Tuesday, 28 January 2025 14:58

[OPINION] Ganduje and constitution of new boards - Jide Oluwajuyitan

Government periodic appointments into boards of parastatals and other federal organisations to manage the affairs of over 500 small governments needed to implement its policies is critical to the survival of the democratization process.  Unfortunately this process has in recent years become a veritable source political party patronage often secured through intense politicking and lobbying by party members.

When Buhari’s list – with 209 board chairmen and 1,258 board members – came in December 2019 after over two years of haggling and indecision, he admitted not knowing over half of those on the list including a number of names of individuals long declared dead.

Last week, following almost two years of delay as a result of bargaining and horse trading by politicians, President Tinubu, according to Bayo Onanuga, the Special Adviser to the President on Information and Strategy, last Monday approved the appointment of board chairpersons for 42 federal organisations out of over 500 small governments the president needs to faithfully implement his party manifesto. We were also told the president directed the board chairpersons not to interfere with the management of the organisations, emphasising that their positions are non-executive.

Much as we have no reason to doubt the capacity and the integrity of most of those currently appointed by President Tinubu, what the nation has often experienced after government’s four year periodic ritual especially since 1999, has been an assemblage of deadwood and failed politicians who just wanted to continue to be relevant by continuous’ sucking of government and its resources.

The president appeared determined to change the narrative this time around. Without prejudice to his party’s periodic ritual of politicking and lobbying, he seemed to have deliberately gone out of his way for those he believes could add value to his administration.

 

For instance Professor Bolaji Akinyemi is our nation’s ‘Sun’. A resourceful intellectual, an outstanding diplomat who played a key role as our external affairs minister to end Chad, Libyan and Mali, Burkina Faso wars, Professor Akinyemi was the brain behind the highly successful Technical Aids Corps Scheme, the concept of the Concert of Medium Powers to mediate within the international system. He was a member of the Uwais panel and deputy chairman of Jonathan’s constitutional conference. He was on the side of Nigeria during the NADECO confrontation with Sani Abacha when the likes of Tom Ikimi and Babagana Kingibe sold their conscience by trading Nigeria for a pot of porridge. To bring him on board, the president had to present Akinyemi as Lagos State candidate as against his Osun State where warring politicians like Rauf  Aregbesola and Gboyega Oyetola  had destroyed the APC over their ego battle for its soul before trading it for PDP, a fact confirmed by Governor Adeleke. 

Of course, the president’s deliberate efforts did not preclude the emergence on the list of some other self-proclaiming patriots including the likes of Abdullahi Ganduje.  In fact it will not be out place to assume that Ganduje, a man with history of endless political wars, mischiefs and intrigues and for whom there is never a dull moment, nominated himself as chairman of the Governing Board of Federal Aviation Authority of Nigeria (FAAN). This becomes a force majeure when it reached the president’s table. In any case, when it comes to party patronage, the buck stops at the desk of the national Chairman of APC.

The only charitable conclusion is that Ganduje outwitted the president.

 

After all, Ganduje from 1984-1994 occupied various positions within the Federal Capital Territory (FCT) Abuja. In 1994 he was Kano State Commissioner for Works. From there he in 2007 moved on to become the Executive Secretary of the Lake Chad Basin Commission in Ndjamena. Although a full time job, workaholic Ganduje could not resist combining the job with that of the chairmanship of the Governing Council of Federal Polytechnic Ado Ekiti. A workhorse, he was so dedicated that for his board meetings in Ado-Ekiti, he would first fly from Ndjamena to Kano and from Kano to Abuja from where the vehicle sent from Ado-Ekiti would ferry him down to Ado Ekiti for a board meeting which may not take off until 7pm.

At close to 77, Ganduje, the national chairman of APC and the recently appointed chairman of the Governing Council of FAAN, has pledged to continue his selfless service to the nation.

I wish to align myself with Ganduje. With his past record of service to the nation, I have no reason to doubt his competence and ability to do more than one thing at a time. And contrary to his envious detractors from his native Kano, I cannot see any contradiction between presiding over the affairs of the FAAN and meeting the demands of his office as chairman of APC which involve strategies for recruitment of party membership, retaining those so recruitment  and periodic fundraising and internal party governance. For even his political foes, the outstanding performance of his party in Edo and Ondo in recent times was evidence enough Ganduje was on top of his games.

But for those who hate Ganduje with a passion, I think it is the case of a prophet without honour in his own country. His detractors seem to come more from his own Kano State, where he and his good friend Rabiu Kwankwaso have been consumed by politics of ‘deposition and imposition’ of Emirs, demolition and reallocation of supporters’ physical properties in Kano in the last eight years. Since the duo did not tell us the source of their bitterness and endless war, outsiders think it must have been over the control over Kano resources, a common weakness among our greedy and selfish political elite. Many also consider Ganduje and his warring rivals’ political failures for their inability to exploit their past relationship in the age of innocence before their exposure to great wealth to liberate the people of Kano from pangs of sorrow and pains of hunger

There was recently a trending picture of Ganduje and Kwankwaso moving around on a Vespa motorcycle on the streets on Kano in the early seventies; many thought that was a relationship both could have exploited to change the fortune of Kano.

Lagos State Security Trust Fund which changed the face and character of Lagos was first launched in 2007.  Many outside Kano believe that if beyond primitive accumulation, the duo came together to exploit their past friendship to launch Kano Almajiri fund, such could have in three years cleaned up Kano.

Meanwhile, all hail Abdullahi Ganduje, the nemesis of political foes, un-fearing Emirs and political benefactors who, at close to 77 has continued to ride against the tide.



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