Time it was when the Lunguda people of especially Adamawa state had cause to show pride in one of their sons, the erudite senator Jonathan Zwingina. They sang it and danced it and the music and the dance steps reverberated beyond the shores of the land. Senator Zwingina’s fame snowballed from the state to the national levels with international trappings. The Lunguda people continued to dance and sing with self-satisfaction and a huge expectation of a bountiful harvest of dividends from an obvious promising son. It never came. The flames burned out leaving behind a tale of woes and despair. It is like a well fed bull released for a fight but suddenly turned round with its menacing horns and strength to devour its master.
The turned around of the bull tendency manifested earlier during the days of the MAMSER campaigns where Senator Zwingina was the state Director. On a visit to his home local government Guyuk, the MAMSER boss picked the gauntlet with the chairman of his council area for failing to receive him at Kilometre 3 as the MAMSER Boss. Although this created ill feelings within the community, it was overlooked and the MAMSER boss was later to be given an overwhelming support to become the senator of the southern Senatorial Zone.
This was in spite of the grudge of the community on what they considered as first sin of their son, that is the unceremonious dissolution of the hitherto Lunguda Development Association (LDA), an association that bound the community together for which the senator was a treasurer. What annoyed the people most was the fact that the community had organized a fund raising from which a substantial amount of Money was realized for itself development? The community was not told the whereabouts of those funds only to be told that LDA was to be substituted with the (LDDA) Lunguda Districts Development Association, an organization unlike the LDA was not purely a Lunguda Association. Proponent of LDDA, senator Zwingina could not sustain the ideals of the union which the community rightly observed smirked off political undertones. The senator wanted to use the new LDDA to cover up the missing funds of the LDA as well appealed to the non-Lungudas for political gains. The people got disenchanted and abandoned the union entirely. Today, the community has no registered platform, thanks to senator Zwingina. But this too, was overlooked on the days of struggle to get the son of the community to the senate.
It was however at the senate that the true colours of their son manifested. It started with the electrification project of the senator who decided to connect his voting village to the national grid. He had three options to get the national grid lines to his village. One, one is to take the line from Guyk via Kurnyi, to Gundenyi and then to Falu his village. The other option was to take the lines from Lokoro to Kawa via Lamza, Walu and Falu. The third option was as the geographers will say “as the crow flies” meaning the lines would go straight from Guyuk to Falu without any village benefiting. To the consternation of the community, the senator took the third option which left out all the neighboring villages. There are allegations that the senator did secure a constituency project to execute a water project amounting to the tune of N200million. Although there is no way the community could verify these allegations as there is no single borehole on ground to attest to it, the allegation itself brought back memories of what the senator did when he was the Commissioner for Water Resources in the Adamawa state. In one of his official tours of local government in the state, the former Military Administrator of the state Group captain Grengory Agboneni visited Guyuk in company of his commissioner of water Resources.
The Administrator observed while inspecting the site of a presidential lodge that Guyuk people lack water and wandered why building a presidential lodge was more desirable. The Administrator therefore scraped the presidential lodge project and directed the Water Resources Commissioner to convert the project to a water one. Senator Zwingina never came back to tell the community what happened to the water project, instead the site of the presidential lodge which was to be used on that water project is now the presidential home of senator Zwingina in Guyuk.
It is not clear if the senator has the original (Co of O) that transferred the plot to him; allegations suggests that he used his position as the senator to cow the local government council into building the place for him.
Needless to say, the water ministry was the senator’s albatross. A senator Wanpana commission which investigated the tenure of the senator as the commissioner of the ministry revealed untamable inconsistencies and the people of the southern senatorial zone would have been saved from the agony of having to send such a son to the senate if a white paper was released in support of the commission’s findings.
Senator Zwingina had his primary school in the present day Guyuk central primary school. During his school days he was often sent out of school for lack of school fees and if his uniforms were worn-out together with many children of the less priviledge families. No denigration is intended here, but to point out that any pupil with such an experience who eventually become a senator will know that many of the children of his home community are still at the level at which he was.
Up to the end of his eight years tenure of the senate, nothing was done to show that the senator cares to look back when friends and relatives contributed to his education.
These and many more things that time and space cannot permit made the people to conclude that their son, the senator, “was more in the mouth” than keeping promises and commitment. It is apparent that senator Zwingina has enjoyed the service cheaply from his community since his elementary school to his senatorial level without commensurate reciprocation. It is also politically immature that after eight years as senator, senator Zwingina does not see the whole of the community as his constituency. He still believes in politics of seclusion where only lackeys who lack the capacity to question what he does are preferred by him.
All of a sudden senator Zwingina left Abuja to Yola to coordinate the campaigns of Right Honourable Ahmadu Umaru Fintiri. The gravevine had it that he took the position to help clear Fintiri before a committee headed by Deputy President of senate, Ibrahim Mantu, a friend to senaroe Zwingina whose responsibilities was to either clear or not to clear Fintiri for the guber race. Others felt that there could be more to do than meet the eye for senator Zwingina who successfully coordinated for a president of the federal Republic of Nigeria Late M.K.O Abiola to all of a sudden descend this low to coordinate for a governor in a state. it has since been found out that Senator Zwingina was not interested in coordinating for Fintiri, but he was coordinating for his senatorial ticket. In any case Fintiri did not need a coordinator in the person of senator Zwingina in order to win an election which he was sure of winning given his acceptance by the people across the state. in fact senator Zwingina was the darkest blemish on the immaculately white political robes of Rt. Honorable Ahmadu Fintiri.
But while Rt. Hon. Ahmadu Fintiri has since accepted that it was a stroke of providence that Madagali will provide the leadership of Adamawa state at these trying moments, he is teaming up as it should be with Governor Bala James Nggilari, the stabilizer, to ensure that Madagali delivers. Rt. Hon. Fintiri is what my people figuratively call Jiswanka, a special arrow for a special game in the near feature. Feelers suggest that instead of visiting governor Nggilari to congratulate him for becoming governor, and also making the senator’s childhood friend Ibrahim Welye the SSG, the senator is said to be involved in complicities that saw to the disintegration PDP as a party in the state.
In desperation, senator Zwingina clinched a senatorial ticket from questionable party primaries which has torn the party apart in his home state Adamawa. Today Senator Zwingina is booed by the youths in Guyuk for wasting eight years as a senator and wonder why he thinks he deserves to be given another chance. Just before the Christmas the senator was on his way to his voting village and decided to take his normal route “as the crows flies” suddenly he realized he realized the road was washed away by the rains and a rivulet which will not cost a serious senator half a million to construct a culvert across prevented him from continuing his journey. The locals booed and showed him an alternative road to Falu, his voting village whether senator Zwingina picks the senatorial ticket is immaterial what matter is if those who gave him the ticket will also crown him the senator elected. If democracy is a game of numbers, Zwingina is on his own. Senator Zwingina has squandered the good will of his people on the altar of greed and self-centeredness. Gone are the days the people follow stupidly only to be disappointed. Certainly, not now Zwingina.
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