Intellectual mischief in Zamfara politics

The habit is driven by a conscious desire to tap useful perspectives on such important issues and it was in this spirit that the article under reference was perused. Unfortunately, at the end, any informed citizen of Zamfara State would wonder at the intellectual claim of the author- although as a professor of geography, it is understandable that Dr Adamu is in the woods as far as the political science and history of Zamfara State goes.

 We know Dr Adamu to be an indigene of Tsafe Local Government who is hardly known outside the BUK ivory tower, much less in the rank of popular or prominent citizens of Zamfara State. Although there are numerous Zamfara State citizens in academia, it is only those who frequent the state and get actively involved or show serious concern in socio-political affairs of the state like Professor Said Gusau, Professor Bawa Gusau and Professor Bilbis among several others, that the masses and the elite are familiar with and accord recognition. Soon after the article was published people started recalling that Dr Adamu has recently been sounding his friends out about his new found interest not just in politics but even in becoming governor in 2011.

This much is evident in the article where in conclusion he presents himself as the conscience of Zamfara State “intellectuals” and extends his “invitation to Zamfara State indigenes teaching in Nigerian universities to form a nucleus body (sic) of intellectuals that will start the rebirth of Zamfara State”. “The revolution must begin now”, he charged, after a heretical combination of Franz Fanon and Malam Abdullahi  Fodio quotations.

Earlier, Dr Yusuf had imaginatively cleared the way for his egg-head revolution by consigning all Zamfara State elders, bureaucrats and politicians into a non-existence only he can define. While it is legitimate for any citizen of Zamfara State to aspire to lead the rest of us as governor, it is laughable for anyone, especially an intellectual professor, to predicate such ambition on his arbitrary and malicious disqualification of all except “Zamfara State indigenes teaching in Nigerian universities” (with himself as the headmaster) from participation in governance. This is a classical case of intellectual psychosis manifesting as political egocentrism whose reality begins and ends in the messianic delusions of the patient.

 It is simply absurd to imagine that any state in Nigeria, particularly Zamfara State, can be exclusively governed by its university teachers because every other class of people is not “intellectual” enough. But, as they say, you can believe in anything in the university!  On this note alone, we could have summarily dismissed Dr Adamu’s professorial fancies, but this would leave several of his other bogus points at the risk of being mistaken for facts. Whatever lies behind the geography professor’s messianic interest in Zamfara State’s governance must be the product of a recent brain wave triggered by prejudice against Governor Mahmuda Shinkafi because, by his own admission, for the eight years that Yariman Bakura (mis)ruled the state and squandered its huge financial resources “politicking instead of building solid infrastructural foundation for the state” he and his fellow “intellectuals” paid no attention and showed no interest in what was happening  in the state. This is definitely the height of intellectual hypocrisy for which Dr Adamu had no explanation throughout his article.

 Perhaps the reason had something to do with what the author himself identified as Yarima’s qualification as a great Nigerian politician: knowledge of “how to use the resources of the state to buy his way, (sic) he bought everybody”. The logical extension of this analysis is that Governor Mahmuda’s barely two years in office is a nightmare to the Dr Adamus because, unlike his extravagant predecessor, he has refused to buy anybody over using state resources, preferring instead to build solid infrastructural foundation for the state.

The “intellectuals” could not even offer any constructive advice to help Governor Mahmuda Shinkafi even though he “surprised” them in his first six months by embarking on development of necessary infrastructure that transformed Zamfara State. The truth is that what the Shinkafi administration accomplished in its first two years has won the commendation of all right-thinking people, even outside the state, especially after eight years of “human development” which paralyzed the state like polio. Obviously, less than intellectual considerations are behind the blind criticism of the Shinkafi administration by Dr Adamu.  

Bungudu wrote from Gusau