Populism is under attack throughout the world because of their parochialism and bigotry. But that’s right-wing populism. Nothing is wrong with radical or Left-wing populism, from Latin America to Asia and throughout Africa. Happily, it is thriving in Nigeria’s Jigawa State.
As part of the old Kano State, Jigawa has always been a heartland of the populist stream of political consciousness. Just that the torch has now passed on to Senator Abdulhamid Ahmed Mallam-Madori who is representing Jigawa Northeast Senatorial District.
A defining feature of the tradition this time is cutting edge communion with the folks, taking note of most urgent needs and seeing to what can be done, especially for the youth and women. The reports suggest that no less than 8000 from the youth category have benefitted from the Senator’s touch. It is cutting edge approach because it is based on critical conversation, not the approach of trying to build a bridge where there are no rivers. In other words, Mallam-Madori’s is not politics of deception and show but of decency.
But the particular action that attracted detailed media attraction this week is a resume of popular actions to the Senator’s credit, the climax of which is a Police training Institute. According to media reports of Senator Mallam-Madori’s outing, the Federal Government is building the Institute at a projected cost of a billion Naira. That’s the projected cost. And when fully on the ground, it will absorb local labour as well patronage of local resources. Those ones are besides Kafin Hausa becoming a hub of police operation in Nigeria, being a training institute.
A Senator who can report a federally funded institution to the tune of a billion Naira has certainly brought home a great message to his people from the Red Chamber. What it means is that the Senator in question is a good negotiator. That’s a legislator job: to go to Abuja and bargain for a share of the national cake for his people. Senators do this by bargaining for allocations, award of contracts, corresponding institutions, etc to whatever goods and services the people in a Senator’s constituency produce. Although this definition is more applicable to members of the House of Representatives who have actual human beings to deal with unlike Senators who are animating the principle of equality of the constituent states, the difference is between six and half a dozen than otherwise.
That’s why the national budget which both houses have to pass is called a negotiated document because it is a product of all claims or demands from each representatives for the share of the national cake corresponding to what his or her constituency produce – from solid minerals to grains to whatever else.
Being able to report a particular share as Senator Mallam-Madori did this past week is the acme of the legislative mandate. And to receive a great outpouring of the folks is the acme of populism but this time, populism without lying, deception or self-aggrandisement. It is in that sense that his outing can be dressed up as radical populism.
Given the way people decry lack of ideology in Nigerian politics, players such as Senator Mallam-Madori might be sending a message worth paying attention to. And worth projection by his party because they come into politics with a message instead of turning it into a show.
