Wassalatu was salaamu alaa rasululLah.
As salaamu alaikum warahmatullah wa barakatuh.
KMG Notes // RANDOM SAMPLING's First Samples today on this blog might have appeared since 2011 when I first stumbled onto this form of journalism and began the process of registering a presence.
I have done so elsewhere, I think on WordPress using names and identifiers that am still trying to dig up to see to the possibility of getting back onto that platform. The WordPress platform that is.
As stated on the blurb introducing this Blog with the kmgsampling.blogspot.com
KMG Notes // RANDOM SAMPLING is a platform whose Chief Reviewer is KMG (Kabiru Muhammad Gwangwazo), a Kano based Journalist, in the trade since 1981.
KMG hit the journalism trail at Radio Kano while still a B.Sc Political Science undergraduate at Bayero University, at B.Sc Part 2. In 1982 KMG got a job in September at the CTV67.
From merely reading news and participating in current affairs programmes at Kano State Radio KMG, moved on to become one of the pioneer reporters of the State TV, CTV67. In addition to that schedule was reading news and presenting and moderating current affairs and political programmes. Such programmes were, DrumBeat, 45 Minutes and Lale Kati, the prime time Hausa political programme of the station that was on air on week days at 9 pm competing with and beating NTA Network News, especially with the mass of Kano's younger and radical PRP Santsi Rimi supporters. The Lale Kati was anchored by Halliru Adamu and KMG, produced by Ishaq Hadeja, Head of the CTV Programmes Directorate. Upto 1984 KMG was still at CTV.
From 1985, KMG got a job as sub editor at Triumph newspapers. He was then moved to the proof desk to serve as assistant chief proof reader with Bashir Bello Akko serving as Chief Proof Reader.
KMG was to be made Chief Proof Reader, later assistant chief sub editor, then chief sub editor of the Sunday Triumph and later Group Chief Sub Editor.
In September 1990 KMG was named Special Assistant, Press/ Head, Press & Public Relations Department, Kano state Deputy Governor's office shortly before Jigawa State was carved out of Kano in the same year, 1990. Alhaji Abba Abdullahi, mni, was the deputy governor. Malam Gidado Mukhtar was Director General in the Deputy Governor's Office. Then Colonel Idris Garba was Kano state Governor.
In September 1991 KMG got a Foreign and Commonwealth Office Scholarship (now known as the Chevening Scholarship) to study for a Master of Arts in journalism at the University of Wales Cardiff in the United Kingdom. The scholarship was facilitated by the British Council. Its Kano Office's Director, Ms Fenella Brooks provided the forms for the scholarship and participated in the interview.
While working on the MA after the main bulk of the course work KMG got a job as a Casual Producer translating and reading news and reports at the Hausa section of BBC, Bush House London from April through September 1992.
On returning to Kano, after successful completion of the MA in journalism in September 1992 KMG was appointed deputy editor of the Daily Triumph. He later got named editor of the Daily Triumph. In March 1993 he was moved to the Weekend Triumph from where he resigned his appointment with the Triumph and set up Pyramid Media with a former ex Editor of Sunday Triumph, Shehu Dauda. As Publisher and Editor-in-Chief of Pyramid Media he superintended publishing of Weekly Pyramid since 1993 upto 1996 when he got elected Chairman of Kano Municipal Council in March 1996. A post held upto April 1997 well after Tarauni LG had been curved out of Kano Municipal in the most recent addition of LGs in Kano.
In 2003 KMG got appointed State Chairman of the All Nigeria Peoples Party (ANPP). The general elections that saw Malam Ibrahim Shekarau (now Sardaunan Kano) emerge as Governor defeating incumbent PDP Governor Rabiu Musa Kwankwaso were led by KMG. He was removed as Chairman in January 2004 in the wake of political intrigues and infighting between those seen as supporters of General Muhammadu Buhari, the ANPP Presidential Candidate and supporters of Shekarau the state governor.
He was much later in August 2005 appointed Special Adviser first on State LG Joint Projects and later Special Matters to the Shekarau Government. A post he held until late 2006 when he resigned.
In the build up to the general elections of 2011 he was appointed to the General Buhari Congress for Progressive Change (CPC) Presidential campaign team for the North West zone along with Late Arc. MT Waziri. As a result he led set up of the Kano presidential campaign platform with Alhaji Sabo Nanono in consultation with Arc. MT Waziri.
He was a candidate in the race for Kano governor on CPC ticket. He stepped down for Brigadier General Lawan Jaafaru Isa.
He was chairman of Coalition Committee for Buhari Groups (CCBG) which worked from 2008/09 to corral and unite various pro-Buhari Groups in Kano, ahead of the formal move by General Buhari to set up CPC.
KMG was assigned to lead the CPC presidential elections team at Kano state INEC along with former Rimi Commissioner and MD Federal mortgage Bank, Malam Kassim Musa Bichi, OON and Dr. Baffa Bichi of BUK Maths Dept.
After the CPc had lost GEJ elections KMG was invited by Governor Rabiu Kwankwaso, Kano's then new PDP Governor to run the Triumph newspapers with a view to revive it, as it had long lost its former glory as the pride of newspapering since set up in 1980 by Governor Muhammadu Abubakar Rimi.
After valiant efforts at resuscitation and innovations including introduction of direct distribution by paper boys on dedicated Triumph bikes, new machines and a new way of doing things the state Governor decided to shut the newspaper down on October 3rd 2012. Almost all staff were absorbed into relevant MDAs in the state.
KMG was then appointed to head Servicom in October 2012 with a view to getting it off ground, as the State Government's service delivery intervention agency. This was done successfully with pilot schemes in nine MDAs and 3 Local Governments supported by the DFID/SPARC and M4D, another UK DFID agency.
With the political turbulence in APC since takeover of the merger by Governor Kwankwaso's newPDP and the willful and gross marginalization of the Buhari CPC tendency in Kano, KMG picked the Governorship Candidate's ticket of the SDP and consulted with General Buhari in late December 2014, 28th to be precise. Thus he had to resign from the Kano state Government appointment on 29th December 2014 to work to corral APC supporters who were on the verge of drifting to PDP. After the presidential election, again in consultation with General Buhari, then President-elect, exactly one week after his election, KMG again returned and rejoined the APC Ganduje team for the state Governors elections with full public and media campaigns.
For now KMG will henceforth be passing notes and samples of issues of interest on these pages as part of the continuing journalistic and political struggles for good governance that he has been into for the better part of the past three decades and some.
Many samples may be from the past, recent past, remote past. The hope and prayer is that all who read these samples will find in them some thing of interest, something to come away with. Something, the reader will say, is of some value. For as long as we dialogue here, as in all previous dialogues with KMG as much as possible everything will be predicted on the truth, nothing else but the truth, as far as we know it here.
