A chieftain of the All Progressives Congress in Gombe State and the party’s gubernatorial candidate in the 2015 general elections, Alhaji Mohammadu Inuwa Yahaya, has knocked the performance of Governor Ibrahim Hassan Dankambo of the state.
The APC chieftain said described the government’s policies as distracted with misplaced priorities. Yahaya said the six years so far spent in office by Dankwambo and his Peoples Democratic Party at the helm of affairs in the state is a waste of common wealth and resources accruable to the Gombe State people both from the monthly Federal Allocations and Internally Generated Revenues. Yahaya, who contested the last governorship election against the incumbent, appeared to have re-enacted his political criticism with the usage of alleged poor performance as a yardstick. The party chieftain, who spoke in Abuja on Thursday in a chat with pressmen, took a sectoral assessment of Dankwambo’s government in terms of education, security, infrastructure, health and economic empowerment of the people, with a conclusion that the governor had performed below the people’s expectations. While accusing Dankwambo of contract inflation, Yahaya cited the state-owned School of Nursing, Dukku, which, according to him, could not take off despite over N3 billion loan secured by the state government to solely finance the school, lamenting that not a single qualified medical doctor or medical instructor is on ground to teach the students. On education, he attributed the poor showing of the state in major examinations in recent times to lip services being paid to the critical sector by the Dankwambo-led government, coupled with what he described as lack of motivation for teachers and irregular payment of remunerations. According to him: “Six years down the line, I don’t see Gombe being better off. I wish you can go and ask the people of the state. Ask them what he promised them during the campaign, in whatever area of human endeavour, and how he has been able to live up to their expectations. “Let me give you instances. For example, in education, Gombe State came second to the last on the table of performance during the 2015/2016 WAEC in the entire federation. Even a state like Borno State that was bedeviled with security challenges of Boko Haram performed above Gombe State. And this is a state that has all it takes to be part of the key players in terms of education, particularly in the North East region. “As I am talking to you now, if you go right into the heart of Gombe, the Central Primary School, which is just about 100 meters from the Governor’s House, was demolished as early as 2012, but up till this moment, that school has not been completed for those children. There is even an electoral ward that doesn’t even have a primary school in Gombe as I am talking to you. Not even one. I stand to be corrected. I doubt if there’s any ward in Nigeria that doesn’t have a primary school in this present generation. Go to our secondary schools, it is the same story. “Look, it is not enough to put ramshackled structures in place and call them schools. Basically, call the teachers and give them the best in training and all the teaching aids they need. Equip them through trainings and seminars, including giving them all their allowances promptly so that they can perform better and motivate the students as expected. Unfortunately, all these don’t happen in Gombe State. “Again, look at the Gombe State University, which was set up earlier before the governor came to office. The school has a huge challenge of funding and no money currently seems to be going there from the government. Rather, all they have been able to save is taken away by the government, thereby leaving them as a pauper. Go to Kumo, where they have the School of Administrative Studies, which they say they are planning to make a higher institution. Up till his moment, contractors have not been paid and the project has been abandoned. Even in Dukku, the School of Nursing, which for that project alone close to N3 billion was borrowed by government, has not taken off. “Absolutely nothing is happening in Gombe. In fact, there’s no hospital which will help the student nurses and midwives to be trained. Not even one professionally qualified medical doctor, not even one talk-less of meeting the number required by law to run a school of nursing or a School of Health Technology. Go to Biliri, the so-called College of Education they claimed to have established is empty. Nothing is there both administratively and physically. I can recall that it was only last year they enrolled and even now they are not even doing classes. Another example is where they claim to be setting up a polytechnic in Bajoga, there is nothing on ground to show seriousness. So, in every index there’s no sign in the educational sector to show that Gombe is progressing under Dankwambo. “Look at common provision of potable water, the story is not different. The Gombe Regional Water Project that was done by the last administration can no longer be sustained by the current government. As I speak, the project has been abandoned leaving about three-quarter of Gombe without water. For instance, the Southern part of Gombe, despite a dam that was built in the 80s, not even a drop of water goes from the pipes to the whole of the four local governments making up that region. So in all indexes, both economically and socially, the people are pauperized and they have no hope under Dankwambo. That’s why I will keep saying that his government has performed woefully, and all these instances are verifiable to Nigerians.” Yahaya therefore urged the people to continue enduring through prayers what he called deliberate economic hardship foisted on them by Dankwambo administration, with the hope that the APC is coming to salvage them in 2019.
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