Mai Mala Buni is now a man of many tasks. His burden became heavier on Thursday, June 25, 2020 when an emergency National Executive Committee (NEC) of the All Progressives Congress (APC) appointed him to lead the ruling party’s 13-member Caretaker/Extraordinary Convention Planning Committee. The fresh appointment, no doubt, has added to his task as governor of Yobe State.
In this piece, Daily Trust Saturday takes a look at how Buni, who is leading a state facing attacks from the Boko Haram terrorist group, has been handling the APC assignments alongside his duties as governor close to two months since Comrade Adams Oshiomhole-led National Working Committee (NWC) was dissolved due to protracted leadership crisis that threatened the soul of the ruling party.
The tasks for Buni
The tone for the assignments to be carried out by the Buni-led committee was set by President Muhammadu Buhari and Governor Atiku Bagudu of Kebbi State, who is also the Chairman of the Progressives Governors’ Forum (PGF), when they spoke on APC NEC’s resolutions about the need to persuade party members to withdraw all pending litigations against one another, settle for internal conciliation and the ratification of processes drawn up by the sacked NWC to ensure electoral victories in the coming governorship elections in Edo and Ondo states.
President Buhari had said that the decision on the withdrawal of courts cases “must be made a resolution of the party which must be effectively enforced with dire consequences for members who choose to ignore the directive.”
Within the same period, the committee led by former two-time national secretary of the party is also expected to organize an elective National Convention to produce 21 NWC members.
How far has Buni panel gone?
Governor of Yobe State and Chairman of the APC caretaker committee, who is now fully operating from the headquarters of the party in the Federal Capital Territory (FCT), Abuja, has been making reconciliation moves across the country, starting with a visit to the party leaders in the South West geo-political zone in line with the mandates given to his panel.
Governor Buni led a delegation to APC National Leader, Asiwaju Bola Ahmed Tinubu, on Thursday July 2 this year. Members of his entourage include Secretary, Senator John James Akpan Udoedehe, Kebbi State governor Abubakar Bagudu and Niger State governor Abubakar Sani-Bello.
Before meeting Tinubu, the delegation had earlier visited the first interim and pioneering APC National Chairman, Chief Bisi Akande at his Ila-Orangun home in Osun State for a one and half hour discussion. Governor Adegboyega Oyetola of Osun State was part of this team. Governor Buni said the meetings were part of the consultations.
The ongoing reconciliation move, Daily Trust Saturday gathered, was moving on smoothly. This was confirmed by the chairman of the caretaker committee the day he inaugurated the 49-member high-level National Campaign Council for the Edo State Governorship Election chaired by Kano State governor Abdullahi Umar Ganduje at the party’s secretariat in Abuja. He said the ongoing consultation and reconciliatory moves of his committee had started yielding the desired result, adding that the visit to Chief Akande and Tinubu had justified the new approach with very positive results after consultations.
To justify the feat of his panel, Buni had on Friday, July 24, taken a former Speaker of the House of Representatives, Yakubu Dogara, to President Buhari. He announced the return of Dogara to the APC while speaking with reporters at the Presidential Villa, Abuja.
Pundits say the presence of anti and pro-Oshiomhole governors at the flag-off of the APC governorship campaign in Benin City is a plus to the Buni-led caretaker committee.
It would be recalled that Buni, who stated that change was inevitable in the ruling party, had said: “As the interim managers and leaders of our party, our priority would be the recognition of the need to act appropriately and acceptably in the overall interest of the party. Our actions in the next few months would be proactive and responsive.
“From now onward, we will concentrate on medium and long term development of our strategies and internal organization to support our public standing as well as our chances of electoral successes in all future elections.
“This is the time for us to focus with determination to create adaptive institutional capacity to weather the current divisions in our party.”
Yobe residents react to Buni’s absence
Residents, opposition parties, and civil society organisations (CSOs) in Yobe State have expressed mixed reactions over how Governor Buni has been managing the affairs of “The Young Shall Grow” state in the midst of combined assignments given to him.
Daily Trust Saturday learnt that Buni only visited Yobe twice since he began the new assignment. He was said to have stayed for few days to attend to some files on his table and returned to Abuja.
A resident of Nayinawa in Damaturu, Mohammed Ali, said he was not bothered about whether the governor stayed in Damaturu or Abuja.
Ali, however, said the basic needs of the citizens of the state should be provided.
“We are currently in the state capital. But we need additional boreholes. Lack of road and drainages have also exposed some houses to flooding not only here but in other areas. And I can tell you, if this could be fixed, we don’t need to see the governor here,” he also said.
Also speaking, a member of the opposition party, Idris Najeeb, said Buni should concentrate on his primary assignment, saying his absence in the state was affecting the masses.
Najeeb said the only way to pay back to communities was to address their immediate challenges of water shortage, health care, and education among others.
He said the new assignment given to the governor was only a plus to Buni’s political career as it would not attract any value to the development of Yobe State.
“There is no time that citizens need government’s attention than now because the state is just recovering from the devastation of the insurgency,” he added.
Also reacting to the development, another resident and political analyst, Umar Adamu, argued that the governor’s stay in Abuja had resulted in neglect of some of the state’s constitutional mandates.
“If you are following trend of an event, you could see that functions like State Executive Council meetings have not been taking place for a while. Under normal circumstance, this is a task that only the governor can chair. Otherwise, he directs his deputy.
“The council has the mandate of deliberating on state affairs with key members among top government decision makers.
“I agree if you say the deputy governor is there to represent the Ggovernor, or Secretary to the State Government is attending to files, but take it or leave it, there are limitations to those responsibilities. Some files need immediate attention or governor’s careful scrutiny, who will do that for him?
“I want to be fair to him because he has a good start with a lot of projects within only a year in office. While his new assignment is important, it is expected that he would pay more attention to events in his state than Abuja,” Adamu said.
However, the Chairman of Yobe Network for Civil Society Organizations, Comrade Alhaji Baba Shehu, said the CSOs expressed concern when Buni took over the new assignment.
Shehu, however, said that the new task had not affected the running of government in the state.
He said: “We carefully pay attention to identify whether there are areas citizens would be short-changed due to the governor’s absence. But we have seen that everything is moving as usual.
“Government is all about coordination, assigning responsibilities on who does what, to ensure that those on ground, the technocrats and other functionaries, are doing the job.
“Contracts that had been awarded have not stopped and works on the new ones that had been approved are about to commence. The activities of government that are supposed to take place are taking place.
“So, as far as we are concerned, in all the engagements we are doing with the government on citizens, nothing has stopped.
“The only thing we want to emphasize is the need for the governor to use the current position to attract more funding and development to the state.
“We are confident that at the end of the day, the assignment would be of benefit to Yobe State.”
Efforts to get the governor’s spokesman, Mamman Mohammed, were not successful. Mohammed did not respond to the call and text message sent to him by our correspondent.
However, the APC youth leader in Damaturu, Yusuf Goni, said that Buni was very concerned about the state’s affairs.
Goni said huge projects such as construction of 3600 units of houses, ultra-modern markets in three local governments, roads aimed at bettering the lives of the common man were currently being executed.
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