Mohammed: We’re Putting Abuja on the Path of Economic Viability
Nigerian politics is full of dissenters and disparagers, people who would stop at nothing to portray their opponents’ or predecessors’ works as worthless. With the country on the cusp between the administration of President Goodluck Jonathan and that of P
On his social and family background.
I was born in October 1958 in Alkaleri local government to an old headmaster who later became a District Head, Mallam Yusuf, and my mother is also of the royal family of Akaleri. I had my primary school in Duguri from 1965 to 1971, then my secondary school in Bauchi from 1972 to 76. I attended the Northeast College of Arts and Science in Maiduguri between 1977 and 1978. I enrolled at the newly established University of Maiduguri and came out with a degree in English in 1982. I worked as a journalist, even during my NYSC in Jos with the Mirage Newspaper and I was the News Editor. I later worked for the News Agency of Nigeria – I had a little stint with them. Thereafter, I joined the Democrat Newspapers, when it came out with a large tabloid based in Kaduna. I was their reporter in Markudi. Thereafter, because of the turbulence in the system after the coup, I joined the Federal Civil Service in 1984 as an Administrative Officer Grade 8. I rose to the position of a Director in the Nigerian Metrological Agency and retired in 2006 to join politics and I became elected as a Senator representing Bauchi South Senatorial District in 2007. I served for three years before I was appointed as Minister of the Federal Capital Territory by His Excellency, Dr Goodluck Ebele Jonathan, in April 2010. Up to this moment I have been serving as a minister.
I come from a much disciplined polygamous household. You hardly knew who your mother was until you grew and was come of age. I was very close to my dad, even though, we were in the village, because of our exposure in the city up to the university level. I must come back to the village, my father was the district head and I liked the discipline he had taught us and because we are from an elitist family. He was a headmaster since 1935 and later became a chief and my eldest brother was the first graduate in Bauchi province; my first cousin, Brigadier Ibrahim Bako, was the first General from Bauchi.
We had the privilege of mixing with the elite of those days and, of course, our parents made sure we became very humble, dedicated and compete among ourselves because we were many in the polygamous house. Our closeness to our mothers is such that you are always brought up under the tutelage of another wife who is not your mother so as to create unity in the polygamous house. Unlike today, where a child is born and then he knows his mother, we hardly knew our mothers until we grew up. I was very close to my foster mother, even though my mother was in the house and later on I discovered whom my mother was and we became very intimate. The closeness with my father was so much because he became role model elite and lived as somebody of those days who lived an upright life.
He was relatively affluent and I saw him take care of all the other members of his family, which is very large. In fact, I learnt a lot from him and that informed my behaviour towards family life, communal life, and, of course, my posture on citizenship.
I was a very timid, not too forward and not given to social life. I was more inclined to reading my books and always trying to remember the stories of my stepmother, and so on and so forth. Of course, we didn’t have so much of socialisation or social life when we were growing up. But certainly, I got married after I graduated in 1982 and I have about 10 children. Thereafter, I married my second wife with whom I have another five children.
My first wife was first betrothed to me by my grandmother, because we were related. She did not go to school and I went to school. I said, no, we were incompatible. But later I discovered she was very intelligent and loved so much with passion and so I put her in school. Today she is a graduate and, of course, having come from similar background and almost the same parents – some people find it difficult to understand this is our culture in this part of the country – we had a very good family and we worked very hard together even when I was a civil servant. I had challenges here and there, I had no problems remembering that back home there were challenges of matrimony, of expectations unmet, and so on and so forth. She was always by my side and very grateful, showing a lot of gratitude and concern, and our children grew up. She was even washing my clothes and when it comes to cooking we had no means of taking house helps, she was doing everything.
That is why we are so intimate today and whatever I become I will always wish her to be by my side because I must reciprocate that immense love that she has shown me and, in fact, all the children. Even if she had a hard time going to school, even though she did not even go to primary school, she can communicate in English, she has a degree in Public Administration and she even wants to go further.
There is no friction because of envy and what have you. Initially, when we were living together in one house, there was no friction. I became a senator, I got another house. I ended up having two families. It is a family life that I don’t want to discuss. Of course, polygamy is good but it causes a lot of hiccups here and there and, of course, you have to be very patient. I see it as a personal thing that need not be explained too much.
I had never thought I will become a politician, even though I come from a political family. My uncle, who was the immediate elder brother of my dad and king of Duguri, was the representative of the Bauchi Province in the erstwhile Northern Nigerian Council of Chiefs. My father, I was told, before I was born was an independent candidate in the NPC and he had a lot of courage because he wanted to go to the House of Reps. I come from a political and a royal family at the same time and an elitist family. But I have always had one thing behind my mind, our father has always taught us that we are not rich even though we are okay and well to do, we should always cling to education, that we should make sure we earn a career of honesty and sincerity and we shouldn’t be given to own idealism, selfishness and, of course, materialism, and he taught us to be civil servants.
I have always aspired to become a permanent secretary in the Federal Civil Service, that is the highest and I must be grateful to God I became a Director in the Federal Service before I retired and joined politics. I had always wanted to become a public servant, but now that I became a politician, I discovered that I wouldn’t have known much if I had not come to this big school called politics. You meet people, it is so exciting, especially, if you are going for campaign. Even to choose a party, you look at people, people will deceive you and delude you, they will make you look like a fool even if you are so wise and if you show them you are wise you will not win the election.
Politics has taught me many things and it has exposed me to many people I wouldn’t have known if I had become the Heard of Service. For example, my mentor today is from the South-south, the President of the Federal Republic of Nigeria whom I hardly knew before and we hardly had anything in common. But you can see the kind of position he gave me out of nationalism and statesmanship. Politics is a universal classroom where you meet people and learn so many things. So much arts and science of living and you cultivate those sensibilities and those qualities that you will never learn in a classroom.
I don’t regret joining politics. But one thing I know politics will do to you, especially, if you succeed the way I have succeeded, with all humility, is for you to lose your independence and privacy. That is the kind of thing we are going through. But to summarise, I believe politics has been very good to me and I am happy managing my public career as a civil servant, a journalist and, as of today, as a politician. I have three constituencies. I know people across board and I am proud to say there is no where I can go in this country that I don’t have a friend and there is hardly any state you will go and mention me and I will not get one or two hundred people that know me. I am very grateful to God, to politics and to my mentors in politics, especially, those who exposed me, first, the governor of Bauchi State, who insisted that we should go into politics together, which culminated in my becoming a senator and even knowing people like the President and Command-in-Chief, Dr Goodluck Ebele Jonathan.
It is so instructive that at a point when I was a Special Assistant to the Minister of Aviation, Mallam Isa Yuguda, and he wanted to go into politics, I came back to be a civil servant. But he insisted I