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SENATOR MAHMUD WAZIRI: A
CONSUM MATE POLITICIAN EXTRAORDINAIRE
By Otunba OLAJIDE, Aug 16, 2006
otunbafunshoolajide@yahoo.com
It was William Shakespeare who said some
people are born great, others achieve greatness, while some other have
greatness thrust upon them. Yes, although Senator Waziri was born great,
he has achieved so much greatness in life by the dint of hard work and the
special grace of Almighty Allah. He is a man of the people, an astute
politician, with impressible administrative cum managerial acumen, a very
good listener, a amiable community leader, a unassuming and humble elder
statesman, a perspicacious and profound egghead, a grassroots mobilizer,
an exemplary role model, a consensus and bridge builder, a man who has
positively and progressively touched the lives of several Nigerians across
all divides, a nationalist per excellence and a pathfinder for the needy.
For those who perhaps do not know the very
highly respected consummate political gladiator, Senator Waziri, he was at
a time the Special Adviser to the president and Commander in Chief of the
Federal Republic of the Nigeria, Chief Olusegun Obasanjo on Inter Party
Affairs. Before then, he was the founding National Chairman of All Nigeria
Peoples Party that won democratically conducted elections in seven states
that cut across North-east, North-central and North-west of the
geo-political zones in Nigeria. It also very germane to point out that, he
is a prince from the famous Fombrina Kingdom that is today called the
Adamawa Emirate Council, the title Waziri is the second in command to the
highest ruler in the Fombrina Kingdom or the Adamawa Emirate Council
according to impeccable historical record.
Senator Waziri is very well educated, he
attended the Yola Middle School; now General Murtala Muhammad College,
Yola, then to North Western Polytechnic, London, where he read shipping
and transportation up to master degree level. After, his education, he
commenced his career as a civil servant with the Nigeria Port Authority in
the early sixties. A was a pioneer civil servant from Northern Eastern
Region of Nigeria, that also referred to as Adamawa Province. He served
with devotion, dedication, diligence, with unbridled and unalloyed service
to humanity and unflinching fear of Allah at all times, until he will
retired to set up his own shipping line with the name Nigerbrass.
At this juncture, it is imperative to
underscore the fact that, he was a member of the Constituent Assembly in
1977 that fashioned out the 1979 constitution. In 1979, he was elected a
Senator of the Federal Republic of Nigeria till 1983. Furthermore, he
played very significant role in the formation, grooming and sustenance of
the Great Nigeria Peoples Party under the dynamic leadership of the now
late, Alhaji Ibrahim Waziri, who preached and popularized the concept of
politics without bitterness, and who won very convincingly in the old
Borno and Gongola states. He played a cameo role in the politics of the
third republic, when he teamed up with progressive and democratic forces
in the then Social Democratic Party where he was a stalwart. He has
consistently identified with the plight of the commoners despite the fact
that he was born into royalty, his identification with the GNPP which
entered into an alliance with the Unity Party of Nigeria (UPN) and the
Nigeria Peoples Party (NPP), which formed the Peoples Progressive Alliance
(PPA) and later Peoples Progressive Parties (PPP) from 1982 to 1983
demonstrated beyond all reasonable doubt that he is irrevocably committed
to the needs of the downtrodden at any material time. Again, it was for
the same reasons stated above that he pitched tent with the SDP and not
with some other very conservative political parties at the time. In 1998,
he worked assiduously and conscientiously to the ANPP right from the
scratch, massively sponsored some of the gubernatorial political
gladiators that contested and won electoral victories, albeit he was later
betrayed by some of these self-serving politicians, he calmly took what
happened with equanimity and philosophical calmness without bearing them
any grudge whatsoever. That is the nature of this great Nigerian, a peace
lover, abhors violence, detribalized, tolerant, accommodative, painstaking
thorough, a stickler for excellence and has eyes for details.
This is a man that have assisted people from
all works of life not minding their religion, background, sex, tribe,
creed, language and what have you. He is someone that believes that
whatever Allah has given him, he should use it in the upliftment and
betterment of people who are in dire need in the society. This is
exemplified by the very large number of people that he helped to get jobs
when he was with the NPA, most of them today are at the commanding heights
of the authority.
Furthermore, on a daily basis his house in
Adamawa is a besieged by people of different shades that cut across the
over 76 variegated ethnic groups in Adamawa state, and he attends to them
one after the other with patience, understanding and rapt attention
without losing his cool at any point. He treats them with respect and will
never look down on any of them or even talk harshly to them. Atimes he
attends to people till the wee hours of the day despite, having very tight
and parked schedule himself. He has an uncommon penchant for listening to
people and assisting them to overcome their numerous problems.
Again, one thing that stands him out from the
crowd any day is the fact that, when others are busy jostling for
political power, and are ready to bootlick and even backbite, he remains
cool, calm and collected. And his steadfastness to noble ideals has
enabled him to be called upon several times to carry out critical national
assignments. His magnanimity, benevolence, simplicity, deep intellectual
capabilities and uncanny resolve to always strive for the greatest
happiness of the greatest number without forgetting the vested interests
of the minority, this more than anything else has catapulted him to the
apogee of Nigeria’s political economy.
Senator Mahmud Waziri is one person that
anybody from any part of the country that wants to be great should
emulate. If most of those that have presided over the affairs of this
great country have imbibed the inner qualities of this illustrious son of
Africa, Nigeria today by any standard could not have been an
underdeveloped country in permanent crisis. Only if they have taken after
him today, Nigeria would have been an El Dorado land of hope and glory.
This is because; he is not given to inordinate ambitions, egocentrism,
rapacious proclivities, kleptocratic tendencies, audacious mendacity,
political vacillations and primitive accumulation of wealth. He is of the
firm view that the greatest glory is not in never falling, but rising each
time you fall. He does not just take the second best, he believes in the
very best.
In addition, albeit a royalty with blue blood
in his veins, an incontrovertible man of letters, a respected elite with
penetrating foresight, an indisputable business magnet of no mean repute,
an unrepentant democrat, an unrelenting defender of democracy and a
distinguished Senator of the Republic, he is not arrogant, cantankerous,
snobbish and standoffish. He is a friend of the masses, despite the fact
he moves with the movers and shakers of the Nigerian state. He is an
emancipator of the encumbrances of the common man. He is a grassroots
mobilizer that cannot be ignored; he is a bridge between the rich and the
poor, between people of different faiths. He is an apostle of peace; an
ambassador of harmonious co-existence, an agent of positive change and a
progenitor of all-round development.
Moreover, he is of the opinion that one of the
greatest problems confronting the Nigerian state is leadership, and he
reasoned that the circumstances of our history have conspired to produce
an elite which cannot function because it has no sense of identity or
integrity and no confidence, does not know where it is coming from or
where it is going. The further contended that, it is clear from the
bahaviour of our leaders that most of them have no respect for themselves
and do not take themselves seriously. That is why they have converted us
into the mimic people. Lacking confidence and self respect, they cannot
develop any sense of efficacy. So even with the best of intentions they
are forever confused and perfunctory. More worrying still, our leaders
suffer from self-contempt. This underlies their alienation from themselves
and from us and it is manifested in their prickly impatience with their
environment, their fondness for things foreign and disdain for local, and
so on. Senator Waziri views development as inevitable in the trajectory of
any social formation. He said development cannot be achieved by proxy. A
people itself or not at all. All it can develop itself through a strategy
of self-reliance that is through the commitment and the energy of the
people. That is where democracy comes in. self- reliance is not possible
unless the society is thoroughly democratic, unless the people are the end
and not just the means of development. Development occurs, in so far as it
amounts to the pursuit of objectives set by the people themselves in their
own interest and by means of their own resources.
Besides, he is a democrat at heart who engages
in debates, dialogue, discussion, communication and ceaseless
interactions, by and large Senator Waziri is a worthy character that is a
shinning example to all and sundry far beyond the shores of Nigeria.
By Otunba OLAJIDE
No 28, Ibrahim Taiwo road
Ilorin
Kwara State.
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