Adamawa Works Commissioner Seeks NSE Partnership

Engineer Mohammed Suleiman had barely settled into his new office as Adamawa State Commissioner for Works and Energy Development when the first delegation came knocking. It was the Nigeria Society of Engineers, Adamawa State Branch, and their visit on Tuesday carried both congratulations and a quiet expectation that the man they were celebrating would prove worthy of the moment.

He did not disappoint them.

Receiving the delegation led by NSE Branch Chairman Engineer Professor Bashir Aliyu, Commissioner Suleiman responded to the courtesy visit with a directness that those in the room said set a tone immediately. He told the engineers that he needed them. Not as a formality, but as a genuine working partnership that would determine how far Governor Ahmadu Umaru Fintiri’s infrastructural development agenda actually travels on the ground.

The commissioner was sworn into office alongside two other appointees by Governor Fintiri on March 18, 2026, making this NSE visit the first he received from his professional constituency. That detail was not lost on him. He noted its significance openly, acknowledging that engineers are not just observers of the work ahead but active participants whose expertise will shape its quality and reach.

“My success in office will depend on the collective support and expertise of engineers within the ministry,” Suleiman told his guests, in words that framed the relationship not as a hierarchy but as a shared responsibility.

He also took the opportunity to address something that tends to follow commissioners of works like a shadow wherever they go. Outstanding contractor liabilities. He told the gathering plainly that the Ministry of Works currently carries no such liabilities, a statement that drew attention in a sector where unpaid contractors and abandoned projects have too often defined the story.

His commitment to transparency, he said, was not a speech. It was a working principle that the NSE and the broader engineering community were welcome to hold him to.

Suleiman also spoke warmly of the governor who appointed him, describing Fintiri’s leadership style as one that rises above religious and tribal considerations in its selection of who gets to serve. It was, he said, that inclusive approach that had allowed him to spend a decade in senior bureaucratic roles, first as Deputy Permanent Secretary and then as Permanent Secretary, before arriving at the executive council table.

For Professor Aliyu and the NSE delegation, the visit was about more than congratulations. The branch chairman described Engineer Suleiman as a dedicated and results-oriented public servant whose innovative approach would serve Adamawa well in the delivery of critical infrastructure. He called on the commissioner to extend support to the society’s ongoing initiatives and announced that the NSE would be hosting a dinner on Saturday to honour three distinguished fellows for their contributions to the engineering profession.

Three other engineers who spoke during the visit added their voices to the assessment of the new commissioner. Engineers John Garba, Mohammed Abbas, and Mundi Musa each spoke of a man they described as hardworking, transparent, and capable of meeting any responsibility placed before him. Their words were not the polished language of ceremony. They were the observations of colleagues who have watched someone work over time.

Engineer Mundi Musa, who currently serves as Permanent Secretary in the Ministry of Rural Infrastructure and Community Development, offered perhaps the most grounded perspective of the afternoon. He told the gathering that he had worked alongside Engineer Suleiman for approximately 33 years. Over that stretch, he said, he had come to know him as a leader who demands results without sacrificing the welfare of the people around him. That combination, he suggested, is rarer than it should be.

For The Gazette News (Nigeria), what the Tuesday visit captured was something that Adamawa’s infrastructure story has not always had at its centre. A commissioner who walks into the role already asking for partnership rather than waiting for problems to arrive. Whether that posture holds under the pressure of actual project delivery is what the months ahead will reveal. But the opening position, transparent, collaborative, and clear about what is at stake, was one that gave the engineers in the room something they could work with.