By Tobs Agbaegbu
He has a winning formula which has not failed him during elections since he embraced politics in 1977. He bids his time, weighs his chances and options before finally taking a plunge.

Abdullahi Adamu, governor of Nasarawa State is a consummate politician who knows the essence of strategy in securing electioneering advantages.

Adamu, popularly called the bridge builder is in the race for the presidency of Nigeria in 2007. But he is reluctant now to make a soap box declaration of his intent. Although he has notified PDP authorities of his intent, through the Governor Ayo Fayose committee set up by the party to shortlist those interested in the race, Adamu wants to be different in his approach.

The governor gave reasons why his public declaration is being delayed. "Well, that will require some work. Ruling Nigeria is not a tea party or a picnic. You have to get your acts together; you have to have your definite programme of action. If I say I want to declare tomorrow, then you will expect that this guy that wants to lead us, what is the state of his mind? How does he want to run the country? What message does he have? How is he going to deliver us to the promised land? What are the problems he has identified and how is he going to get over such problems, etc? There is difference between those who wait to cross the bridge when they get there and those who start jumping before they get to the bridge. Those who jump before they get to the bridge are in the market already, and you can see that they are not making any impact. It’s like the battle has not started. This is because the guys who have the programmes have not stepped in."

Newswatch learnt that Adamu is putting up a structure and strategy, which he hopes to use to beat his opponents. A befitting campaign headquarter is about to spring up at a prime location in Asokoro, Abuja. The Adamu for president Campaign office in Abuja is to be headed by a seasoned administrator and politician, experienced in political party and election matters. Newswatch learnt also that Adamu’s other campaign offices will soon spring up in all the state capitals and will be staffed by tested hands chosen from a cross section of Nigerians to reflect the diverse tribal, religious, and cultural coloration of the country.

A blueprint of what Adamu will tell delegates at the PDP convention as well as his plan to transform the country is also being worked out. The details are being kept close to the heart of people handling Adamu’s campaign, ahead of release of PDP guidelines for conventions.

However, it will not be difficult for watchers of the governor’s life style, his pronouncements over the years and the people he associates with, to know what Adamu has in stock for the country. A clearer picture of what to expect, however, came from Sani Jimba, director of communications in the governor’s office.

Jimba told Newswatch that "as a politician who knows his terrain very well, as a governor who has surprised everybody with monumental achievements in spite of lean resources, as a leader who spoke for four years for Nigeria in the capacity of chairman of the governors forum, Abdullahi Adamu knows the problems of his people and the problem of Nigeria. His programme of action and policy statements will protect all interests in the country. He has also featured prominently in handling issues of national concern during the seven years of Obasanjo’s administration. I expect therefore that the governor will carry on with the reform programmes started by the Obasanjo administration."

Jimba is right. Adamu’s antecedents clearly show him as a federalist. In the course of his emergence as a national figure, however, he did not close his eyes to issues affecting his people at the state and regional levels.

His career in politics began in earnest in 1977 when he was elected into the Constituent Assembly, a body that ratified the 1979 draft constitution. Thereafter, he became a pioneer member of the National Movement, a political association, which later metamorphosed into the National Party of Nigeria, NPN. He was the first secretary of the party from December 1978 and later chairman of the party in Plateau State from 1982 up to 1983 when the military terminated the life of the Second Republic. He also served as a member of the National Executive Committee of the party.

Adamu also participated in the national constitutional conference which drafted the 1998 constitution. To his credit therefore, he was twice involved in the writing of the Nigerian constitution.

Adamu is also a former minister of state, Federal Ministry of Works and Housing. He served in that capacity up to November 17, 1997.

At the lifting of the ban on politics by the military, Adamu became a member of the United Nigeria Congress Party, UNCP, and was one of its leading gubernatorial contenders in Nasarawa State. His efforts did not materialise as the party, alongside others, was dissolved on the death of General Sani Abacha. He became a founding member of PDP in 1998, on which platform he contested and won the election as governor of Nasarawa State on January 9, 1999. He was re-elected for a second term of four years on April 19, 2003.

A peep into his pronouncements in the past shows that Adamu has a clear grasp of the problems of the country and has even, unwittingly, provided a blueprint on how to solve them. On November 7, 2002, he spoke at a state dinner in honour of Obasanjo. Titled, Our Nation, Our Future, the governor spoke on the need to preserve our democracy by dealing with the forces of disunity throughout the country. He condemned the move by the House of Representatives to impeach the president and warned that the step did not argur well for our democracy.

He said: "This unfortunate development (impeachment saga) so early in the life of our fledgling democracy has opened the floodgates of primordial fears across the length and breadth of the nation. Ethnic champions are once again riding the waves of these fears to the cheers of the misguided. The doomsayers are back at their game. The energy of the executive and the national legislature has been sapped and indeed wasted on this saga for the last three months or so. It is time to stop now and pull the nation back from the brink."

He urged the press to champion the cause of national unity and progress, saying: "Our efforts at building a virile and sustainable democracy will suffer self-inflicted injury if our media wittingly or unwittingly make themselves ready tools in the hands of misguided ethnic champions, political jobbers and the unreconstructed prophets of doom. The media must join hands with the leaders at all levels in building the nation we have all so fervently dreamed of. We can only build in peace, not in chaos."

Adamu advocates for a strong national unity. He warned against tribal or sectional loyalty at the expense of the nation. "Our nation cannot and must not be subordinated to those administrative units, no matter what importance we attach to them. Perhaps we need to do something we have always run away from – evolve a national ideology, which puts the nation first," he said.

Adamu conjures the image of a Nigerian statesman. But he believes also in the universal adage: "charity begins at home"-but this as a process of strengthening the fabric of our national unity. This was the context in which he spoke about the need for a strong northern unity in December 2004. In an address to the Northern Peace Conference, titled "People of the North, Think," Adamu spoke of divisiveness in the North, along political, ethnic, religious and economic lines. He said: "The gap between Moslems and Christians is widening by the day. The same applies to the growing social inequality in the region. The super rich and the poor in this region lead parallel lives." He warned that "history has taught us that the pauperisation of the people ultimately leads to social upheavals in which the rich become the victims."

Of late, no leader from the North has dissected the problems of the North as much as governor Adamu. His knowledge of the problems of the North, which he discusses without losing cognisance of the overall problems of the country, portrays him as the most serious contender for the office of the president, among politicians from the North. Adamu’s statements carry with them the authority and intellect of a personality destined for greater heights. He also exudes the aura of accomplishment whenever he moves around in his state.

Indeed his records as governor of Nasarawa State speak volume of the potentials in him. Records from three key sectors – education, energy and resource management, are currently being used to compare Adamu with Bill Clinton, former US President, during his time as governor of Arkansas.

Suleiman Asonya Adokwe, commissioner for information and internal affairs said that when Adamu became governor of Nasarawa State, in 1999, the entire state could not produce five qualified candidates for university admission. But today Nasarawa State can proudly proclaim that it is now able to fill all its quotas in most of the tertiary institutions across the country.

"To crown his achievements in the education sector," Adokwe said, "The governor established a state university at Keffi, a polytechnic at Lafia, a college of preliminary studies and a lot of other quasi-tertiary institutions across the state. The institutions emphasised science education, which is the engine of growth and development. In the schools, payment of fees is uniform and these is no discrimination of any sort between indigenes and non-indigenes."

Adamu told Newswatch: "One of the reasons for the agitation for Nasarawa State at that time was due to our backwardness, the level of marginalisation that we suffered and it manifested in everything. And when I had the opportunity to be governor, when I was campaigning, preparing my mission, programme of action I saw education as the foundation of it all. That in the north, we are backward in western education, and that even within the north we have places like Nasarawa state as one of the backward states in the area of education. And there is no way you can talk about development when you don’t have the capacity to know what you want and the direction of that development that you want. So the thing to do was to quickly address the issue of education. And over and above other areas of priority I started from primary schools, tertiary institutions and then university. Of course, education is light. If I were not educated I wouldn’t have been governor today. And if education is good for me, why is it not good for my neighbour? If it is good for my children, why should I not extend it to the children of others? So that is the emphasis."

Nasarawa State is building a hydro-power plant, which will be commissioned by the end of 2006.The generating capacity of the hydro plant is 30 megawatts of electricity compared with the total power supply of 7 megawatts to the state by the Power Holding Corporation of Nigeria, PHCN, at present. Clearly, the project which is expected to be ready in December will serve the needs of the state sufficiently, and also have extra for use of neighbouring states like Plateau, Benue, Kaduna and the FCT.

The governor has done excellently well in the area of resource management. Muhammad Kabir Abubakar, the State commissioner of finance told Newswatch "We rank 2nd to Ekiti State among states that receive meager amounts from the federation account and yet the governor managed the resources well enough to carry out monumental developmental projects."

In June, the state assembly passed a motion urging the governor to accept the challenge of contesting the 2007 presidential election. Mohammed Ogoshi Onawo, the speaker of the house told Newswatch that the motion was moved by Isa Onuku. He said he tested the popularity of the motion by ordering for a voice vote from the 24 member house. The verdict: "Not even a single voice was heard in disagreement when I ordered a voice vote. That shows you the massive support the governor is having from the people of Nasarawa State in the move to get him to accept to run for presidency in 2007," Onawo told Newswatch.

National assembly members from the state also support the state assembly. Shuaibu Abdullahi, representing Awe/Doma/Keana Federal Constituency told Newswatch that he and his colleagues support Adamu for the presidency.

Halilu Bala Usman, chairman of the National Programme on Immunisation, NPI, told Newswatch that the governor was such a courageous man who would be an asset to the country. Usman debunked allegations that the governor is intolerant of opposition and may turn out a dictator. He told Newswatch: "Those accusing governor Adamu of being intolerant of opposition say there are no opposition parties again in the state. What they failed to point out is that the opposition elements in the state got converted to the ruling party because of the accommodating leadership Adamu offered. Nobody complained of intimidation, persecution or abuse of his human rights. That is a point in favour of governor Adamu."

The governor has also obtained endorsement from the 13 local governments and 15 development areas of the state, as well as from his party – the PDP, in the state. Musa Seidu, chairman of Awe LGA and chairman, Association of Local Governments of Nigeria, ALGON, Nasarawa State chapter, told Newswatch that the governor received full support from the grassroots. "What else can anybody wish from his people when all local government chairmen in Nasarawa State rose to ask the governor to continue his good works as an excellent administrator, but this time at the national level? Watch out, Governor Adamu will emerge and Nigeria will be better for it," he told Newswatch.

Yunana Iliya and O. G. Akaila, state secretary and legal adviser of PDP in the state respectively told Newswatch in separate interviews that the party has communicated its endorsement of the governor for president to him. The PDP chieftains said the party was satisfied with the record of achievements of the governor in the past seven years, especially in the area of roads, education, health, commerce and industry and in good governance.

Even labour unions in the state said they were satisfied with what is on the ground in Nasarawa State. Mohammed Abdul Keffi, chairman of the state chapter of the Nigeria Labour Congress, NLC, said labour suggested Adamu for president because of his exemplary leadership. He described Adamu as a highly detribalised leader, pointing out that in the state, non-indigenes even enjoy permanent and pensionable employment.

Outside Nasarawa State, Adamu also enjoys tremendous support and goodwill. In the South-West, the Ooni of Ife conferred on him the traditional title of Aare Obateru, one of the highest titles ever conferred on a non-Yoruba man by him. The governor is billed to receive other titles from many parts of Igboland especially in Anambra, Enugu and Imo states. He received honorary doctorate degrees from the Federal University of Technology, Akure and University of Science Technology, Port Harcourt. Adamu, the consummate bridge builder, has a powerful network of friends that cuts across the country. These will be his assets when he steps into the ring.

Reported by Anza Philips.

Posted on the web by Newswatch magazine August 3, 2006