Tag Archives: Governor Mu’azu Babangida Aliyu

#KakandaTemple ~ Still on Niger Guber Race

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Image credit: Nigerianeye.com

Image credit: Nigerianeye.com

My expression of cynicism last week, in my take on the generational chaos that is the contest to succeed Governor Aliyu in 2015, has sparked a torrent of reactions, fierce from the devastated camps and patronising from like-minded Nigerlites. The defenders of the former group have savaged me with accusation of mine being an unfair and “incomplete” criticism of the process. I want to clarify the meat of that criticism here.

My observation that the frontrunners in the marathon to Government House, Minna, is dominated by the children of the Old Powers, the power-brokering military overlords, whose children have now come of age and are ready to re-establish and amplify their family name, pride and fortunes in a society that seems to have forgotten about them, was not a mischievous portrayal as countered. It is my honest identification of the aspirants, especially the poster-child of PDP, Umar Nasko, son of General Gado Nasko, and even of the retreating Mohammed Babangida, whose father, former Head of State General Babangida, is reportedly unenthusiastic about his bid. In APC, the frontsman is Abubakar Sani Bello, son-in-law of former Head of State, General Abdulsalam Abubakar and member of a Forbes-recognised family—his father, a former military Governor of Kano, Colonel Sani Bello, has been ranked among the 50 richest Africans.

The happiest dissenters may be the handlers of Mustapha Bello, who have insisted that their principal, who is not from a modest background either, who is the younger brother of the Forbes-recognised entrepreneur and uncle to the APC frontsman Abubakar Sani Bello – shouldn’t have been categorised amongst the younger aspirants.

They argue that Mustapha Bello does not fit into my declaration that we have no marked progressives in the race, ignoring my definition of the progressive in the context as “one previously involved, even if individually, in the struggles for liberation of the state”. That definition is in distinction from an emergency politician who only appears in the political space and in people’s consciousness at the point of seeking elective office, the sort who then self-brands himself as a “progressive”.

I also compared our present poor crop of aspirants to Governor Aliyu, highlighting the incumbent’s advantages, which unsettled them more. The reference to “credentials” in my occasional praises of Governor Aliyu was not merely a recognition of our Governor’s pre-governorship achievements—as a legislator, highflying bureaucrat and of course his Ph.D in Public Policy and Strategic Studies, which complemented his cultural responsibility as a title-holding, fanfare-sponsoring “man of the people”, an unofficial populist, as testified to by witnesses of his aristocratic tendencies and largesse in the old Minna!

Yes, it’s not praise for the man’s academic feats, and even though he’s favoured by the establishment, Mustapha Bello’s political resilience isn’t even as remarkable as that of David Umaru who, unlike fellow serial aspirants, haven’t fizzled out or joined the winning PDP since defection, and has thus remained the soul of opposition politics, becoming a political activist in his longstanding tracking and analyses of Governor’s administration. Though the zoning formula, which I don’t even endorse anyway, favours Mustapha Bello’s senatorial district this term, his handlers may not even promote his candidacy on that pedestal, for he had challenged the re-election bid of the then incumbent Governor Abdulkadir Kure, in the 2003 elections.The next two terms of the next eight years are, by the designs of our power-brokering elite, for the people of Niger North of which all foremost aspirants are constituents.

In the case of Umar Nasko, Abubakar Bello and Mohammed Babangida, and other younger aspirants, the last column wasn’t an attempt to criminalise their descents or fault their academic achievements, for they are representatives of a sidelined generation, a generation plugged into modern ideas waiting for opportunities to establish the place of the youth in a country where the redemption of the people is assumed to rest on the shoulders of frail old men. So, my column wasn’t an attack of Umar Nasko. I only set out to advise his handlers to engage competent hands in managing his personality and ideas, for in spite of any shortcomings, he’s just as qualified to vie as the rest of them.

We live in a country of deep-rooted political patriarchy where the ambitions of youthful aspirants are trivialised and mocked by fellow youths, having, over the years, been crushed to the lower rungs of our socio-political existence by a destructive gerontocracy. The youth may not be the answer for salvation of this dysfunctional system, but their audacity to vie in a system that doesn’t praise their active participations in the power game, without being dismissed as too youthful, is a triumph for our generation.

So far, the line up for the guber marathon is an amusing commentary on the biology of our politicians. While a people are discussing the audacious emergence of a 39-year-old Umar Nasko, being the youngest in the race, there is, in the race, a 73-year-old Senator Nuhu Aliyu, older than the fathers of the aspirants, older than General Babangida, older than Colonel Sani Bello, and, wait for it, born in the same year as Umar Nasko’s father. May God save us from us!

By Gimba Kakanda

@gimbakakanda

#KakandaTemple ~ Niger 2015: Who Let the Boys Out?

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Photo credit: umarnasko.com

Photo credit: umarnasko.com

Niger State, without a doubt, is passing through the darkest phase in its political evolution. This is not about the failed development plans of the incumbent Governor or his foundationally flawed visions of having the economy of the state ranked among the three most developed in the country. This foreboding darkness is the chaos stirred up by the race to succeed him, in which famous families are, more than ever, actively involved, as though they’ve finally realised the need to re-establish themselves in the new world that seems to have forgotten about them.

Sadly, just a few months to the governorship election, there’s no aspirant who clearly fits into the word “progressive”, one previously involved, even if individually, in the struggles for liberation of the state; just a clique of political opportunists and politically insular children of the silent kingmakers buying off the people, in exploiting the poverty and naiveté of government-dependent civil servants, artisans and street toughs, highlighting politics of money, instead of ideas. Yet, none of these contenders is capable of matching even the current Governor’s pre-governorship credentials.

I was having a discussion with a friend the other day, and, while resisting his ploy to lure me to a candidate’s camp, I asked: “Beyond the heavy pocket, who is X?” And so also would be asked of those piggyback politicians who may end up as pawns of moneyed fathers and godfathers, all desperate to gain or consolidate political powers and relevance.

I’ve actually stopped being overly idealistic, only cautious despite my inclination to realpolitik. What, however, displeases me is how we’ve fallen even in the quality of aspirants whose cluelessness may be overlooked. This is the reason I think we’re doomed. If the Governor Aliyus fail to redeem Niger, I fear for these successors, especially the ones under their shadows.

One of them, Umar Nasko, the son of a former Minister of Federal Capital Territory, General Gado Nasko, is a marked character in the shadow of the present Governor. While some attribute this privilege to the Governor’s show of gratitude as public servant under the senior Nasko in the FCT ministry, a section has found as suspicious the renewed relationship between the governor and Nasko, for the latter, as a Commissioner, has once been reportedly dismissed by the government for misappropriating funds meant, according to several accounts, for the “proposed” 5-star hotel in Minna.

Umar Nasko’s “biography”, shared on his campaign website – www.umarnasko.com – is the sorriest tosh I’ve ever tortured my senses to read; a failed attempt to romanticize several embarrassing non-events in his bid to promote himself as an achiever, the opposite of what he really is.

That biographical sketch is enough to crush the man’s political ambition even before this frustrated takeoff, and it has nothing to do with his academic hassles. Even though the constitution makes Secondary School Leaving Certificate a qualification for becoming a governor, it beats me that our politicians, especially those with no impressive records always bother to cover up their deficiency with, as is the case with Nasko, atrocious, incoherent and clearly “suspicious” rants of the semi-literate.

Nasko ought to be celebrated as a product of a generation yearning for the involvement of the youth in politics. But it’s unfortunate that, as a self-promoted representative of that same generation, he could not task a “literate” team with defining and selling his personality and ideas.Anyone close to Nasko should advise him to have that embarrassment on his website taken down or rewritten.

Obviously, we cannot afford judging the contenders based on ultra-progressive principles. If we apply that, we may end up with nobody qualified to lead the state. I will also not join the critics who have dismissed them as too youthful and inexperienced. What matters is the sincerity of their mission. What matters is our understanding of the youth who ride on destructive opportunism, and those conscious and competent, despite being beneficiaries of our systemic political opportunism. For, in Nigeria today, with every youthful Saminu Turaki, there’s a youthful Donald Duke.Youth doesn’t mean incompetence, just as old age isn’t wisdom. Which is why honest criticism of all candidates ought to be done at the launch of their aspiration.

The last fifteen years of democracy in Niger State have been a great leap backwards, and this can be understood in comparing Minna under the civilians to the aesthetically grander Minna of 1990s, under the military, with functional streetlights and flowered central reservations and vibrant economic activities and social life. This is a simple indication of our misfortune since the coming of this democracy. That a people are celebrating streetlights as achievements today, which were in existence in the same place in the 90s, is a reason to lose sleep.

As the people of Niger state roll out the drums to bid Governor Aliyu goodbye for eight years of eloquent speeches, and delightful showmanship, we all have to agree that he was a promising leader, visionary, progressive, cerebral and, very importantly, independent(!), but how he ended up even more confused than his predecessor whose administration he dismissed as fraudulent on assuming power, is a story for patient historians. That we’ve fallen from the “standard” of the Governor Aliyus of 2007 to that of the General’s children in the 2015 race is a frightening situation. May God save us from us!

By Gimba Kakanda

@gimbakakanda On Twitter

#KakandaTemple ~ David Umaru: the Last Man Standing in Niger

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Surviving as the opposition in the political culture of Niger state is a feat possible only for the tough and the extraordinarily resilient. Over time, as a keen observer, I’ve watched and studied the comings and goings of certain dramatic figures who have emerged to challenge an incumbent government and have all either fizzled out on realising the impossibility of shaking the establishment or sold out, either by defecting and accepting to join forces with the incumbent or serving in the system they could not fight long enough to oust.

The times of these men, and they have all been men, have been interesting: from the emergence of Isah Ladan, a big spender who initiated dazzling political fireworks before he fizzled out, with no words heard from him again, on to Mustapha Bello, a beneficiary of Abuja’s covert intervention in our local politics, who emerged to frustrate the reelection bid of the then incumbent Governor Abdulkadir Kure. The same Abuja interference that once backed Mustapha Bello was the same factor that produced the current Governor, Mu’azu Babangida Aliyu, when the ambition of the Kure-backed candidate was defeated on charges of corruption by the EFCC.

In Niger State, everything revolves around the government: it’s not just about the credible lie that it’s a “Civil Service” state with moribund economic life, but the reality of its people’s disinterest in political resistance. This dilemma is a creation of a system that keeps them economically dependent on government, such that the only industry in existence in Niger state right now is Sycophancy. In his perpetuation of this lie, Governor Mu’azu Babangida Aliyu, who has been screaming himself hoarse in telling the world that the recurrent expenditures of the state are what eat up our budgets, has gone on and created needless agencies and ministries to engage the sycophants and cover up his declarations. I think it’s unfair to cry out that our salaries and emoluments eat up your funds and yet go on to create new channels through which taxpayers’ monies are drained.

One interesting story that captures the misery of opposing the establishment in Niger State is a certain encounter with a relative who used to be belligerently against under-performing governments. “Why,” I asked, “have you been quiet over this mismanagement of the state by the Governor and his cliques?” His response was a depressing narrative. He could not, and would not, oppose the system because the government is the biggest patron of his wife’s businesses, which include a chain of restaurants. Dissenting would mean severing his ties with government and consequently sabotaging his wife’s businesses because the patronage would stop. So many families and people are gagged by such beneficial dependence, stirring up a cultural sycophancy.

The coming of Barrister David Umaru ended this tradition of short-lived popular opposition forces and, especially, emergency governorship contenders who come, vie and disappear or sell out. Appearing on the political landscape in the build-up to the 2007 governorship elections, first as a member of the ruling party, the PDP, before joining ANPP to embark on this journey against aberrations, he formed strong networks at the grassroots and unwavering urban campaigns that, for the first time since the return to democracy, signaled the possibility of ousting the ruling party in Niger State.

Like the others, he did not stop being a politician, a formidable opposition figure, when PDP was declared winner of the 2007 polls. He contested the results, which were collations of witnessed irregularities, in the court, and remained undefeated even when the election was upheld. In the mean while, he remained a firebrand critic of the state government, exposing its mismanagement of public resources and having these published in several advertorials in the national dailies. He put up another fight in the 2011 governorship elections with a clearly unpopular Governor Aliyu whose last-minute appeal to the vulnerability of the people, embarking on distributing food items and money to the electorate, became the subject of many political comedies.

As an indigene of the state who has, on several occasions, openly registered disappointment in the performance of Niger State, I benefitted from the facts and figures on the administration of deceits and frauds in the state revealed in the advertorials signed by Barr. Umaru. He stands out because he refused to let go, refused to give up in struggling for the redemption of the state, refused to underestimate the place of the opposition, refused to allow the Establishment loot in peace. He has remained the symbol of resistance, an assurance that the atmosphere of sycophancy is crushable.

It is, however, expected that his candidacy was deconstructed by agents of polarisation who sought to stoke ethnic and religious sentiments in order to try and disconnect this live-wire of the opposition from the people. That is the low to which politics in Niger State has descended. As a state in search of the progressive elements, it’s disquieting to see the alternatives being stopped on the bar of their religious, ethnic and even zonal affiliations. I must make a case that, away from politics, religion is hardly an issue among the minority groups of the so-called Middle Belt where siblings follow different faiths without love lost in the family. The Nupe, who are largely Muslims, elected their Christian brother Professor Jerry Gana as legislator and the old Nigerlites elected a man who was not Nupe, Gbagyi or Hausa, Dr. Musa Inuwa, as governor, years before these agenda-driven religious fanatics, ethnic bigots and regional ambassadors repainted our fading disharmonies. The Gbagyi, of which Barr. Umaru is a member, are thankfully immune to polarisation along the line of religions. Which is why his popularity couldn’t be diminished by propagandas of the powers that be.

Now a new challenge has been set with the passing of Senator Dahiru Awaisu Kuta: the seat of Niger East Senatorial District. And it’s quite commendable that Barr. Umaru has been called, and he has accepted, to fill the void. It’s this news that someone capable of stopping the “retiring” Governor Mu’azu Babangida Aliyu, who is also interested in the seat, from being given another platform to exhibit his oratorical skills, in lieu of promised development, that comforts me. With zoning formula in place to frustrate Barr. Umaru’s governorship ambition in 2015, the Senate is the perfect slot, especially in consideration of his influence as grassroots politician of commendable intellectual integrity in the zone. There he can build a stronger force in this bid to demolish the political conservatism of a state possessed by too many sycophants. May God save us from us!

By Gimba Kakanda

@gimbakakanda on Twitter

#KakandaTemple ~ What You Don’t Know About Governor Aliyu

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This week seems to signal the end of David Versus Goliath polls in a decade and a half as Nigerians welcome a much-anticipated political development that sharply highlighted the naiveté of President Goodluck Jonathan. As agreed by many, Jonathan has just sealed his place in history as Nigeria’s most uncharismatic head. Ever. Yes, ever. The only time the office of the president had ever been undermined, and unsurprisingly became a space for incubation of cluelessness, was in the last days of his predecessor, the late Alhaji Umaru Musa Yar’adua, whose syndrome was attributed to his failed health – though, like Goodluck, his then deputy, he came into power through a political permutation of opportunisms and sentiments in which he had almost no power to influence!

Expectedly, this development, the defection of five of the seven PDP governors who made up the G7 rebels antagonising their president to the opposition party, roused mixed reviews among analysts, with the harshest dismissing APC as an asylum of victimised rogues, a party with no definable ideology to redeem the mess that has become Nigeria under PDP. While cynicism is already a part of our political culture, having lost our faith in any process designed for change, however practicable, some citizens have taken condemning the merger of G7-2 and APC as merely being objective, as though there is another alternative to launching a formidable opposition to check the excessive and criminal manipulations of a people’s intelligence and resources in these fourteen years of a dysfunctional democracy!

This merger is laudable for one obvious reason – for invigorating the race to winning the trust of the public, knowing that, at last, both sides are capable of replacing each other and if any is ever found wanting a recall is now a convenient exercise. I have been on the front line of Nigerians challenging the oppositions to understand the psyche of Third World politics where mainstream media-centred electioneering is ineffective. Nigeria is not an America where sentiments woven around a politician’s tweets and newspaper interviews are likely to earn him the sympathy and solidarity of the electorates; here parties need structure and appreciable relationship with the masses, because even rigging is not possible without a structure. PDP has been a leader in all the major polls in Nigeria because it understands the psychology of Third World electorates, which is presenting your physical selves to your supporters to assure them of intended policies, and how the other person squanders their resources. The people need a sense of assurance, a structure that a party actually exists. As I told an APC-basher elsewhere, APC’s biggest illusion will be being hopeful of victories at the 2015 polls, without these G7 governors, without structures, without crisscrossing the minds and thoughts of the grassroots, without planting their flags on parts of Nigeria where even MTN’s everywhere-you-go masts are unavailable!

On the quality of its membership, let’s all agree that everybody is corrupt in the absence of rigid laws, and that it’s enforced ideology and manifestos that will uphold the discipline of a party. Parties are built on ideology and manifestos, not individuals’ private interests. This applies to APC. Sadly, PDP has violated that onus. And of the two members of the defunct G7 who refused to defect, a PDP stalwart Professor Jibril Aminu, in his interview with Daily Trust, opines: “Already, two of their pillars have changed their minds and left the group, I understand (Mu’azu Babangida) Aliyu who was thought to follow them where ever they were going has left them and (Sule) Lamido who claimed to be the pillar of the group developed cold feet. He can abuse me again if he likes but I will tell him to his cheeky face, there is nowhere he will go and do what he did in PDP, to get (sic) foreign affairs minister and governor of a state” (Daily Trust newspaper, 28/11/2013). In this attempt to protect the ruins of a house on fire, Professor Aminu exposes PDP as a house where internal democracy is missing, a fraternity where private interests are served – which is what he clearly painted with his allusion that Lamido’s ministerial and gubernatorial s(election)s were scams he can only ‘get’ in PDP. If APC must set itself apart, nobody’s private interests should be served, no individual should be an overlord, and internal democracy should never ever be compromised to please any overlord!

As for Governor Aliyu, a politician who couldn’t deliver his state to PDP in the last presidential election, one whose re-elections was as the results of open financial inducements, defection may be a dangerous miscalculation. CPC not only won the presidential but also the national assembly elections in Governor Aliyu’s backyard in the last election, so I wonder why we’re going berserk over his, and Lamido’s, betrayal of their of colleagues.

As 2015 approaches, Governor Aliyu’s political future is on the edge of a cliff. First, his senatorial ambition will be mortally shattered by the Gbagyi voters who are very ethnically united, especially in their aversion to a Hausa man’s candidacy, and there will be no more previously neutrally involved Zone A voters and their Zone C counterparts to save him this time. And there will also be no more zoning formula, which has brought him this far in politics, to manipulate. Second, Aliyu’s refusal to defect may be to play PDP’s northern strongman in the rush to 2015 in exchange for “presidential” support for his declining political relevance, but Governor Lamido, who’s a more popular candidate, is a threat to that dream. Third, being a poor-performing Governor, one who has created too many portfolios obviously to “settle” his boys and to justify Niger state’s inflated recurrent expenditures, unlike Kano’s Governor Kwankwaso’s managerial prudence, he has every reason to be afraid of the presidency over possible witch-hunt.

And so? Well, if APC needs a gamesman in Niger state for 2015, they don’t need its governor’s moral supports, they only need to rush to court the zonal strongmen of the three senatorial districts in Niger state, with special interest in the very influential Nupe-speaking people of Zone A. Governor Aliyu may be a loser, he’s not a fool. He’s a politically sage schemer. This is why I love him. May God save us from us!

By Gimba Kakanda
@gimbakakanda (On Twitter)