By Dr Umar Ardo
Dr Umar Ardo, the author
The Anti-corruption summit organized by the Adamawa State Government on Tuesday, February 20th, 2018 in Yola was a ruse. It is not that I condemn the idea of an anti corruption summit. No but I condemn the organizing by the Adamawa state government of a stage-management of lies, dramatically crafted and presented to the public as a symbol of an anti-corruption regime. It is appalling that a state government would bring together the entire Federal Government of Nigeria led by the president himself and three governors and make them applaud to total lies about happenings in the state.
Staging an anti-corruption campaign on lies and bringing the president to clap to it is perhaps the biggest misfortune for the country. It’s clear to all discerning minds that everything said by the Secretary to the Adamawa State Government in his presentation at the summit was a total lie and an absolute fabrication.
To make specific reference to issues in the presentation, one can observe that it was gross insincerity for the SSG to claim that, as at 2015, there were only 15 Keke NAPEPS in Adamawa state, with five in Yola north, five in Yola south and five in the mechanic garage. It is a pathetic indecency for those who know the truth to clap to that.
Every claim in that presentation from beginning to the end was a lie and I can prove it. It was only a day before the president’s visit that teachers and civil servants in the state took to the streets demonstrating against non-payment of salaries, yet the SSG claimed that Adamawa State Government wasn’t owing a single kobo in salary and the audience clapped to that. The SSG also claimed that the government has successfully invented a digital Islamic IPAD on a local elate for the Almajiris in Adamawa state. That was a lie also.
It is worrisome how low our leaders can go to deceive the led. What is even more pathetic is that in a state where internecine communal killings have become the order of the day, our leaders, including the president, will be clapping to lies that a so-called Public-Traditional-Partnership created by the government has effectively secured the state. No wonder not even a mention was made of the mass genocidal killings of hundreds of our people that the state witnessed in just a matter of days ago. I sympathize with the relatives of those who lost their loved ones in those gruesome killings. Even as the leadership lies, claps and laughs, the wounded in those crises are still lying half dead and half alive in our hospitals in the state with no adequate treatments. Yet our so-called leaders are seemingly celebrating of so-called successes of their so-called leadership.
It is even more disheartening that the president who failed to visit the state when those killings took place, especially when 142 people were horrifically murdered in a single day (60 in the morning in Mubi and 82 in the afternoon in Numan), did not think it fit and appropriate to seize the opportunity of his ‘anti-corruption’ visit to the state to at least visit the hospitals and see the injured still lying and wriggling in pain in dilapidated beds or even on floors. This is most sad. I feel so sorry for this country. I wonder where we are heading to.
