The government has established the Bauchi State University, BASUG, at Gadau with campuses at Azare, Misau and Bauchi. At its recent commissioning, Vice President Sambo described it as an eloquent testimony of profound vision of the governor to give his people good education.
The governor’s heavy investment in the state’s education sector is only following in the footsteps and tradition of the founding fathers of the state that saw human development as a major requirement for personal growth and as their collective asset to national development.
Robust political discourse in the North actually started in Bauchi. Nigeria’s first and last Prime Minister, late Sir Abubakar Tafawa Balewa hailed from Bauchi. The State has also produced two former Secretaries to the Government of the Federation, a former Head of Civil Service of Federation, a former Chairman of the Federal Civil Service Commission, many former Federal Permanent Secretaries and a former Minister of Civil Service Matters, many Federal Ministers (including the governor), among others.
Therefore, the 2013 prestigious Kenneth Kaunda African Consciousness Leadership Award given to Governor Isa Yuguda as the Best Governor in Education and Infrastructural Development in the African Continent is an international endorsement of the commitment and dedication of a man to the emancipation of his people from the shackles of disease, ignorance and illiteracy.
Emeka Nwankpa, Dahiru Saleh and SegunAdedeji, governance/public affairs commentators, contributed this piece from Abuja