BARELY after the first edition of the write-up with the above caption, President Bola Ahmed Tinubu inaugurated a Committee on Strategy, Conflict Resolution, and Mobilisation to resolve conflicts within the All Progressives Congress, APC. He tasked the committee with strengthening party cohesion, resolving lingering disputes, and crafting a unified mobilisation strategy to sustain APC’s dominance at the polls. He deemed it appropriate to appoint Governor Mai Mala Buni as its chairman.
Governor Buni was the first elected national secretary of the APC and served for five years. He left to become the Governor of Yobe State. He was also the Caretaker APC National Chairman and the chairman of its Extraordinary Convention Planning Committee in 2020–2022. It was during his tenure that he “broke” the People’s Democratic Party’s “dam” where he “poached” and “harvested” its governors, National Assembly members, and many other prominent figures for his party, stabilising it for victory in the last elections.
In part one, we discussed his innate desire for peaceful coexistence and how he brought peace and trust to Yobe politics. What we did not mention is his characteristic ability to build bridges and maintain them. He is a man who, by all means, avoids friction and rancour. No two contending parties will sit with him, and one of them would come out grumbling, because he so much believes in fairness and that justice cannot be for one side alone.
Those who know him well say he is cultured. You will never hear him abuse (even in private) or fight any person in the opposition, within his party, or non-aligned, even if that person insulted him. And when any good that is meant for the one who fights him is about to escape from his grasp, Buni would be the first person to force it back to him. That is the extent of his fairness. He is a thoroughbred politician, broad-minded and cosmopolitan, at ease with the locals and their settings, humble and knowledgeable.
No doubt these are qualities the president and influential party stakeholders know that informed the decision to give him the enormous responsibility of strengthening party cohesion, resolving lingering disputes, and crafting a unified mobilisation strategy. With the avalanche of defectors to the APC, including governors and National Assembly members, a level-headed, just, and fair personality like Buni is needed to unite, consolidate, and stabilise the party.
And no doubt it is these qualities, coupled with his respect for human dignity and belief that every individual should have the opportunity to excel, that led him to declare a state of emergency in education, which has seen out-of-school kids mopped off the streets, and secondary school students winning accolades around the globe.
His administration has established six Model Schools, seven Mega Schools, nine Government Girls’ Day Senior Secondary Schools, eight co-educational Government Day Senior Secondary Schools, one additional boys’ school, and an IDP School in Buni-Yadi. Scholarships have also been awarded to nearly 1,000 high-achieving students of both sexes to pursue various fields, including Petroleum Engineering, Medicine, Anaesthesia, Piloting, Aeronautical Engineering, and Pharmacy, both locally and internationally.
In his bid to make the state the nation’s breadbasket, Governor Buni implemented a “Mega Agricultural Empowerment Programme” to transition the state from subsistence farming to mechanised, commercial agriculture. He aims to ensure food security and economic resilience through agribusiness.
In 2024, Vice President Kashim Shettima was in Damaturu, the state capital, to launch the first phase, which targeted over 80,000 farmers and provided 100 tractors, 5,349 small ruminants for women, and over 6,000 other pieces of farm machinery.
And in July last year, the president launched the second phase, during which dozens of tractors, 1,349 hand planters, 8,000 harvesters, 4,000 solar-powered water pumps, and 20,000 bags of subsidised fertiliser were distributed.
Massey Ferguson tractors, power tillers, hand-push planters, multi-purpose threshers, and crop residue crushers were also allocated to various local government areas for distribution to deserving farmers.
In August last year, the governor once again donated feed and inputs to 2,700 pastoralists, providing fodder crushers and motorcycles to boost livestock productivity and reduce herder–farmer conflicts.
His agricultural empowerment policy has encouraged youth to view agriculture as a profitable business, and providing women with goats and feed has empowered many households to boost their incomes.
This has led to lower prices for staple foods through increased farm output, thereby enhancing food security and improving living conditions in the state.
This was reflected in the Nigerian Bureau of Statistics’ July 2025 report, which found that Yobe State is the most affordable place to live in Nigeria.
It said, “Yobe State is Nigeria’s most affordable state to live in, with low costs driven by falling inflation and successful agricultural programmes boosting food security and local markets, making it relatively cheaper for housing and daily living compared to other states, especially around cities like Damaturu and Potiskum, where business thrives, though security improvements are key to sustained affordability.”
But what inspired this piece was Yobe State’s pacesetting achievements in healthcare delivery, which made it emerge as Nigeria’s leading state in Primary Health Care (PHC) and win awards at the 2025 PHC Leadership Challenge Awards held in Abuja late last year.
Primary health care focuses on grassroots healthcare. It clinched the award of Best Performing State in the North-East for the second consecutive year, winning the title in 2024 and 2025, with each award attracting a $500,000 prize, and also emerging as the Overall Best Performing State in Nigeria, securing an additional $700,000, bringing the total prize money earned to $1.2 million. They are a clear indication of Governor Buni’s administration’s sustained investment and reforms in the health sector.
To begin with, Governor Buni has ensured that each of the state’s wards has a functional primary health care outlet maintained round the clock. There was an issue with a primary health care office destroyed by a thunderstorm, and a resident of the area, whom I do not personally know, informed me via WhatsApp, sending me photos. I forwarded them to the governor, and the first thing he asked me, which gave a window into his thinking, was…
To be concluded.
- Dr Gimba, anipr, is the Publisher and Editor-in-Chief of Neptune Prime. His syndicated column, The Arbiter, appears on News Point Nigeria newspaper on Monday.