If I Were Governor Radda, Funtua Wouldn’’t Be This ‘Beautiful’! -By Ismail Misbahu

If I were him, Funtua would be an example, not a source of flimsy fanfares. The beauty that defies qualities and attracts popular votes, registers victories and scores egos from the mass yet pliable peasantry, is like clothing a corpse with a well-tailored Asuwaju blue coloured peak lapel suit than the normal white Kaffan. The president used this suit in May this year while attending the Pope Leo XIV’s inauguration in Rome, Italy, and was looking very spruce and stylish, leaving many talking about his cute appearance and sense of fashion more than his quality leadership and delivery.

Radda’s cute appearance and sense of fashion in Funtua is unmistakable and cannot be any better. I have no valid evidence to suggest that the ongoing N20Billion groundbreaking road dualization project in Funtua is an opportunity to accumulate rather than deliver public goods. But I would say this: towns or local government areas like Funtua and its sisters such as Bakori, Malumfashi, Faskari etc as well as others in the states hit hard by insecurity in the North, do not necessarily need this type of urban renewal.

What they simply need is security-oriented town planning that will support deurbanization—a population turnaround basically of the suburban environs where insecurity is reaching a heaven for cleansing. This will facilitate resettlement efforts while a robust town-cantered urban renewal and expansion is hitting a new ground. It is not a big deal; it is that Funtua needs a systematic enhancement of a physical planning framework that will guide a less sprawling in-town expansion, with feeder roads to be dotted with protective otherwise intelligent street lighting that should not only be installed along the town’s diametric lines—of Zaria-Sokoto primary road networks. New and rapidly expanding residential areas along the western (Sokoto) and eastern (Bakori) diversions and indeed all across the township settlements, need to be secured with street coal-tar, proper sewage systems, reliable access to potable water, in-town police substations or precincts, sidewalks, parks, and more school buildings; wireless computer centres for primary and secondary schools, public libraries etcetera. “The foundational effort to improve urban connectivity and facilitate trade and business opportunities” which the Governor claimed to have resulted from this project should first have an impact on the resident population.

According to a reliable source, the renewal budget of Sokoto Road covering 5.9 kilometres is set at N12.8 billion and that of the Tsohuwar-Kasuwa-Funtua road, covering 1.2 Kilometre at N637 million. These can be more realistic if priorities were to be given to the more genuine access-driven secondary roads that linked the towns primary ones, as opposed to a linear ribbon development that acutely restricted to a marginal growth of primary roadsides, more often for political gains. The concept of Funtua’s urban renewal and its land reused policies were, as designed in the 1978 older concept of Max Lock, originally based on a holistic town’s expansion. Dual carriage road—with a physical divider separating traffic flowing in opposite directions—is applied mostly to state capitals. But where this is meant to link other states or capitals, the start up point—if happens to be a local government area like Funtua, which located at the cross-junctions of many towns and cities—should consider dualizing the diversionaries and in the case of Funtua, a focus on the town’s eastern (Bakori) and Western (Sokoto) bypasses. In this case, the Funtua-Katsina dual carriageway spanning 3.9 kilometres and worth N5.8billion can be more realistic if it considers dualizing the eastern (Bakori) bypass as this will ease traffic flow of vehicles more than the jamming-up of the already congested central market road currently under dualization.

Hitting private and public buildings, despite the size of compensation given, I am afraid, is simply anti-transparent and counter-productive as much as this would attract popular political fanfares and muzzle critics and genuine opinions. To some extent, it may be a cover ‘to steal and sleep’, perfecting the grand official impunity and professional laundering that represent the highest stage of corruption a servant leader would not want to attain! As a leader and administrator with proven expertise in rural agriculture and sociology, a private sector proficient and a community philanthropist, the Governor should not let all these be lost on him. Neither should these get lost on his contractor, the MotherCat nor his serving Commissioner of Works, Housing and Transport, Engr. Sani Magaji Ingawa. For servant leadership allows leaders, contractors and consultants to swallow their interests while submitting themselves to the larger public ones.

Acknowledged to have existed, the Governor’s initiation of Community Watch and programs like BESDA and AGILE to boost better education service delivery, should be more than just ‘symbols of ambitious leadership.’ They should be practical, flexible and adaptable to local needs and aspirations. The Community Watch, which his Chief Press Secretary claimed to have composed a number of “1,466 well-trained and equipped personnel” should be enriched in both leadership command and orientation, as well as assume a community Police status with substations in-and-around the state central townships including the new residential settlements. The threats to security of lives and properties at the margins of Funtua town is emotionally unbearable.

Of course, no one suggest that the Governor must follow the old town’s planning framework of Max Lock or its recent 2011 Review carried out by a Kano-based Multy-System Group Company. These two frameworks if consulted and reviewed, would however provide a more meaningful guides to the town urban renewal project, whichever direction it is set to be pursued. The maximum time-frame stipulated in these frameworks for Funtua urban renewal is 2030 subjects to a five-year review of the town’s physical planning structure. A sincere and responsible leadership at federal, state or local level, should not take this for granted. Like the old master plan, the 2011 Review also included in its provision the 1978 Land Use Act (Section 3 of Katsina State Designation of Land in Urban Area Order 1998). This Act, in a clear agreement with the two master plans, defines Funtua as “an area falling within a fifteen-kilometre radius from the town centre.”

The total area covered by this 15-kilometre radius is about 35.000 hectares which is far greater than the present built-up area of the town and is not likely to be exceeded by 2030 in any direction. It suggests a relief for the major roads to Katsina and towards Sokoto—Zaria roads and emphasises instead on the expansion of the 15-kilometre distance from the town centre, which since 1991, had reached as far as Bakori town in the east along Katsina road, and to Mairuwa on the Sokoto road. A greater part of Bakori local government, the Act maintains, had already fallen under the 15-kilometre radius designed for Funtua town. No doubt that the eastern part of the Funtua urban land area, that is, the Dutsen Reme settlement, fell into Bakori Local Government as far back as 1991.

The point is that, regardless of this artificial designation of land boundaries, the Act as well as the two master plans, were very instructive on the need to expand the town with proper residential land allocation at the surrounding environs along the eastern and western bypasses. They expressed a desire for resettlement, re-urbanization and growth.

This therefore should be expected not overlooked; it is what should be attempted not to pick the card of compensation and score flimsy fanfares, from a population already fed with confusion and insecurity.

Truth be told, Your Excellency!

Ismail, from Funtua wrote from Abuja.
Ismailmusbahu15@gmail.com