It’s an unarguable fact that Governor Muhammad Inuwa Yahaya, the increasingly provocative governor of Gombe State, is steadily chalking up points that would undoubtedly make him go down as the worst governor to come out of the “Jewel in the Savannah” since the creation of the state on October 1, 1996.
He has since shown clearly that he is no longer who he was when he was angling for a position that would catapult him to the highest political office in the state. Virtually all those who supported him, promoted his cause and pacified many other leaders who would ordinarily have nothing to do with his campaign for governorship to come to his side, are being cast aside in a most ignominious manner.
Now, from all in indications, he believes he has arrived; that he is a self-made man who only listens to his own voice. Yes, a leader is supposed to be one who provides solutions. But when a leader begins to see himself as the ultimate repository of answers to challenges bedevilling a people; when he begins to be propelled by some unrestrained inordinate ego rather than beneficial virtuous humility, then the leader must be embarking on a journey of self-destruction, or gradually walking his way to total damnation. There can’t be any other outcome than this.
Indeed, self-destruction is not an option any well-meaning indigene of Gombe would wish for their leader. But a governor who has chosen that path for himself and refuses to listen to the numerous voices of reason in that territory urging restraint and conciliatory approach to matters must know that he cannot be helped.
Governor Yahaya happens to be the only governor in the entire Northeast region who finds comfort in unconscionable hypocrisy and divisive rhetoric. Not even when under the government of the opposition party did Gombe State witness such disgusting level of bitterness and rancour as currently displayed among the people. And to say that this is the result of the gross misgovernace offered by a sitting governor who ought to know better is to belabour the obvious.
A leader like Yahaya who relishes sowing the seed of discord at any given opportunity is not the type of administrator Gombe needs at this critical phase of its history. This is a governor who never stops criticizing former governor, Ibrahim Dankwambo, for instance, for allegedly piling up loans upon loans to the tune of over N120 billion during his tenure. Yet, Yahaya, in just about two years of his first term, has taken more loans than Dankwambo took in his entire eight years as governor. There’s a name for this type of misguided antagonism against a predecessor who had done his best to put Gombe State in the best shape for further progressive development. It’s called rank hypocrisy.
But, instead of anyone else, Yahaya is the one who appropriately deserves the label of the borrowing governor. The man does not seem to care one bit, clearly showing no scruples, no matter how little, in his propensity for borrowing. In just a little over two years as governor, Yahaya, like a sailor on a never-ending binge, has borrowed more than N100bn, and the people are still counting. And there appears to be no cogent and convincing reason for borrowing. The impact of the amount so far borrowed is not visible, just borrowing not for the purpose of genuinely salvaging the state but to fund frivolities.
While the debts keep rising, the people have continued to sink deeper into poverty. Resources that ought to be deployed to improve the lives of the people have continued to disappear into the pockets of officials. The level of decay is beginning to assume an alarming dimension. Instead of the governor to focus on how to build on the achievements of his predecessors, he is going around looking for imaginary enemies and doing everything he can to set the people against their leaders who have a different idea on how the state should be governed.
It’s no surprise that Gombe has over the last two years deteriorated so fast that it’s difficult to recognize that this was the same state, a model in the savannah that once held a great promise for growth and development in the Northeast region. Here is the state that Governor Yahaya is beginning to turn into something else – most likely a haven for impunity and violence, a state where even past leaders fear to tread just because the incumbent has decided that it’s got to be his way or no other way.
Anyhow, he’s got to realise that he won’t be in office forever. Therefore, he needs to step back from his ways and think of the type of legacies he wants to leave as a leader. Clearly, as it is, he seems to have chosen for himself a path of self-destruction. This is his greatest undoing. But if he truly has an eye for 2023 as it is said all over the place, this is the moment to begin to readjust his style with the aim of delivering democratic good governance for the benefit of all.
As it is, the people of the state seemed to have taken stand against the coercive mode of leadership and his micro-managing of affairs of state and the irredeemable mistake of betraying his former boss and the party leader in the state, Sen. Danjuma Goje. The development has plunged the APC into the point of no return, with many of its members and political appointees resigning, the consequence of which the party has psychologically lost the 2023 battle. Inuwa Yahaya must be held as the architect of his own problems.
Jonathan writes from Billiri, Gombe State.
