Makoda: A Rare Gatekeeper -By Abdulyassar Abdulhamid

As a gatekeeper, if he were a journalist he would have been in the newsroom ferreting for errors or inserting his voice to strengthen news stories.

By now he would have been nursing bruises he had sustained from kicks by those who wanted to get published at all costs. 

To be a gatekeeper in a newspaper is house to be the guardian of the reputation and the integrity of the newspaper. 

He is a politician. In politics, the art of gatekeeping is more time-consuming, challenging and demanding than in journalism. It is a self-searching journey.

For every government to be successful, it requires someone, a shock absorber, to keep the system working, to safeguard it, to set up guardrails, to check and balance, and weed away unwanted political parasites, whose ambition is to either sabotage or fleece the treasury at the expense of the public. 

A gatekeeper in a democratically elected government equates a Chief Security Officer to the Head of State in a military dictatorship. He simply takes the bullet for his boss and, to use Mohammed Adamu’s words, he is always “assailed by treacherous political insiders” and the opposition elements.

And to serve under Governor Dr. Abdullahi Umar Ganduje, a governor that can walk miles to inspect projects and oftentimes dead in the night; and whose slogan is “Aiki Aiki” is to work one’s fingers to the bone. 

Alhaji Ali Abubakar Haruna Makoda has weathered both. He is determined, cool-headed and foresighted.

No wonder! He was crowned with Gwani (expert) of the Glorious Qur’an alongside scores of others by Gwani Dan-Zarga Tsangaya a few years back.

A business administrator by training, Alhaji Ali Abubakar Haruna Makoda, the Chief of Staff to Governor Dr. Abdullahi Umar Ganduje of Kano State was born in Makoda in 1966. 

He was at Senior Science Secondary School Dawakin Tofa in 1980s before moving to Bayero University, Kano, where he earned B.A. degree in Library Science & Information Science/Political Science in 2003.

In 2006 he was back at the prestigious Bayero University, Kano, where he bagged Masters of Business Administration. 

Starting as an administrator at the University of Maiduguri where he rose to a board member of the university’s teaching hospital, Alhaji Ali Abubakar Makoda is a grass-roots politician.

Makoda was the one time state secretary of the People’s Democratic Party (PDP) and two-term local government chairman of Makoda Local Government Council.

In 2014, he was appointed Special Adviser on Metropolitan Affairs to the then governor of Kano State Dr. Rabiu Musa Kwankwaso.

In 2015, he was appointed commissioner, Kano State Ministry of Environment by Governor Dr. Abdullahi Umar Ganduje, a position he held up to 2019.

Makoda’s elevation to the enviable position of the Chief of Staff to Governor Abdullahi Umar Ganduje in 2019 marked a turning point in his political career. It is a covert attestation to his fierce loyalty, hard work and an unusual attention to details.

Ditto an appreciation of the unprecedented transformation he had brought to the environment ministry as testified by his high sense of purpose and commitment to duty.

During his reign as the commissioner of environment, the ministry gathered momentum. Routine environmental sanitation was entrenched and the level of compliance was very high.

Thanks to Governor Abdulllahi Umar Ganduje who introduced the programme Urban Renewal Project for “Kano Kal-kal”, aimed at keeping the state clean through regular sanitation and dredging of drainages across the state to prevent flooding. 

Under the programme, 500 youth were trained in waste collection and employed as waste collectors and a number of garbage trucks purchased to collect garbage from all the nooks and crannies of the state and transport it to garbage treatment facilities. 

Makoda has headed the bureaucracy of the Government House, Kano, for the last one and a half years. Besides, his temperament is a typical example of what “textbooks of master-servant relationship recommend”.

He sums up the perfect picture of the relationship that exists between Robinson Crusoe and “Man Friday”, (fidelity personified) in Daniel Defoe’s novel, Robinson Crusoe.

His proven track records, vast experience in administration, respect and unwavering loyalty earned him the post.

When family and well-wishers from Makoda Local Government Area trooped to Government House, Kano, in August last year to thank the governor for appointing their son  as his chief of staff, Governor Abdulllahi Umar Ganduje’s reply was succinct and to the point: “He is trustworthy”. 

It is a value-laden statement and the governor had one thing in mind: Makoda is a safe pair of hands. He is always as good as his words and his commitment to the success of the governor’s administration is unrelenting. He is also instrumental to the numerous successes the administration has recorded in the last five years.

To use President Buhari’s words, “working without fail, seven days each and every week”, Alhaji Ali Abubakar Makoda has demonstrated, in person and practice, that his desire is to give his best for the greater good of the people of Kano State. 

One would always see him quietly shuttling, forth and back, the corridor leading to the governor’s office with a bundle of files clung to his chest.

However, at the time when some people restrict their understanding of Makoda to only a politician of repute, it is instructive to know that he is a philanthropist as well.

His gatekeeping post has never diverted his attention from his main goals: youth empowerment and societal development. He has made commitments to encourage young people to take charge of their lives.

In these, he has invested so much that one hardly finds a town or village in Makoda Local Government Areawhere his philanthropic activities have not traversed. 

From Makoda Gari at one end across Koguna, from Jibga to Maitsidau; from Wailare to Kadandami and from Durma to the swathes of Babar Riga are Islamiyya schools he has either constructed or rehabilitated and a number of students from less-privileged families he has sponsored or youth and women he has empowered.

His belief is that when education opens the door to success where none seems to exist, human development, by expanding the richness of human life, holds the key.   

When I recently asked an inhabitant of one of the major towns in Makoda Local Government Area of the political influence of this administrator/philanthropist par excellence, he said: “The history of Makoda political maturity is the history of the political rise of Alhaji Ali Abubakar Haruna Makoda’. 

“He is everyone’s favorite in the Makoda political establishment. He wields enormous influence in Makoda politics owing to the selfless service he has rendered to the citizenry.”

Of recent, in Nigeria there has been a heated argument on what the work of a chief of staff exactly is. Anyway Alhaji Ali Abubakar Haruna Makoda is charting his own path and by doing so he is teaching the world how to best do the job.

Abdulhamid wrote via abdullahiyassar2013@gmail.com