Nigeria, July 22 -- When history is written about how a child of yesterday grew into an adult who now rubs shoulders with "elite states" and even with its own grandparents, especially Plateau State, the precursor from which it was carved, one name insists on being spoken first. That name is Senator Abdullahi Adamu, CON. His identity straddles both the local and the national, and over the decades he has become a household reference point in Nigerian politics. This is not by accident. Political science scholars who study "state-building elites" argue that founding leaders perform what Max Weber called charismatic-rational authority. They convert personal credibility into institutional legitimacy, and in doing so, give a new state its firs...