A few weeks before the hand-over day of May 29, as a retired civil servant who has served in different capacities in both state and federal governments, I find it very vital to use this medium to reach out to Jigawa State governor-elect. Mine is not political but patriotic and advisory.
It is on record that His Excellency the Governor of Jigawa State, Alhaji Badaru Abubakar, came to power in May 2015 after his first loss in 2011, under the then AC party. His brief has shown that he was a hardworking, energetic, and prudent person; he was a civil servant, a worker and later an entrepreneur as well as a business tycoon.
However, during his campaign in 2015, Governor Badaru made some promises to the Jigawa civil servants and the public, the promises include:-
- a) Payment of salaries, and allowances including, leave allowances promptly.
b)Appointment based on performance, capability, experience and competence.
- c) Manage the state resources prudently to develop the state.
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Moreover, despite opposition by a group of grudging politicians from an opposition party, especially in his Babura hometown, that usually organised people against him, Allah in His infinite mercy made him the governor of Jigawa State.
Immediately after he was sworn in, he started to put into action some of the promises he made to the civil service sector. I personally scored him 60 per cent in performance in his first term.
Unfortunately, after his first successful tenure and his re-election in 2019, the governor began to drift from all those promises he earlier made, making appointments based on preference and favours. Sadly, he was misled and the civil service became corrupt through unethical practices that demerit the system.
They succeeded in relegating the office of the Head of Service by eroding its powers and capabilities. This led to the creation of untouchable civil servants, disloyal and disobedient civil service in the state.
The governor was advised to prematurely retire some senior civil servants and deploy teaching staff into the civil service instead of social science graduates to fill in the gaps.
That singular move has left most of the schools lacking experienced teachers as well as creating unqualified and inexperienced principal offices in both administration and other cadres of the services; at the same time leaving the experienced staff stagnant with no promotions.
I am writing as a concerned citizen of Jigawa State, to let the outgoing governor know that he had derailed from what he promised the civil servants of the state.
Also, I want to also state here that by this misguidance Your Excellency you have thrown away your hard-earned prudency and sadly you have chosen to put away comprehensive fraud reports submitted to you by several validation/investigation committees you established on several occasions.
For record purposes, I would like to list some of the committees here; a) Committee report on the state Ministry of Education (b) Committee report on the state Ministry for local government and local education (c) Committee report on the state Ministry of land housing, housing funds loots among others.
I will also urge Governor Badaru to as a matter of urgency finalise and take action on these reports before handing over the mantle to the incoming government.
Where it is not possible due to time constraint, these reports should be part of your handing over documents to allow the incoming administration to take action
To the incoming governor, I advise that such lapses should not be allowed to happen again and also I wish to urge the incoming administration in Jigawa State to take the issue of the state civil service seriously for a better Jigawa State for all of us in particular and for the nation in general.
Idris Shehu Kazaure is a retired civil servant
