El-Rufai and challenges of consolidation

What will Kaduna State Governor Mallam Nasir El-Rufai do differently in his second term? Correspondent ABDULGAFAR ALABELEWE examines the challenges that will confront his administration.

THE challenges before Governor Nasir El-Rufai of Kaduna State are as enormous. The challenges are unique, more daunting and they require a lot of deliberate policy actions to tackle them.

Aside the burden of delivering the dividends of democracy, like roads, hospitals, potable water, housing and education, El-Rufai has a peculiar burden of security challenges ranging from banditry, kidnapping, ethno-religious crisis and farmer/herder clashes to contend with.

But, as daunting as the challenges seems, they are not as tasking as the division that exists among the people of Kaduna State along ethno-religious lines. This is one big challenge that often ignite crisis in the state.

Security

The government of El-Rufai since inception in 2015 inherited killings in the southern part of the state, occasioned by clashes between farmers and herdsmen. The challenge has since then been a difficult one to address. What stands farmer/herder clashes out in the south, unlike the northern axis is the difference in religion of the actors.

The challenge of farmer/herder clash is an age-long one, which had its resolution rested on the shoulders of the community leaders. However, in Southern Kaduna, the crisis assumed a level of monumental destruction of lives and property, because the community leaders could no longer apply the traditional dispute resolution instruments.

What makes the dispute resolution between farmers and herders difficult in Jema’a, Kachia, Kajuru and Sanga local government areas, unlike in Zaria, Igabi and Kudan, is because the predominant farmers are the indigenous Christians of southern Kaduna, while herders are predominantly Fulani.

Therefore, every clash that claims lives of farmers is seen as an attempt to exterminate the southern Kaduna Christians. It is usually interpreted as a continuation of the Usman Danfodio Jihad of 1804.

One factor that may have worsened the situation is the 2011 post-election violence. The crisis, caught some trans-border Fulani herdsmen who were on transit to other African countries in southern Kaduna, where many of them were killed. This led to reprisal attacks several months after. The situation continued until the coming of the current governor in 2015.

El-Rufai has though made several efforts to address the situation, ranging from attracting the presence of more security agencies. For instance, a Nigerian Army operations based and a Mobile Police Squadron unit are now located around Kafanchan and Kachia. But, efforts of the governor were interpreted as taking sides with the herdsmen, because El-Rufai himself is incidentally of Fulani extraction.

However, while the security approach has worked to a large extent, pockets of such clashes reoccur intermittently during harvest periods. Therefore, the governor has the task of complimenting the security approach with a standing farmer/herder conflict resolution committee under his founded Kaduna Peace Commission.

Another disturbing security threat that Governor El-Rufai has to address during his second term in office is the armed banditry and cattle rustling in Birnin-Gwari Local Government. The situation has equally claimed many lives, but unlike, the farmer/herder clashes in southern Kaduna, the Birnin-Gwari situation seems to have defied security approach. In fact, 11 soldiers were killed during a single attack in 2018.

The Kamuku Forest of Birnin-Gwari, which connects Niger, Kano, Katsina and Zamfara State has for years comfortably housed the criminals who terrorise all the neighbouring states.

At inception, Governor El-Rufai and his colleagues from other states foresaw the danger posed by the forest, a situation which made the Kaduna State governor to raise alarm that it may become another Sambisa, if they fail to pull resources together to root out the criminals. The governors responded and got the Federal Government to deploy the military to the area. But the military effort has apparently not yielded the desired results, as depicted by the recent killings in Zamfara and the unabated cases of kidnapping, killings, robbery and cattle rustling in Birnin-Gwari Local Government of Kaduna State.

Governor El-Rufai therefore needs to go back to the drawing board with the security agencies, to device a new means of tackling the menace. There is also the need to fix the the Birnin-Gwari/Kaduna road. The governor needs to do a serious follow up on his recent disclosure that the Federal Government and the Dangote Group have signed a pact to fix the road. Commercial motorists say the present bad condition of the road allows the bandits to have a field-day, by picking travellers for ransom on the road.

Just like the Kaduna/Birnin Gwari road, Kaduna/Abuja road has also in the past few years become notorious for kidnapping. Initially, passengers use to dread travelling on the road in the morning hours and in the evening between 6 and 7pm. The situation has worsened, as kidnappers now operate anytime of the day, despite security presence at every U-turn.

Report has it that the kidnappers operated everyday in the afternoon last week, until Governor El-Rufai’s convoy ran into them during an operation on Wednesday.

As wielding the big stick has not really yielded the desired results on Kaduna/Abuja road, the need to adopt the new tactics suggested by one-time Commandant of the Nigerian Defense Academy (NDA), General Paul Tarfa, is becoming inevitable. Tarfa had recently suggested that the best way to root out the kidnappers from Kaduna/Abuja highway is by taking the fight to the criminals in the bush.

He said: “Since it has been identified that the criminals attack and go into the forest to hibernate, the best thing to do to root them out is take the fight to them in the forest. The forest must be combed; otherwise they will keep on coming back to the road.”

Unity

Unity is, without doubt, the biggest challenge before El-Rufai. This, just like the security challenge, predated the emergence of his government, but the problem has become worse even in the face of effort to address it.

The people of Kaduna State are divided, with the River Kaduna separating the state into two main camps: the Christians’ south and the Muslim’s north. The predominant Christian people of southern Kaduna have no iota of trust in their Hausa Fulani brothers in the northern and central part; the former even accuse the latter of domination.

Analysts say the division and mutual suspicion among the people of different faiths became apparent in Kaduna, shortly after the return of civilian rule in 1999. The situation worsened after the shari’a crisis of year 2000 and the Miss World crisis of 2002, when Christians living in the northern part of Kaduna metropolis started relocating to the south and vice versa.

Though, El-Rufai has plans to address the wrong settlement pattern of the state capital, the governor needs to do more than that to enjoy the confidence of all, especially now that he and his Deputy-Governor elect, Dr. Hadiza Balarabe, are Muslims.

Those who know El-Rufai very well say he cares less about ethno-religious background in his appointments. Rather, he pays more attention to the appointee’s capacity to deliver on the assigned duty. He confirmed this when justifying the choice of Dr. Balarabe prior to the election. He said: “Government House is neither a church nor mosque. So, we are not coming here to preach, but to work for the people of Kaduna State.”

He went further to explain that Dr. Hadiza Balarabe’s rich credentials stood her out among 32 candidates earlier penciled down for the job.

The governor’s argument on the choice of Dr. Balarabe has however not changed anything, as far as the people of southern Kaduna are concerned. Though the deputy governor-elect is from Sanga Local Government, which is part of southern Kaduna, but because she is a Muslim they do not see her as one of them.

The governor needs to walk his talk by being fair to all, irrespective of their political, religious and ethnic background and ensure equitable distribution of developmental projects and state resources. This is most likely to change the perception of those who openly accuse him of religious bigotry and hatred for the Southern Kaduna Christians.

Education

No doubt, the administration of Governor El-Rufai has initiated and implemented a lot of reforms in the education sector. It has identified and dealt with the rot in the primary education which, he said, was the faulty foundation responsible for the inherited failure of students at WAEC level. This reform led to the sack of over 21,000 unqualified teachers and the recruitment of about 25,000 qualified ones.

Also in the area of school infrastructures, 413 schools have so far been renovated. A set of two-storey primary school buildings, the first of its kind in the state, have been completed at various locations where there was huge population of pupils beyond the existing schools’ carrying capacity.

These strides and other reforms notwithstanding, the burden before Governor El-Rufai is the need to get hundreds of thousands almajiri children off the streets and return them to the classroom.

The government at its inception in 2015 came up with the idea of banning streets begging, but the ban was not properly enforced. Now is the time to enforce the ban, especially on school-age children. If the almajiri children are taken back to the classrooms, it will prevent them from being ready tools in the hands of criminals.

Health

For the health sector, there is a big challenge for the administration in its second term. The challenge is however not insurmountable, especially now that there is high hope that the government will be able to secure the $350million loan it was granted by the World Bank last year. The loan could not be accessed by the state because the three senators from Kaduna State opposed it on the floor of the Senate. But now, El-Rufai’s men have defeated two of the senators in the last election and have reiterated their commitment to securing the loan for the state.

The problem with the health sector in Kaduna State is lack of adequate functional Primary Healthcare Centres (PHCs). This challenge has for years affected the health of vulnerable groups, such as women of child-bearing age and children under the age of five.

El-Rufai himself while presenting the 2016 budgets in December 2015 expressed concern that the state records over 103,000 maternal deaths annually and also loses 95 babies out of every 1000 births. He attributed the situation to lack of ante-natal care, medical facilities and inadequate medical personnel.

The governor also warned that if drastic interventions are not put in place to save the lives of pregnant women and children, the maternal and infant mortality rate will go higher. It was in an effort to reverse the trend that his government and General Electric (GE) signed a pact to equip 278 health care facilities in the state.