Education: Tambuwal’s Harvest of Awards and Laurels -By Ahmad Muhammad Danyaro

Democracy is the most excellent and viable system in polity appraisal. This is more glaring when viewed from the point of federation unity. As a basic requirement for growth and development, democracy has been inherent capacity to carry along with it, while accommodating different shades of opinions and inputs in terms of contributions of ideas for the achievement of desired goals.
Thomas Mann once declared that ‘the destiny of man presents is meaning in political terms‘. That is to say, in our contemporary experience, it is difficult to make clear separations or distinctions between the politics of life and the life of politics. Once again, Governor Aminu Waziri Tambuwal add yet another cap to his feather as Tribune Newspaper bestows on him with a platinum award as of “Touch bearer of educational development”.

The former Speaker of House of Representatives, Governor Waziri is a man of his words and amazingly bold: he means every word he says and goes for it. His statements are never taken for granted as are astonishingly translated into action for the good of the people. Earlier in the life of the administration, Tambuwal identified the mindset of the human element as material in the building of the Sokotro State of his dream. The new Sokoto paradigm is properly articulated re-orientation initiative, aimed at preparing the people to face the challenges of the new thinking consistent with the government’s renewal agenda. In Sokoto today he has secured an orientation shift that promotes “business unusual” policy as a veritable platform to build a state as envisioned by Governor Aminu Waziri Tambuwal. After the May 29 2019 second term inauguration of President and State governors across the federation, Tambuwal was the first in the federation that constituted his cabinet and made key appointments. Undoubtedly, he was in a haste to take Sokoto to a greater height.

Often times, our human inhibitions tend to makes us think that real leaders are mortals with messianic mission. That perception or thinking is totally flawed as our daily experience demonstrates that real leaders are just ordinary people with extra ordinary amount of determination. However, Aminu Waziri Tambuwal so stands on a different pedestal as he added another feather to his cap when he bagged an award from Nigerian Tribune Newspaper “Platinum Touch Bearer of Educational Development” at the occasion of the Newspaper’s 70th anniversary in Lagos.
Against this backdrop, Sokoto State Government under the leadership of Governor Aminu Waziri Tambuwal mad has been aggressively been pursuing a well-articulated vision of aspiring to be a leading a Nigerian state with prosperous, healthy and well educated citizens living in harmony with people and nature and pursuing their legitimate interests in freedom moderated by good governance. Explicit in this unique vision is a proven roadmap of where we are, where we want to be and how to get there. His administration places very high premium on education and skills development as education is pivotal to human capital development.

Considering the fact that no state would develop without quality education, because educated citizens are rationale pillars and promoters of development. The Tambuwal administration put in place machineries to overhaul the state education system and concentrated on the reconstruction of dilapidated public primary and secondary schools across the state. His government declared a state of emergency in the sector and improved the welfare of teachers and non-teaching staff. It also adopted a strategy of enhancing the effectiveness and efficiency of stae-owned tertiary institutions.

Tambuwal has established himself as an education governor having consistently allocated more than 27% per cent of Sokoto State budget to the education sector since he assumed the saddle of leadership in 2015.Sokoto State became the first state in Nigeria to introduce the “Right to Education” bill, which provides for free and compulsory education, to be paid by public coffers, for all children ages six and eighteen and criminalizes refusal to send children to school, and parents will be liable to criminal prosecution if they stop their children from attending school.
Waziri wiped the shame of the people of Gudu Local government area by building a secondary school in the council and taking it off the derogatory map of the only council without a secondary school in Nigeria. This is apart from renovating 1,500 primary schools, 180 junior secondary schools and 200 senior secondary schools among others.

There is no doubt that many aspects of development by individuals and nations have been fired and propelled by vision which is regarded as an indispensable ingredient and catalyst in the dynamics of human existence. This is why Woodrow Wilson once emphasized that “no one that does not see vision will ever realize any high hope or undertake any high enterprise”, a pragmatic statement reinforced by that of Ralph Waldo Emerson who said, “Where there is no vision, a people perish”.

Until recently, not much was known about Sokoto’s huge investment in the information and communication technology (ICT) sector. The vision of the e-government is the optimization of services so that government can achieve its goals. When Governor Tambuwal took over the mantle of leadership in May 2015, he outlined the “Government ICT Strategy” which aimed to ensure that, in a dynamic technology environment’s plan of an INCT –enabled transformation of public services of the state. The ICT Strategy provided an opportunity of benefitting from several emerging game-changing trends that support better public citizens and public institutions at the centre of design and delivery of digital services.

The matawallen Sokoto is no stranger to awards and recognition to his hard work. He has last month recieve the Special Award on Good Governance from Bisi Olatilo Show Just before after the Tribune Award and at the last weekend bagged Nigeria Union of Journalist (NUJ) Kaduna State Council Award for “Best Performing Governor on Youth and Women Empowerment”. Just last year he many awards among which are Business Day Newspaper “Icons of Good Governance ”, Vanguard Newspaper “Governor of the Year” among several others.

Governor AWT quick start clearly shows great sense responsibility, exceptional courage, the sincerity of purpose and diligent service to Sokoto and humanity which distinguished him as a worthy icon of rare breed whose been etched permanently in the annals of creative and legendary leaderships. There is no doubt that his legacies shall remain an eternal source of inspiration for many generations to come.

Danyaro writes Abuja and could be reached on ahmaddanyaro2017@gmail.com