A debacle one in town

Since Friday morning when the Supreme Court handed down its ruling on the Zamfara election imbroglio, I conducted a mental googling of Nigeria’s political history in the last 40 years in order to find a personally-created debacle quite like the kind that just occurred. I could find none. The closest case was in 2007 when […]

Since Friday morning when the Supreme Court handed down its ruling on the Zamfara election imbroglio, I conducted a mental googling of Nigeria’s political history in the last 40 years in order to find a personally-created debacle quite like the kind that just occurred. I could find none. The closest case was in 2007 when the Supreme Court threw out Governor Celestine Omehia and installed Rotimi Amaechi in Rivers even though the latter did not contest the main election.

As at the end of the 2019 election in March, APC had won the governorship, all national and all state assembly seats in Zamfara State, a politician’s dream complete sweep. On Friday it lost all of them when the Supreme Court upheld INEC’s, and the Zamfara G8 faction’s, long standing position that the party did not conduct primaries in the state due to internal crises. The next day, on Saturday, INEC declared the previously defeated PDP candidates as winners of the governorship and all but one state assembly seat. In short, APC went from 100% to zero while PDP went from 0 to 99%, a reversal of fortunes without parallel in Nigeria’s political history.

I first began to have doubts about Abdulaziz Yari Abubakar around 2012 when he answered a reporter’s question about his frequent foreign travels. He said something like, “Before I became the governor, I was an international businessman so I have to travel in order to make sure that my businesses do not suffer.” Not only was the claim not true, since he was a House of Representatives member and an Abuja land speculator, but I wondered whether he ever thought of the possibility that the people he was elected to govern also deserved his full attention. Especially because the Constitution recklessly vested “all executive powers of the state” in the governor.

Two years later, Yari told reporters at Sokoto Airport that it was no big deal if he spent too much time in aircraft cabins because a state government can be successfully run from the air. How can, when plane pilots do not tolerate phone calls, text messages, emails or social media chats once they are airborne? Even if they do, it will be risky if the governor holds a security council meeting via Skype; Zamfara bandits’ IT consultant could eavesdrop on the proceedings.

Still later, Yari caused a national uproar when he attributed the severe outbreak of CSM in his state to the sins of adulterers and gays. He apparently lurched on to that excuse because Zamfara State has one of the weakest health services in the country. Chairman of the state’s Medical and Health Workers Union Comrade Isyaku Sabo Tsafe said two years ago that Zamfara State had only 46 qualified medical doctors, 20 of them based in Gusau. In the heat of the insecurity crises that bedeviled the state, Yari caused another stir when he announced his resignation as the state’s chief security officer, allegedly because he was not receiving enough cooperation from federal law enforcement agencies.

In a way therefore, it was not surprising that Yari handled his party’s primary elections in a way that ultimately led to the greatest self-inflicted debacle in Nigerian politics. I am not saying he was the only one that caused it, but he was the principal culprit. At the root of it was his desire to anoint his chosen man as successor. That in itself is not bad or strange; it is human for a departing man of power to wish to be succeeded by a friendly successor. In Nigeria, almost everyone is doing it, so Yari could not be an exception. Trouble was with his methods, such as they were. Things were complicated because, unappetizing as the Zamfara Governor’s chair may look to me personally, there were eight other major contenders including a prominent senator, a very rich banker, the serving Defence Minister and a recently retired Federal Perm Sec.

I would have thought that in a rural state such as Zamfara, the governor holds most of the aces even in a free and fair primary election. Though Yari is quite unpopular in his state, he was shrewd enough to control all the state, local government and ward party structures. He could therefore afford to provide a level playing field for all aspirants and still ensure that his chosen candidate wins the contest. The problem, as I learnt, was that Yari was convinced that party national chairman Adams Oshiomhole had anointed a candidate of his own and was bent on foisting him through the agency of the committees that he sent to the state to conduct the APC primary, three of them.

Yari’s fears were not unfounded. Oshiomhole had already done the same thing in Osun and Imo states, where he used underhand tactics to out-manoeuvre the APC governors and foist men of his own choosing. In Ogun’s case, the chairman was apparently doing Bola Tinubu’s bidding. In Lagos too, there were signs that Oshiomhole used underhand tactics to help Tinubu to dislodge Governor Akinwunmi Ambode. Remember that the Clement Ebri-led party committee that conducted the primaries initially cancelled it but was prevailed upon by the National Secretariat [read: Oshiomhole] to reverse itself.

Oshiomhole even descended into a public shouting match with Yari, just as he did with Amosun and Okorocha. He held many press conferences to denounce Yari and said it was his committees that must conduct the primaries. Yari responded with outrageous deeds of his own. He said, in front of television cameras, that if any committee members sent by Oshiomhole set foot in Zamfara State, he will personally deal with them. He also said if Oshiomhole’s “father and mother born him,” he should send another committee. He then got the state party exco to organize “primaries” which neither the national secretariat nor INEC recognized

Yari had another problem: greed. He had already forced his old mentor, Senator Ahmed Sani, Yariman Bakura, to abandon the Zamfara Central chair for himself. Not only did Yari wanted to anoint a successor [his Finance Commissioner Mukhtar Shehu Idris], but he was not ready to give up a single federal or state assembly seat to his rivals. That said, the conduct of the G8 anti-Yari group was hardly exemplary. They too resorted to inflammatory speeches and thuggish tactics. There are viral videos of Senator Kabiru Marafa urging his supporters to give his opponents the beating of their lives.

Don’t forget, all these things were taking place when bandits and kidnappers had reduced the state to a basket case, security wise. The other question everyone was asking was, where was President Buhari? He apparently did nothing to reign in the combatants. His statement at a party meeting that aggrieved party members were free to go to court was statesmanlike, but it undermined the party’s rule that members must “exhaust internal mechanisms for resolving disputes.” This Nigerian “principle” is a cover for party leaders to do as they wish. The Zamfara G8 exploited Buhari’s large heart, went to court and dealt their party the lesson of its life.

INEC, Supreme Court and G8 all came out of this affair looking good; INEC for being vindicated, Supreme Court for upholding the rule of law against the ruling party, G8 for being proved right that no primaries took place and for showing Abdulaziz Yari Abubakar the limits of arrogance, impunity and greed. This ruling has taught our political parties, hopefully, that the INEC election timetable is not a toy and that every single sentence therein in enforceable in law.

The biggest beneficiary in all these turned out to be the Zamfara PDP. Its candidate Bello Mutawalle Maradun picked the governorship on a platter of gold while his party comrades swept nearly all the legislative seats. They have a whole book of lessons to learn from the most shocking electoral debacle in Nigeria’s history.