By Missang Oyama
The aura around him exudes peace, and his carriage is a manifestation of serenity to wit. He carries a certain charm and calm mien; well-composed, speaks sparingly and sensibly. Umar Mustapha Madawaki (fondly called, Otumba) is a magnet that attracts unity among people, and his sense of dedication to duty is unparalleled. He is a man of easy manners and stable emotions.
From his formative years, Umar has shown that he is endowed with the uncanny gifts of academic, business, and leadership genres. Umar exemplifies the truism that “Success requires training, discipline, and hard work.” For him, those values constitute the winning edge. He has demonstrated in his private and public life that if an individual is not frightened by those values, the opportunities to be successful are just as real today, as they ever were.
Umar Madawaki is a man who is sandwiched between character and credibility in his daily interactions. In the trajectory of his life, he recognizes that divinity is always at work in him. Umar was born on 10th March 1963 in the cascading ambiance of Gurumpawo community in Ganye Local Government Area of Adamawa State. He grew up with a high-minded aspiration to be the best at whatever he sets out to do. He began his formal education in Islamiyya Primary School (now Yelwa Primary School) where he obtained his First School Leaving Certificate in 1975.
Then, he went to Government Secondary School (now Murtala Muhamed College), Yola, where he studied and obtained the West African School Certificate in 1980, towering head and shoulders above his peers. Umar graduated from the University of Maiduguri in 1986 with a Bachelor of Education degree majoring in History. With regal ease, Umar notched up his academic career when he returned to the University of Maiduguri, where he studied and obtained a Master’s of Education with a bias in Philosophy of Education in 1991.
He has effectively straddled between theory and practice in educational research, teaching, and training. Umar demonstrated that he is indeed a master of intellectual artistry when at only twenty-four years old, in 1987, he took up an appointment with the Federal College of Education, Yola, as an Assistant Lecturer. He is a man of exceptional academic erudition. Umar became a man of history as the first academic staff of the College to be offered a postgraduate scholarship. With numerous laurels adorning his treasure chest and several research papers published in referenced academic journals both locally and internationally to his credit, he is indisputably a leading light in academics from whatever perspective one chooses to assess him.
As one with a high drive for entrepreneurship and an effectual propensity to take the calculated risk, Umar towed the uncommon path by resigning his appointment from academia. He got inducted as a player in the oil and gas sector of the Nigerian economy when he registered his first company, Boldstar Nigeria Limited. He has since demonstrated his dexterity in the industry as a savvy entrepreneur, breaking limits and recording remarkable successes.
Umar Madawaki, identified and situated his interests in the oil and gas sector to include pipeline activities, equipment, and chemicals procurement. He has cut his teeth as a procurement consultant, maintenance provider, and supplier to the Pipeline Product Marketing Company (PPMC) and other oil majors, including Shell, Agip, Faudi Filtration System, TEG Stations, and Omat Stations. As a man of prodigious intellect, Umar diversified his business into other sectors of the economy spanning agriculture, mining, and real estate. He is indeed the proverbial jack of many trades with the capacity to be a master of all.
With an avowed desire to build capacity in his endeavors and reinvent himself, Umar has attended conferences and undertaken professional courses and training in some of the best training institutes and universities at home and abroad. To shore up his knowledge in procurement, where he has become a veteran consultant, he enrolled at Crown Agents, a world-class procurement training institution in the United Kingdom, and obtained a certificate in that discipline. In 2014, Umar was at Harvard University, Boston, the United States of America, where he trained and obtained, a certificate in Real Estate Development, Finance, and Leadership.
In 2015, he was in Hong Kong for the Mines and Money International Conference. On that occasion, he joined other global players in the mining industry to discuss developments in sustainable global economy and finance in mining. In 2017, Umar was at the Affordable Housing Conference in Singapore. At that event, he made a presentation that attracted rousing applause and standing ovation from global players, policymakers, and regulators in the housing industry.
Umar has experienced both adversities and successes in life. However, unlike most men, he has from adversities, learned wisdom, drawn strength, and cultivated a deep sense of love and empathy for people. Umar has equally learned to be humble in success and magnanimous in victory.
His life is a chronicle of aspirations founded on the burning desire to offer selfless service to humanity. As a devout Muslim, he is driven by charity and the public good. To that extent, Umar forayed into partisan politics in 2018 when he joined the All Progressives Congress (APC). He has proven that he is the actual image of a progressive politician, making invaluable contributions to the growth of the party with a reformed-minded disposition. In the 2019 general elections, Umar flew the party’s flag as a Senatorial candidate to represent his people at the hallowed precincts of the Nigerian Red Chamber.
Umar Madawaki is so accomplished yet graceful and approachable. He is possessed of the most profound sense of humility and modesty regardless of his manifold achievements. In a multi-ethnic and diverse religious inclination state like Adamawa, the APC would need a standard-bearer in the mold of Umar Madawaki to fly its flag as the governorship candidate in the next general elections. He is allergic to ethnic jingoism and religious bigotry. He is foresighted enough to understand that the socioeconomic development of Adamawa State and, indeed, Nigeria transcends the strictures of ethnic and religious sentiments. Umar embodies the finest tradition of our politics in tempers and attitude.
Having proven his mettle in the highly competitive private sector, Umar’s incursion into the political turf is not informed by self-aggrandizement or the perks that go with any public office. He comes with the determination to provide purposeful and visionary leadership to the people of Adamawa State. His inexhaustible bank of private sector experiences will be of immense benefit to the state and by extension the party. The man is an elephantine reservoir of social wits and uncommon stratagem. He is equally armed with a well-articulated economic blueprint to jumpstart the development of Adamawa State from the rubbles that the PDP has kept the state.
Umar’s borderless interconnectedness across the country will be of huge significance to the Adamawa people. He has spread his tentacles across the length and breadth of the country and beyond, building bridges and enduring relationships. From the faraway Northeast State of Adamawa but holds the traditional chieftaincy title of Otumba in the Southwest State of Ekiti. An admirable down-to-earth candor informs his private and public life. On that note, he enjoys a massive grassroots appeal and good positive perception across Adamawa State.
In a state where the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) is holding sway, APC would need a likable and popular personality like Umar Mustapha Madawaki to be in the driving seat as the governorship candidate to wrestle power. Umar is ostensibly the code that the people need at this time to break the PDP’s long-held hegemony in the state.
Missang Oyama is a social commentator who writes from Abuja. missangoyama@gmail.com.
