ISSUES! Leadership Is All About Service To The People

It was the British liberalist, Jeremy Bentham that once thoughtfully opined that, “leadership is all about the greatest good of the greatest number. ”

This thought-provoking humanist quote shall continue to generate interest when analyzing the role and impact of government or policymakers in the affairs of societies. This is especially so in a democracy where multitudes of the people elect leaders to govern and deliver on their manifestoes.

Faced with tough choices of satisfying the pressing and nagging needs of both rural and urban dwellers, political leaders, in the noble thoughts of Bentham, are expected to make policies and programmes geared toward fostering as much wellbeing for as many people as possible.

As a son of a peasant farmer, growing up and traveling from Shafini to the urban areas either for education aspirations or commerce wasn’t a tea party for us. The road we ply wasn’t anything to right home about. Our plight was next to zero rural access road, this was as a result of total neglect by the government despite our people being active voters since the return of democracy in 1999.

The excruciating hardship that has been experienced by our people while traveling in and out of Shafini is better imagine. There are instances during raining seasons where we are cut off completely from traveling out as a result of heavy downpour.

Our people often resort to improvisation by constructing wooden locally made bridge to temporary ease movement. This is the difficult situation as a people we have been passing through for years. In some extreme difficult situations we are often compelled to disembark from our vehicles to push our cars and lorries out of mud or to reduce the heavy load of the vehicles to enable them make it across.

However, it seem our years of suffering is gradually coming to the end as our community is presently benefiting from the construction of 48km Felegi-Shafini-Tungan Jika rural access road with a brand new bridge. With this development, I sincerely believe that the 6 hours it normally took us to make a journey of an hour or less will be history.

As a direct beneficiary, while commending the effort of Gov. Abu Lolo for remembering our neglected areas to be worthy of a rural access road, it is our hope that quality will not be compromised. We shall continue to demand for more from our leaders and pray for them to deliver on their mandates.

Now when I hear people chanting Lolo is working, I will join in reechoing it.

©️ Abubakar Musa Shafini and wrote from Shafini.