By Abdallah el-Kurebe, Editor
Unruffled by the electoral farce that stole his mandate at the February elections, Lawal Adamu Usman (Mr LA), Peoples Democratic Party senatorial candidate for Kaduna Central has launched a new community support programme to empower his supporters and indigent families across the state.
While still on vacation in Europe, Mr LA directed the gift of exotic cars to three of his loyal supporters in the last 24 hours and listed about 10 others for sponsorship to perform the lesser Hajj in Saudi Arabia.
Beneficiaries of the car gifts were Mohammed Yakubu Mumzee, Bala Tela and Aisha Galadima while the Umrah beneficiaries include Ibrahim Ali, LA’s campaign director and many other supporters and PDP stalwarts in the state.
A statement by LA’s media office and made available to Newsdiaryonline assured all supporters, friends and well wishers of Mr LA’s commitment to ensuring that the mandate given to him in February is reclaimed and restored.
The statement said while LA pursues the already initiated legal process for reclaiming the people’s mandate, he is at the same time committed to empowering the people through a new scheme branded the LA CARE PROGRAMME.
Mr LA, the statement said, is at the same time, moving to rebrand the politics of Kaduna state believing that the prevailing model is the one muddled, vague, and most times contradictory.
“LA believes that the current system is the old-time electoral politics with a slightly heightened shrill of progressive rhetoric; a politics based not on educating people but on mobilizing them, nor on creating an active public sphere, but on electing candidates.
“The operational system does not ensure that constituencies are informed, politically knowledgeable, and more capable of acting independently on their own in order to develop a creative, fluid, and truly popular politics.
“This type of politics is essentially counterproductive because people who are mobilized by charismatic leaders, centralized institutions, and power-oriented political structures remain masses, not independent- minded citizens.
“It is also dangerous because, while these types of politicians gradually become professionalized and guided by career interests rather than principles, the ordinary people become passive and inactive; institutions become bureaucratic and centralistic like in the case of Kaduna today,” the statement said.
