From Salisu Zakari Maradun, Gusau
Constituents of Zamfara central senatorial zone have voiced their concerns over what they described as inadequate representation by the senator of their zone, Sen Ikra Bilbis.
Speaking to our correspondent in respect of the activities of the current senator representing Zamfara central senatorial zone, Alh. Aliyu Ikra Bilbis, a politician in Tsafe town, Alhaji Kabiru Sodangi said “Since this man went to the Senate, he completely abandoned us. Infact, his predecessor was 100 times better than him. He shared things with us and he is a good resourceful person who during his stay at the upper chambers cared much on anything to do with us”.
According to him, Ikra has betrayed not only tsafe where he hails from, but the entire zone of four local governments as all of them are complaining the same thing tsafe complains.
He explained that since Ikra stepped into the senate he changed his cellphone lines to avoid people and did not come back to the state until after about five months from the day he was inaugurated as elected senator.
Kabiru, a 72 year old who said he has been an active politician right from Shagari’s administration in1979, also disclosed that they decided to go for Ikra in the February 2023 presidential and national assembly elections thinking that he would perform better than the former, senator Kabiru Marafa but unfortunately, and to their dismay, he disappointed them and the zone.
“We did not know that this is the way he would behave, we would not have gone for him because we now realize the importance of Kabiru Marafa, a person that got our teeming youths employments, a person that was always helping us and was always listening to the people with whose mandates he was at the senate.
“During the stay of Marafa at the senate, our people benefitted much in all the programs of the government at the federal level, and he made sure that Zamfara was heard during any session and was one of the fearless and educated senators and we were, and still are proud of him and that is why I said we regret taking his successor to that place because he does nothing infact we became his enemies,” he added.
Commenting further, the septugenarian politician also stated that Zamfara central was not luckily with their current senators. “When he came out for the race, we all unanimously sympathized with him going by his past record. He came down to our levels, lobbying for our nods to him which we sympathetically agreed that he should be voted for, and now this is the reward of what we did for him as we became nothing to him as he embarked on creating new friends and masters from outside the state.
This is a senator that even if he comes to the state nobody from this town will have the information of his arrival, we will only hear it through other channels that the senator is in the state, and he had never stayed in Tsafe longer than two hours since he took over form Marafa, which was not the case before he went.
Like I regrettably said earlier, Kabiru Marafa has never ran away from us or switched off his lines to avoid us,” he revealed.
In the area of welfare, the politician said there was nothing tangible as far as welfare is concerned, adding that,” I can tell you what other leaders did at their respective places but there is nothing I can say about Ikra in this area, because I did not see or hear anything of that nature to us here apart from his first palliative of two measures of rice to some people about five months ago. He said,”this is what is called “hit and run” and that era of hit and run has gone, perhaps the senator did not know that. That era has gone, but he will know very soon,” he concluded.
