Governor Bala Muhammad built his opportunistic political career by kicking people when they’re down. In 2010, he kicked the sick president Umaru Musa Ƴar’adua, of blessed memory, when he was down — literally when he was dying on his sickbed in the Holy Land — cold-heartedly evincing inhumanity and expressing neither pity nor affinity. The role Bala played during the 2010 “doctrine of necessity” saga will continue to live in infamy. And, for that opportunism, Bala was compensated with a cabinet seat that ultimately and ignominiously landed him an iron bunk, not a golden throne, in Kuje. Karma is a bitch, as JoJo would sing.
Now, Bala thinks Tinubu is in a weak and vulnerable political position, akin to President Ƴar’Adua, resulting from the needed reforms he’s implementing. Bala inanely thinks the reforms are Tinubu’s Achilles heel, hence the attacks. Bala couldn’t be more wrong.
Bala’s “principled stance,” to use the words of his obsequious yes-man, on Tinubu’s reforms, stand against his professed pro-market beliefs and PDP’s freemarket and neoliberal ideology. Therefore, it must be hypocritical or opportunistic or both.
The required reforms’ lasting gains outweigh the transitory pains, according to many economists. Undoubtedly, the reforms have commendably increased Bauchi’s share of federal allocation to over ₦50 billion in the last 3 months of 2024 and to ₦183.6 billion last year, according to Bauchi State Budget Performance Report, 2024 Q4.
Sadly, Bala couldn’t see such gains because he could only see the reforms through his thorn tinted glasses. To Bala, the gains mustn’t be seen or mentioned but the transient pains must be hyperbolically painted in black pictures.
When the aged and poverty-stricken, retired state civil servants are hungry and suffering, it’s the reforms that are to be blamed not Bala who wickedly withheld payment of their owed gratuities but paid his “financial consultant” ₦16.6 BILLION, (budget performance report), nearly 10% of the entire federal allocation Bauchi received last year. To rub it in, Bala’s chief of staff, Aminu, called such questionable, unconscionable expense a “prudent use of resources.” If you say this is mismanagement or wasteful, like Tuggar did, you’re being “both dishonest and petty,” according to Aminu! Really ? I can’t believe Aminu would sink so low to sycophantically justify such immoral expenditure. Can the Bauchi State House of Assembly conduct a public hearing on this in order to get to the bottom of this filthy “financial consulting” deal?
Further, while Aminu, in his Tuggar’s takedown, trumpeted Bala’s transformative agricultural policies which turned Bauchi into agricultural Mecca, or so he thinks, his budget performance on agriculture undermined that spurious claim. Bala didn’t put his money where his mouth is. What Bala spent on agriculture was about ₦4.9 billion less than the amount he paid his financial consultant last year — a whopping ₦16.6 billion! Unbelievable.
Besides, if Bala’s agricultural policies are indeed transformative, food would have been in abundance in Bauchi. And if it were, Bala won’t be shouting — hunger and suffering — the way he does.
If there’s hunger and suffering in Bauchi it’s because this presidential wannabe, factional leader of a fractured and shambolic party divided against itself, prioritizes his welfare over the welfare of Bauchi citizens. He expended a total of ₦47 billion on himself in government house, which is more than 25% of our federal allocation and more than educational, health, water or agricultural spendings in 2024 as indicated in the budget performance report 2024. Indeed Bala spent over ₦462 million on his chief of staff, far above the meager ₦337.4 million he spent on gratuities. No wonder Aminu is proclaiming Bala as an angel or sort of god. Threatening disbelievers with hell. Shame!
Accordingly, Bala’s lackeys, like Aminu repeatedly and dishonestly claim that he has an “unblemished” record of service and integrity. Bala’s blemish was writ large in his face. Or what about the indictments on fraud, corruption, land grabbing and racketeering by the EFCC and ICPC? Public servants with real unblemished record don’t go to Kuje at the end of their public service, they go home quietly, unindicted. They don’t amass unexplained wealth. They don’t give Adda Nigeria Ltd contract while interested in it.
I wouldn’t expect even a low-life sychopant to paint a rosy picture of the record of an indictee. Did it not weigh on his conscience? A governor who paid ₦28.3 billion to one “financial consultant” in 2 years, while denying, for six years, thousands of retired state workers their over due gratuities of about ₦20 billion, according to Sen Bala Kariya, doesn’t show any “commitment to the welfare” of these Nigerians. Bala is only committed to the welfare of himself, his family and lackeys.
Lastly, if Bala is serious, he shouldn’t be howling down the government reforms from the distance without giving real alternatives. Real solutions to solve decades-long abuse suffered by the Nigerian economy in the hands of PDP and others. Solutions that will make our creditors, investors, multilateral and international partners take us seriously.
But we all know Bala’s just being Bala —political, hypocritical, opportunistic and solipsistic — misguidedly thinking that Tinubu, like then fragile president Ƴar’Adua, is down for the kicking. Make no mistake, Tinubu’s re-election is a sure thing and Bala must know that growlings of a puppy doesn’t give the lion goose bumps.
Saad Umar is the Chairman, APC Publicity Committee Bauchi State.
