Dr. GANDUJE: The Consummate Public Administrator

By Abdu Labaran Malumfashi.

The National Chairman of the ruling All Progressives Congress (APC), Dr. Umar Ganduje, PhD is not someone you would toy with, though his visage would suggest otherwise.

This means that you would toy with him at your own peril. The Dr. prefacing his name is academic and therefore earned, not a Honorary one. His wife (popularly known and addressed as Gwaggo) is even one step ahead of him, being a professor, teaching at one of the Nation’s tertiary institutions.

He is also the immediate past governor of Kano State, who before then, had served as an administrator at both federal and state levels.

All things considered, this is a power couple, in both academic and political sense of the phrase, with whom you can only toy with at your own peril.

What is even more important is that Kano is in a class of its own, in which nobody allows himself to suffer fools gladly. It has also the tradition of passing state power to a deputy, and nobody is any more the wiser. In other words, nobody would allow the party’s light to go out in his hands without a fight.

It is therefore not surprising that Dr. Ganduje, who has seen and was himself a power, would emerge as the National Chairman of his own party, the APC, and is expected to sell it (the party) across the country.

How he managed to emerge his party’s National Chairman is anybody’s guess at the calculation of the (nation’s) power brokers. In a true democracy, the national chairman of the ruling party is certainly more powerful than what transpired in Nigeria now.

But one thing is beyond contest, Kano, the APC Chairman’s home state, is the most populous and richest in the Northern part of the country, and will survive even without the monthly handout from Abuja. Kano is therefore a state to be courted by the nation’s power brokers, which is why the chair of the nation’s ruling party has to come from there.

It is also why all peace-loving people will feel sorry for Kano at the moment for being caught up in the crossfire of dirty politics. The NNPC or the party in power in the state is battling the APC for the soul of Kano state, and as happens in the country, it is a fight in which the winner takes all. The loser is therefore left licking his wounds, looking out for the next four years for another election contest.

The irritating power tussle in the home state of the astute administrator, is a battle that nobody would want to lose. But as things are looking up, it would seem that the APC is one step ahead in the battle. As stated earlier, Dr. Ganduje will not want the light in his home state to go out in his hands.

The national chairman of the APC is not a new comer in politics, he therefore stands to lose more than any one else if his party loses the court case to the ANPP. This is a truism that is well known by all, least of all Dr. Ganduje.

It is therefore, a do or die affair (a phrase popularized by former civilian President Obasanjo) who wins or who loses the case at the Supreme Court between the APC and the ANPP.

More than anything, the ANPP vs the APC court case is a test on the resilience of Kano to withstand any adversity that may befall it. It is also a test on the unity of purpose of the people of the state to move on regardless of which ever way the wind of change blows.

Above all, it is as well the test of the capacity of the consummate administrator that is Dr. Ganduje to deliver the goods, which the APC top guns have placed on him, being so sure on his capacity to do just what they expect of him.

Of course, the APC National Chairman knows only too well that he is not without adversaries, people who would do anything to make sure that he fails. And they are not necessarily in the opposition party. They are found anywhere, including but not necessarily limited to his own party, the APC.

He would do well to prove to those who trusted him with this onerous job that they have not misplaced their trust in him, he is indeed the consummate administrator who will not disappoint them. It is said that ‘success has many fathers, but only ONE father for the failed person’.

And Dr. Umar Ganduje will prove to them that he is not a failure, and that he has no intention to start being one now, or in the future. He has fought too many battles and won, and one more is just, as the saying goes, ‘what the doctor has ordered’.

In other words, it is up to Dr. Umar Ganduje, PhD to prove that the nomenclature of the ‘consummate administrator’ is a truism that seats well on him.

Mr. Malumfashi wrote from Abuja.