2015: Kabiru Gaya barnstorms through Kano guber race

Former Governor of Kano (1992-93) and now Senator, representing Kano South Senatorial district, Architect, Dr. Kabiru Ibrahim Gaya, is returning to a familiar turf. He is barnstorming through the densely populated cosmopolitan state of Kano, the old trading centre of commerce of Northern Nigeria, ahead of the race to gubernatorial glory of the state in the run up to the 2015 general elections.
Senator Gaya is contesting the All Progressives Congress (APC), governorship primary and looking ahead to become the next Governor of Kano, a job he had done before and excelled when governance was bereft of the level of funds now available to state chief executives for development. I ran into him at Abuja Geographical Information Systems office last week and we talked about his move for the Kano Government House in 2015. I knew his antecedents as a hardworking politician with a sound architectural background and was aware of his man of the people reputation in Kano State where I had my secondary education in the early sixties.
Senator Dr. Kabiru Gaya, a ranking senator by virtue of rounding off his second term as senator of the Federal Republic of Nigeria is going into the governorship race with an exciting curriculum vitae and could just be what the doctor ordered for the continuation of the fast-paced development by the late Abubakar Rimi of blessed memory and the brilliant Ibrahim Shekarau now Minister of Education and the Kwankwasiyya man, who has built series of flyovers in Kano to bring the city up from medieval times to the era of modernised infrastructure.
Architect, doctor and Senator, Kabiru Ibrahim Gaya’s political career shot into national limelight in the 1992-93 Babangida unending political transition when, as Governor of Kano State, he provided leadership in the state at the Kano Government House and barely showed snippets of what leadership style he could bring to bear on the state when the former military president abruptly ended the test tube experimentation in political engineering of Nigeria. But the determined politician, called Kabiru Ibrahim Gaya, was not resting on his oars. So, he pushed on, surviving the Abacha dictatorship and moved into the Abdulsalami transition that heralded the current democratic dispensation we are all enjoying this past 15 years.
Before joining the All Nigerian Peoples Party, ANPP, he was board member of Kano State Environmental Planning and Protection Agency (KASEPPA), which is a government agency in Kano State that is responsible for issues concerning the environment in the state. Functions included planning urban centres, control of development in urban centres, provision of amenities, conveniences and infrastructures and other functions necessary for healthy and orderly urban growth.
As a leading architect, trained at the Ahmadu Bello University where he bagged a Masters Degree, he was eminently qualified to work in “KASEPPA, which is responsible for ensuring that public land is not illegally allocated to individuals and destroys illegally constructed buildings.” He was later awarded a doctorate degree of the University of Porto Novo, Republic of Benin. Senator Kabiru Gaya, despite the tough competition that usually abound in Kano political terrain, stormed through the Senatorial elections of 2007 and won the Kano South senatorial seat easily.
His stint at the Senate began on a fast pace because of his penchant for action-packed leadership style and soon moved into the Senate Committee on Gas, Local and Foreign Debts, States and Local Government and Upstream Petroleum Resources and Works. It did not take Senate President, David Bournaventure Mark, long to note the leadership capacity in Senator Gaya by appointing him to the senate leadership as Deputy Minority Whip where he has remained a top class performer in legislative and other matters. Senator Gaya is not the type to help to warm the Red Chamber by doing nothing and contributing little to legislative governance as well as plenary debates.
He is reputed to have sponsored the Finance Management and Accountability Bill 2009 and the Millennium Development Agency Bill, 2009 and “co-sponsored five motions and contributed well to debates in plenary. In May 2008, as chairman of the Senate committee on works, Kabiru Gaya lamented that some projects were going very slowly, but said the Senate would never subscribe to the idea of privatizing Nigerian roads”. In his brief as the Chairman Senate Committee on States and Local Government Administration, he gave full support for the freeing of LGA finances from the clutches of State Administrations.
When I asked the distinguished senator the impact he has made in his senatorial district by virtue of holding the senate committee on works as well as membership of important committees such as gas, upstream petroleum resources, he reeled out a long and impressive list of projects that he has attracted to Kano South Senatorial District. “In the area of education, I have built 320 class rooms and 17 skill acquisition centres throughout Kano South and as far as water resources were concerned, I have sunk exactly 276 solar-activated boreholes.”
The Senator is on record to have attracted 18 health centres across his Kano South area as far as job creation was concerned, he has facilitated the employment of 670 men and women into productive employment. “I can beat my chest that as a Senator, I have brought about the installation of 6000 tube well and irrigation pumps in my senatorial district which is an essentially agriculture based economy”, Gaya confirmed. Of course as works committee chairman, roads and bridges abound in my area which both me and the state government has put in place, he added.
Senator Gaya was yet to round up his achievements for his people without mentioning the impact he has made in the power sector. 30 transformers he brought to the areas of Kano south has helped to improve the power situation in the area and has seen a vast improvement in growth in the local suburbs rather than everybody moving to the cities. Looking ahead to the gubernatorial elections, Senator Gaya is happy that the state governor Rabiu Kwankwaso is not necessarily naming an anointed candidate because as he said, he is a man who wants an open, free and fair primary for all. That means we all have to exhibit our credentials for the public to assess us and vote for the best candidate. “I am ready and willing for this arrangement because I am sure of my credentials and my capacity to deliver Kano to the Promised Land”, he spoke emphatically.
The aspirant for Kano government house hopes to replicate his work in Kano South to the other senatorial districts of Kano Central and Kano North. “I will encourage even development across the length and breadth of the State and I will not just push all the development to Kano South just because I am from there, rather there will be equal development across the areas. I did as much in the short period I governed Kano in 1992 and 1993”.
Senator Gaya will be concentrating a lot of government resources to improving agriculture and natural resources when he gets to government house, Kano. He said that having been exposed to issues in oil and gas during his senate years, “I will be shifting emphasis to non oil economy”, he postulated. “In fact”, he said “I want to see a return of the groundnut pyramids, hides and skins where I will develop their export markets because that was the political economy when our forefather Ahmadu Bello called the shots. We can reinvigorate the areas of non-oil to help internal revenue generation because emphasis should be shifting to that area, especially with dwindling oil sales which is our economic mainstay at the moment.
“Finally, I plan to boost the trading status of Kano to come back to what it used to be in the medieval times when Kano city was known for its transnational trade and a first class investment destination. There will be no time to waste because the quest for development has got into a higher gear. I will build upon the achievements of Governor Kwankwaso and make Kano state the commercial hub of Nigeria and de-emphasize yields from the federation account”.
Senator Gaya added that the impact of insecurity in the country may have slowed down the pace of development in parts of the North, but he hopes that it should become a thing of the past by the next dispensation. “That is why my government in Kano State will fight for zero unemployment because it is when the majority of young people are jobless that the devil makes its workshop around them and cause instability, insurgency and societal degradation”. Senator Gaya is very upbeat about the potential for his success not just in the primary but in the actual elections because his glittering experience will help immensely to shape the economic pathway to the total transformation of Kano and the rest of Nigeria.