By; MOHAMMED KAWU, Bauchi
A paramount traditional ruler of Northern extraction, Dr. Abbas Njidda Tafida has described the Nigerian President and state governors as the top most scientists of the country, with whom the followers largely depend upon for survival.
As the high ranking scientists, he argued, the president and governors must make efforts to observe factors of nature, factors surrounding them, look at issues before them, and ask themselves what are the answers, what do the people need and what are the things to do to solve the country’s problems.
According to him, the first point to be raised is science, which is mainly observation, assessment and problem solving instincts, and that is effectively the job of leadership.
Dr. Abba Tafida who is the paramount ruler of Muri Emirate in Taraba State, noted with concerns that the country’s leaders are spending too much time and money on pomp and prestige, instead of meditating and taking time to look at the country’s problems as they are.
The Muri Emir in a paper to the recent Animal Scientists Annual Conference held in Bauchi, said “however, that our professors though good, are useless” as, according to him, they only translate the decisions they made to reality while dumping researches aside.
He explained, “I call the Deacon professors, very big man sitting behind a beautiful pick-up vehicle asking for everything on earth before he can carry out his research.
“But if we already have enough, what are we going to research. We are researching because the resources are not enough. Your research is supposed to contribute to the development of the resources, and therefore you must limit what you need to do your research”.
The monarch therefore, counseled that knowledge must be humble and leaders must show patience, concern and must see themselves as mothers holding young babies, hence the need to observe those babies critically.
The emir added, “When those babies have malaria, they cannot speak, we (leaders) are the people to observe and discover that they have paraplegia and take them to the hospital. So that is the job of our Governors that could give them 100 percent support of their followers”.
“When participants in all spheres of life work hard to determine the best course of an action to serve national interest, it will be very easy if our leaders also make their own observations and become source of ideas and recommendations. The two will easily come together”, emir positioned.
“We have a beautiful Nigeria; we cannot create another one. The only way out is for all of us to be scientists. Being a scientist first of all means a clean act and intention to solve problems, and all our leaders must endeavor to become scientist”.
This, the emir stated, means that the leaders must be people with clean hands, people committed to solving problems, people committed to answering the question of the last man, not only the question of the big people, and “if that is done, we may have to win election because every governor that comes is thus that, we would love him forever and we will ask him not to go for election”.
Dr. Abbas Njidda Tafida therefore debunked the idea the British and other colonial masters left to Nigerians that science is the responsibility of selected few in very big offices with very big pick-ups vehicles and fat government salaries as wrong.
The Muri Monarch, also an animal scientist, therefore defined science as an honest effort by everybody who has the opportunity to study nature, observe nature and come up with ideas that would create opportunities or remove impediments to opportunities.
