Re: Speaker Dogara: Letter from a forgotten constituent

Imust start by saying that I am not writing this rejoinder to denigrate or castigate our good brother Abubakar Algwallary who penned an article on his Facebook page and also published in Daily Trust Newspaper of Wednesday 30 May 2018 with the above title. No, and I will never do that because as a citizen and constituent of the Rt. Hon. Speaker, he is entitled to not only to his opinion and freedom of speech and expression, but also to that of representation and he is always free to ask his representative questions as this is the hallmark of democracy.

However, there is a need to set the record straight, and bring to the attention of both the public and the writer, the laudable programmes and projects the Speaker has been implementing in all nooks and crannies of Bogoro/Dass/ Tafawa Balewa Federal Constituency since he mounted the saddle in 2007.

As a fair and true leader who believes in even distribution of government projects and patronage, Hon Dogara has always made it a practice to equally divide projects into three to cover the three local government areas he represents.

In each local government area, there are ward leaders, youth leaders, women leaders and other stakeholders who are responsible for recommending programmes and projects to be implemented.

For Tafawa Balewa LGA, where Abubakar comes from, there are two districts namely Lere and Bula and the writer is from the latter.

Since he stepped into the House, Hon. Dogara adopted a template containing all major needs of various communities in his constituency, including water, healthcare, education, electrification, roads, etc which are cited evenly among the LGAs, wards and districts respectively.

As stated earlier, leaders of the various districts are responsible for bringing up issues, needs and problems of their communities to the attention of the Speaker. In this wise, Hon. Mohammed Aminu Tukur is the leader for Bula District and he has been discharging that responsibility to the best of his ability in the last three years.

We also have the Miyetti Allah and Jarawa leaders in Bula District and all projects are evenly shared between the communities based on their recommendations.

The writer will therefore do well to ask those leaders representing his community questions as the Speaker cannot know everything that transpires in every community.

The Speaker also has aides for all LGAs and districts in addition to the constituency office in Tafawa Balewa where Abubakar or any constituent can lodge complaints.

However, this is not to say that there were no projects executed in the communities mentioned by Algwallary in his article. In fact, to the contrary, those communities in Bula district of Tafawa Balewa happen to be major beneficiaries of Hon Dogara’s representation in the last 11 years including in Gwallarai, Mr. Abubakar’s immediate community. Thus, I will advise that proper checks should always be done before going to public on issues like these because facts speaks for themselves: Hon. Dogara’s legacy projects are spread all over.

For benefit of doubt, I will mention just a few projects we attracted to these communities in the last three years alone which include: Rural Electrification: Duguryel, Sabon Kaura, Badagari/ Kojuldi; Newly Built Schools: Gaso, Yammga, Gongon, Dajin, Magalang, Mbat 1, Mbat 2, Dajin, Gital, Dull, Yola Babpati, Gadan konsur, Kayarda; Renovated Schools: Dull, Batal, Mbat 2; Electrification (Solar Lights): Duguryel, Bununu, Gommadaji; Roads: Ball-YolaNora, Duguryel; Water Project: Ball Solar Borehole (Ongoing), Katsanawa Solar Borehole (Ongoing), Gordin Solar Borehole; An ultra-modern ICT Centre built and fully equipped in Dull; 40 Solar poles for houses in Dull and Renovation of Schools at Gwallarai, Sakani. Lili, Kudadu, Kahel. Fonde, Wuro Shell, Talbel among others.

As a student of democracy and parliamentary studies, I know that the concept of representation has come to acquire different meanings in Nigeria due to our peculiarities where lawmakers come under tremendous pressure from their constituents to provide social amenities such as roads, water supply, healthcare, electricity, schools, skills, scholarships, etc due to absence of state and federal government’s presence in most localities.

It is, however, not enough reason for Nigerians to continuously allow local governments and states to completely and totally abdicate their constitutional responsibilities to the people and heap everything on the shoulders of federal lawmakers who struggle under difficult circumstances to attract projects to their constituencies.

Notwithstanding, the Speaker’s attention has been drawn to the issues raised by Abubakar, even though there can never be enough resources in the hands of lawmakers to solve all of the challenges confronting their people.

Turaki Hassan is the Special Adviser, Media & Public Affairs to Speaker, House of Representatives