3-5-2025.

Big politicians are entitled to say or declare their interest in contesting or not contesting for a certain office. They are entitled to that, because it is a personal opinion, even though it may be informed by other factors that only the informed can fathom. It may be made due to one of two reasons, ALL of which may be viewed as a being ‘politically correct’’.

But it is certainly not a CORRECT political statement (move) by any politician to make a blanket statement for everyone in a constituency, simply for the purpose of repaying a favour, currying a favour, or maintaining the status quo in the society.

It is therefore VERY, VERY wrong to welcome President Bola Ahmed Tinubu with large billboards proclaiming the LIE that ‘BA KORAFI’ (There is NO complain). It is nothing but the height of sycophancy, to say that the people in the state of ‘Heritage and Hospitality’ have NO complain, when the opposite of the claim is very clear everywhere for ALL, even the blind, to perceive.

But for the president’s tribespeople respect for their ethnic group, which transcends national or religious affiliation, even them would not have stoop this low to tell the president that there is absolutely no problem at the moment in their land.

The big billboards strategically placed so they could not be missed, are adorned with two equally large pictures of the president, on the left, and his host governor, on the right, plus a small one (picture) of the ‘sponsor’ of the ‘advert’.

It is to be noted that during state working visits by top federal government officials, especially presidents, the state remains supplied with electricity for the duration of the period the visit lasts. This is particularly more so in places where the august visitor is expected for official function, or just mere  leisure (courtesy calls on traditional rulers and other important people are nothing but leisure events). 

However, the visit by the president did not lead to the constant supply of electricity in the state capital. As usual, the normal DARKNESS supplied in the state, remained the most ‘memorable’ aspect of the presidential visit for most of the ordinary citizens in the state.

In terms of many other aspects of living, only further hardship remains for most, while the billboards are telling the president that all was well in the state. The claim angered many people, including some die-hard members of the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC) in both federal, Katsina state and the 34 local governments within the state.

Some of them quickly took to the social media to distance themselves from, and dismiss, the claim as false and made without the go-ahead of the majority of the poor citizens in the state. It is however, not for this writer to say who these citizens are, anyway.

Even the ‘failure’ to fulfil the mandatory expectation of some citizens in the area of electricity supply during the presidential visit tells its own story. And the story does appear to be unwell for this part of the country, despite the encomiums lavished on the governor by the president, at one of the functions on day one of his arrival.

The ENTIRE Northern region, minus Abuja (whose minister, Nyson Wike, INSULTED Northerners recently), was reportedly supplied with a mere 160 mw of electricity to Lagos’s 1, 308 (Ikeja 759 mw, Eko 679 mw), Ibadan’s 644 mw, Benin’s 429 mw’ Port Harcourt’s (capital city of Nyson Wike’s home state) 404 mw, and Enugu’s 404 mw. The supply of electricity to the Southern part of the country by the Nigerian Distribution Commission is therefore about 3, 400 mw, compared to the meagre 160 mw supplied to the ENTIRE North by the same commission at the same time. It does not look like a mistake, looks more like a deliberate ‘mistake’, as far as I am concerned.

The FCT minister may have made his insulting remarks to the Northerners based on his knowledge of the workings of the mind of many of the opportune Northern elites. He was at one time a Junior minister in the Ministry of Education, but run the ministry with the Northern Senior minister from Jigawa state CONTENT to be periodically given a stipend, and always referred to as ‘Honourable Minister’. The honourable minister was later dishonourably dismissed from the post, and willy Nyson Wike was made the Senior Minister.

Or the case of a Northern traditional ruler, who would rather the people who serve him diligently be killed by hunger, or by the government’s security thugs, than lose the seat that gives him the opportunity to always lord it over them. Apart from his age-old call on the central government to  ‘remove fuel subsidy’, he is currently embroiled in an emirship tussle that led to his removal as the African leader of a religious sect. He still insists on reversing the decision breaking up the influential emirate into four. His grandfather had ruled the emirate before he was sacked from the throne.

If it was a  ‘mistake’, does that also explains the meagre N19 billion allocated to road projects for the ENTIRE Northern part of the country to the Southern part’s humongous N14.5 trillion for the same purpose in the 2025 budget proposal submitted to the National Assembly (NASS) by the president. The massive ‘mistake’ was only discovered when Senator Danjuma Goje of Gombe State raised an alarm.

Was it also a mistake that the president singlehandedly awarded the N15.6 ($13 billion) contract for the Lagos to Calabar Coastal Highway, with neither the approval nor the knowledge of the NASS. The Works Minister and former governor of Ebonyi State, Senator Dave Umahi, even hired six Senior Advocates of Nigeria (SANs) to go to court and file a counter petition,  to deny some Nigerian Civil Rights organisations the right to invoke the Freedom Of Information Act (FOIA) to scrutinise the contract (Lagos to Calabar Coastal Highway).

But the same minister only comes to the Northern part of the country either to CANCEL one important road project or another, or to campaign for the president’s second term reelection in 2027.

Is it unintentional that the Vice President, Senator Kashim Shettima, is unofficially ‘demoted’ and reduced to running unimportant errands in or outside the country, while the President’s son, (the Constitutionally unknown First Son) Seyin Tinubu, is ‘elevated’ to the position of the Vice President, chairing important state events in or outside the country, commandeering (illegally) a presidential plane with billions of Naira inside, for his exclusive use, and also travelling in a massive convoy like the president himself.

Former Vice President and Presidential Candidate of the opposition Peoples Democratic Party in the 2023 election, Alhaji Atiku Abubakar (AA) yesterday urged President Tinubu to call the First Son (Seyi) to order for his increasing political visibility. “The Presidency is not an inheritance to be passed down like family property. President Tinubu must remember that Nigeria is a democratic republic, not a monarchy”.

“Korafi” is definitely aplenty with many of poor citizens in Katsina state, even if those highly connected feel contented with the status quo. They should know that it is only an infinitesimal few which ‘enjoys’ the status quo under the President Tinubu-led Nigeria.

May God bring to an immediate end the many injustices perpetrated with impunity by the present government to the majority of her citizens. May He immediately answer our prayers that ‘enough is enough’, as far as the overbearing hardship in this country is concerned.

Malumfashi wrote from Katsina.