Another fine Tukur is gone, By EMMANUEL YAWE

I came to know and work with the Tukurs closely in 1983 when the patriarch of the family got elected as Governor of Gongola State.

The relationship ought to have started earlier because I was in Yola the Gongola State capital when he returned from Lagos where he had served as the Chief Executive of Nigerian Ports Authority for years to contest elections for the gubernatorial office of the state. I was then an editorial staff of News Agency of Nigeria. Soon after his return, the New Nigerian Newspapers offered me a better job. To Kaduna I went.


There, I accidently met Engineer Hamman Adama Tukur, his junior brother who was the Rector of Kaduna Polytechnic. I was then young, a bit careless and coming from the first and best university in Nigeria at Ibadan I think my brain was still sharp. I proceeded to interview him without a notebook or recorder. Then I rushed to the office and immediately wrote a perfect story out of the interview. It made the front page of the Sunday New Nigerian for the week as a big lead story.

A few weeks after, the same Rector was looking for a reporter at the New Nigerian to interview his senior brother Bamanga Tukur who was then in the heat of campaign for the gubernatorial race. He approached Abba Dabo my Editor who assigned me for the interview. By the time we met, he was shocked but pleased that I was the one to do the story. He cracked jokes calling me “dan iska”, the rascal, who published a perfect story out of an unrecorded interview.


He arranged my meeting and interviewing Bamanga in Yola.I did the Bamanga interview and it was published. Later my Editor assigned me to do a political supplement on Gongola state, sponsored by the NPN, Bamanga Tukur’s political party which I did.


Then all hell was unleashed against me. Rumours, accusing me of corruption and other unprofessional conduct were circulated at the New Nigerian. I didn’t know what was going on and continued doing my job without let. But the New Nigerian management took the unsubstantiated accusations very seriously and set up a panel to probe me. It was only at this stage that a friend who knew about the whole drama and also that I was innocent broke the whole scandal to me. I was mad and confronted my Editor.


The investigation was a fiasco. There was no truth in the allegations against me whatsoever. The panel did not even invite me to testify. They only invited people they expected to implicate me. Strangely, all of them testified in my favour.


Hamman Tukur felt pained that I was being victimized. He later told me I was a victim of high wired politicking in the Northern circle of the ruling NPN who didn’t want Bamanga to win the gubernatorial race for their party in Gongola in 1983.


Dr Raymond Dokpesi, the Director General of the Bamanga Tukur Campaign Organisation sent a message that I should leave my job at the New Nigerian and join the campaign team. I stayed on at the New Nigerian regardless.


When Bamanga Tukur won the election, Dr. Raymond Dokpesi sent a ticket for me to come to Yola immediately. I met him in Yola and he sent me to meet Mr David Barau the Deputy Governor elect. Bamanga Tukur himself was out of the country. David gave me an assignment to draft a speech which he was going to deliver in a short while. I did the draft and submitted it to him within a few minutes. He couldn’t believe what I gave him. Years later, he told me my handwriting was so beautiful he wanted to “eat it”; then the contents of the draft were just super.


Dr Raymond Dokpesi and David Barau insisted I was to be appointed Bamanga Tukur’s Chief Press Secretary in 1983. Engineer Hamman Tukur also took a flight from Kaduna sorely to come and insist that his senior brother Bamanga appointed me his Chief Press Secretary. Dr Raymond Dokpesi signed my letter of appointment, a weather-beaten piece of paper which I still keep and cherish today.


Hamman kept a distance from the government of Bamanga Tukur for the three months we were in office. But Mahmud came around a few times to advise and encourage us. It was a role he was eminently qualified for as a the first indigenous director of Institute of Administration in Congo Zaria, who took over from Professor S. S Richardson he is reported to have been responsible for training the fine crop of northern civil servants that inherited the colonial service.


The only problem was his decision to serve as General Muhammadu Buharis Minister for Commerce and Industry when the military toppled our government in 1984. As a result of that coup, Bamanga was imprisoned at Kiriki maximum prison. Those of us who worked for Bamanga felt some unease as he served as a top flight Minister in a government that imprisoned his senior brother without cause nor charge. But the big heart in Bamanga ensured that what would have remained a permanent crack in most families was forgotten and also forgiven.


A few days ago, I went to see Bamanga to commiserate with him over the death of Dr Mahmud. He was still the same good old Bamanga of our Gongola days – cheerful, friendly and full of vitality even at 85. He was only sad that the relationship between the Tiv and the Fulani has degenerated to the extent that all he hears is about the wild allegations of Governor Ortom of Benue against the Fulani. Why did he go through all the problems he did in his days as governor to appoint Dr Samuel Agbide a Cabinet Commissioner, the first and only Tiv Commissioner in Gongola State and me his Chief Press Secretary if the Tiv and Fulani are implacable enemies? He kept asking.


But standards have fallen between 1983 and today. Mendacious politicians like Samuel Ortom have taken the stage, keep feeding their unsuspecting followers with out and out lies to maintain their strangle hold on their followers. In Benue, they have created a security nightmare which they keep blaming on the Fulanis even when the facts on the ground say otherwise. Is it the Fulanis that created the self-confessed outlaw, armed robber, ritualist and terrorist, gave him (a stark illiterate) a senior position in Ortoms government? But in his tirades against the Fulani Ortom will never mention the role of Gana and his henchmen who have remained a security scare to the state even after Ganas death.


As we left, Bamanga Tukur, the one-time Governor of Gongola State kept staring at us with the eyes of a doting father. Since we served in his government, he has become a Minister of Industries, a promominent global industrialist, world renowned business mogul and National Chairman of the PDP. And yet this is a man who played a very immodest role in bringing th Fulani and Tiv together. Today he is ignored by a Fulani President (Buhari) and a Tiv governor (Ortom) even as the orchestrated conflict between the Fulani and Tiv threaten the security of Benue and Nigeria.

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