Re: Why Yari Needs N10m For Upkeep.

Opinion By Idris Muhammed

Below is my short response to an article written by Mahmud Jega of Dailytrust published on the back page of Monday, November 2, 2019 edition of the paper.

I must confess that this is one of the uninspiring piece I have read in recent past.

Beside trivialising a trending serious national issue, it equally has the dangerous tendency of insulting the sensibility of the down trodden in Zamfara state in particular and the entire masses of this country who are daily being insulted and treated with the most degrading contempt by the elites.

You surely need intensive tutorials from Tunde Asaju and Adamu Adamu if you are to do any better in satire writing. Perhaps, you are not meant for it. You are in the class of what I call frontal writers; these are activists, writers and social reformers that confront issues frontally irrespective of who’s ox it gored. As far as I am concern, this is where Mahmud Jega belong.

In my considered opinion, the issue under review is as fundamental to nation as the lives of the citizenry. Hence, too important to be treated with levity.

The abrogation by Zamfara state house of assembly of the ‘state pension scheme’ for political officer holders, irrespective of what the motivation is or was, is a revolution that all well meaning Nigerians should support, advocate, promote and champion across the length and breath of this country.

A couple of months ago, I stumbled on a document detailing the annual “entitlements” of political office holders, specifically former governors, in Akwa Ibom state.

I could not help but weep for for this country and its teaming masses. At the risk of sounding too conservative, what a former governor take home annually in that st

ate is enough to provide qualitative undergraduate education to 200 students. This is the situation in virtually all the states in Nigeria.

The Nigerian political elites are shameless; in fact, conscienceless. They have very little or no humanity left in them. This is what motivated Yari and the state assembly in the first instance to enact that obnoxious legislation.

Millions of satire will not make them change their mindless attitude towards the management of public treasury; they need to be confronted frontally with the most ferocious language at all time.

It doesn’t mater how many times you ‘ve criticised Yari in the past; one, two or three more criticism would have been more appropriate than being apologetic in the face of glaring mindless rape of the innocent people of Zamfara State.

Idris Writes From Kaduna