The 2023 presidential and national assembly elections threw up many surprises with the ruling All Progressives Congress suffering casualties on many fronts. Although the APC presidential candidate Asiwaju Bola Tinubu won the race, the bruises suffered by the party in many states could lead to further chaos as Nigerians elect governors in 29 states across the country.
APC suffered arguably the biggest setback in Kaduna State where Governor Nasir El-Rufai is becoming hugely unpopular due to some of his actions which cost the party victory in the presidential elections and could jeopardise its chances in the gubernatorial polls on Saturday.
APC won in just two local governments out of the available 23; even the Labour Party won seven while the leading opposition Peoples Democratic Party ran away with a whopping 14.
The extent of the damage was also underlined by the fact that the APC failed to win any of the three senatorial seats as the PDP cleared everything.
The damaging outcomes of the February 25 elections could be attributed to many factors but the actions and inactions of Governor El-Rufai during his eight-year reign played a major role in the political fiasco.
OLUSESAN OBA highlights some of the key actions taken by El-Rufai that threw a wedge between him and many people of Kaduna State.
Demolition of Houses for urban renewal project
In October 2021 the Kaduna State government began the demolition of over 400 houses in some parts of the state especially Zaria for a project he called urban renewal.
The exercise rendered many people homeless while thousands were displaced. Churches, mosques and business places were cleared out by the operatives of the urban planning agency, KASUPDA.
All entreaties to El-Rufai to halt the demolition fell on deaf ears as he stubbornly stuck to his plans.
Even Amnesty International pleaded with the governor to stop the demolition exercise, noting that “forced eviction is a gross human rights violation that particularly deprives people of the right to housing” but the governor stuck to his guns.
However, the government carried out the demolition without adequate compensation and it is safe to say the anger and dejections of the people were reflected in the outcome of the polls penultimate Saturday.
The sack of more than 25,000 teachers
One of the biggest controversies in El-Rufai’s eight-year administration was the sacking of more than 25,000 teachers over his two tenures.
The governor caused an uproar in 2017 during his first term when he fired 22,000 ‘unfit’ teachers. The Governor claimed the Education Sector Support Programme in Nigeria, ESSPIN, report he received showed that 83 per cent of the teachers scored less than 25 per cent in Maths and literacy exams and he was open to only the option of firing those who failed.
Attempts by the Nigeria Union of Teachers to have their sacked colleagues reinstated failed as the court ruled in 2018 that the Governor reserved the right to carry out the exercise.
About 22,000 teachers were hired to replace the sacked ones but about 4000 of them were sent away by the governor for poor performance.
Even though the action of the governor almost cost him his second term, he repeated the exercise in 2022 when he fired 2,357 teachers including the NUT chairman in the state for failing the competence test.
Despite pressure from different quarters including legal actions, El-Rufai refused to back down on the actions.
The sacking of more than 70, 000 workers
It is believed that more than 70,000 workers were laid off under the administration of El-Rufai with most of them not getting redundancy payments.
El-Rufai’s government is rated as the highest number of workers dismissed in the history of the state. The downsizing exercise began in 2016 when over 13,000 workers considered to be ghost workers, were fired and the governor sustained that trend even to the twilight of his reign.
Interventions by the Progressives Governors Forum, the Arewa Consultative Forum and even the Nigeria Labour congress yielded no results as El-Rufai claimed his government had no financial capacity to maintain ‘bogus’ civil service.
His position was aggravated by his refusal to pay pensioners while the sacked workers were not adequately compensated. Many believe the situation led to a high level of insecurity in the state and the electorate ostensibly took the anger to the polls.
Increment of tuition fees in all tertiary institutions
El-Rufai’s rating among the residents of Kaduna was badly nosedived when he announced an increment in the tuition fees in all state-owned tertiary institutions.
The authorities of those schools, namely Kaduna State University (KASU), Nuhu Bamali Polytechnic, Zaria, Kaduna State College of Education (COE), Gidan Waya, Shehu Idris College of Health Sciences, Makarfi, and Kaduna State College of Nursing and Midwifery, were forced to increase their tuition fees by more than 300 percent.
KASU was directed to increase the fees from between N24,000 and N26,000 to a minimum consolidated fee of N150,000. while the government pegged the minimum fees for National Diploma and Higher National Diploma at N75,000 and N100,000, respectively; the National Certificate in Education (NCE) programmes in COE Gidan Waya raised to N75,000.
In fact, students of the Faculty of Medicine from the state are now paying as high as N300,000 as against N24,000 while non-indigenes pay N500,000.
The students protested, and the parents lamented while the civil society’s efforts amounted to nothing as the governor refused to change his mind.
The policy inevitably forced many students to drop out of school because their parents could not afford to pay the new fee.
Sacking of 313 district, 4,453 village heads
Governor El-Rufai intensely infuriated a lot of residents when he sacked 313 districts and 4,453 village heads in what he described as a restructuring of its traditional chiefdoms to reduce the burden of a bloated payroll imposed on local government councils.
The government reverted to 77 districts and 1,429 village units that existed before 2001 but the decision met huge criticism.
The majority of the electorate claimed the decision to sack the chiefs was responsible for the spate of kidnapping, banditry and killings in the state and that could be responsible for the poor showing of APC in the elections penultimate Saturday.
High-handedness during COVID lockdown
The people of northern Nigeria don’t joke with their religions and many Kaduna Muslims complained about the high-handedness of their governor during the COVID-19 pandemic when mosques were shut down for many months.
The poor manner the government handled the case of a popular Islamic scholar, Sheikh Dahiru Bauchi, when the COVID-19 enforcement committee evacuated his students (almajirai) for allegedly going against the COVID-19 protocols at the middle of the night. angered his followers and many other Muslims who sympathised with the cleric. They had vowed to vote against him and they obviously carried out their threat.
Demolition of markets
El-Rufai also offenders traders after he demolished more than 15 markets across the state.
His government said it embarked on the project to modernise markets in the state but traders complained that they were not carried along and compensation were not paid to ameliorate their pains.
This could have also affected the party.
