By Emmanuel Bello
Perhaps he didn’t expect this dramatic outcome but Governor Darius Ishaku, from a routine power broker, has suddenly transformed into something of a rock star celebrity in Taraba state. Or even a revolutionary in the mould of Mahatma Gandhi, Che Guevera and Nelson Mandela. I’m not exaggerating because his super star appeal and acceptability status has so sky rocketed that a commentator, Hezekiah Godwin, said it is the first of of its kind in Taraba’s chequered history. Gov Ishaku is so popular now even his bitterest critics want to find him and have a handshake. Never before, Godwin said, has any political leader rightly guaged the central need of his people, tapped into it, articulated it and galvanized almost everyone to embrace it. Godwin said the bipartisanship of the current engagement beats imagination. Hear him: “as a student of Taraba state history I can say that there was never a time anyone has rallied people around one single subject as Governor Ishaku did with this anti open grazing bill. The phenomenon transcends religion, ethnicity, political affiliations, social status and gender. It has all the trappings of a revolutionary movement. It is Taraba’s Arab Spring no doubt.”
What do revolutionaries do? Well, essentially, they take a hard look at a problem and find historical solutions to them. Simple. And by doing so, they are elevated, from the rudimentary, to legend status and inducted into the hall of fame. Today, everyone to a man in the state stands with the governor on the anti open grazing bill because it goes to the heart of the matter: survival! From the onset of his government, Ishaku had rightly diagonised that peace was the most important ingredient for development in the state. As Godwin adroitly observed: what is the use of an airport or good roads or hospitals and schools, or big markets and hotels and stadiums and fertilizers/tractors; what’s the point in paying salaries, creating employment opportunities, reviving comatose industries, talking to investors and paying huge pensions/gratuity bills; what’s the use of all of these when lives are in danger and rampaging gun men are disseminating the populace? What indeed was the use of government if the governor would rule over dead people? That’s why the governor, at the campaigns, went into a social contract with the people. He screamed from all rostrums that if the people would give him peace, he can assure them of development.
But Gov Ishaku has gone beyond this. He is no longer waiting to be given peace. He’s now in the business of bringing that peace to the people. The bill came at a time many Taraba citizens thought hope was lost in the peace department. Killer Fulani herdsmen were stomping on farmlands in their hundreds; a docile security formation was taking sides; and famine loomed. A less than revolutionary approach would have been to sit back and expect cover from above or tell citizens to find ways to protect themselves. Governor Ishaku took the hard way instead. He was well aware of the misconceptions and daunting task of implementations associated with the bill. But he did the needful and applied a far reaching and very profound solution to the problem of herdsmen/farmer clash.
In the eyes of many Taraba people, this is not just novel but something of a redeeming innovation. It has captured their mind in a way nothing has in the last two decades. And where some could say their governor hasn’t completely addressed the issues of salaries or provided all the fertilizers they need, they are more than ready to concede that he has worked towards their protection- which actually happens to the number duty of any leader. The survival instinct is the first in every human being. That’s why Taraba people have unanimously crowned Gov. Ishaku their man of the millennium and are ready to roll with him, in a political romance, for as long as constitutional mandates permits. It is the stern stuff revolutions are made of.
Bello is Senior Special Assistant to Governor Ishaku on public affairs.
