A minister’s disdainful act of snubbing

Two events, both of them similar in nature, and involving the same person, happened recently, one in Jalingo and the other in Damaturu, Jalingo, for those who need to be reminded is the capital of Taraba State while Damaturu is for Yobe State. The personality involved in the two events is Hajia Aisha Jumai, Alhassan, […]

Two events, both of them similar in nature, and involving the same person, happened recently, one in Jalingo and the other in Damaturu, Jalingo, for those who need to be reminded is the capital of Taraba State while Damaturu is for Yobe State. The personality involved in the two events is Hajia Aisha Jumai, Alhassan, Minister of Women Affairs and Youth Development. She had, at different times between August and September visited the two states. It was in her capacity as a minister of the Federal Republic of Nigeria.
In Jalingo, she addressed a group of women on empowerment, a subject that is dear to both the Federal Government and the Taraba State Government which currently has Arc. Darius Ishaku as governor. The visit to Yobe was to the Internally Displaced Persons camps, IDPs, where she also addressed the inmates on behalf of President Muhammadu Buhari. The IDPs camp is a fall-out of the Boko Haram insurgency in the country’s North East region.
The two visits, though not political in nature were deliberately turned into a game of bitter politics by the minister, particularly, the one to Jalingo. In Jalingo, the minister openly snubbed Governor Ishaku, who was in the state and in his office at the time of the visit, by refusing to pay him a courtesy visit as protocol demands. In Yobe, the story was somewhat different. The minister took time out to visit the Yobe State governor and media coverage of the visit was a huge celebration thereafter. Her speeches at every stop during the visit to the two states were full of innuendoes and veiled but nonetheless contemptuous remarks against the government of Taraba, her home state. The minister’s obviously baleful act of snubbing of Governor Ishaku has since then been a subject of intense debate in political circles in and out of the state. The popular reading of this act is that the minister is re-drawing the objectionable line of discord which Ishaku and other leaders in the state have battled to erase.
The reason for the minister’s animosity towards the governor is not difficult to fathom. Ishaku is the man who trounced Hajia Jumai Alhassan in the 2015 governorship polls in Taraba State. She rejected that unarguably people’s verdict and started litigation that was eventually resolved in favour of Ishaku at the Supreme Court. Despite her obvious loss of the race for this highest political stool in the state both at the polls and in the courts, Hajia Alhassan seems unable to overcome the shock and the bitter taste of defeat. This is not good enough. But what is even worse and repugnant is allowing such bitterness to colour her official attitude and relationship with highly placed government officials in the political opposition camps in Taraba State, particularly the office and the person of Governor Ishaku.
The minister’s attitude is an unfortunate reminder of the deplorable attitude of our politicians to politics and elections. Though many of them preach politics without bitterness, they lack the discipline to subject themselves to the demands of this esteemed and highly cherished political axiom. Election is still seen by most of our politicians as not only a call to war but war that must be won by all means and at all costs. And since victory in war or electoral contest cannot be won by all the combatants or contestants at the same, there must be a loser. Failure is, therefore, not an illegitimate child in the electoral process. It is normal to that process and those whose luck it is to nurse post- election failure must learn to accept their fate with maturity and understanding.
Democracy anywhere in the world thrives on elections. Where the polls fail to produce results acceptable to all parties, the courts take over the process of adjudication. When the highest court with jurisdiction on the matter has made a pronouncement, it is expected that the matter be rested. Ill feelings are, therefore, expected to give way to co-operation and collaboration on the part of all the parties to enable the winner serve the people. Any attitude openly expressed or displayed through veiled remarks that is capable of causing disaffection against constituted authority should not be encouraged.
It is against this background that the people of Taraba State and Nigerians at large must condemn the attitude displayed by Hajia Alhassan against the office and the person of Governor Ishaku in Jalingo recently. Ishaku is the elected governor of Taraba State as of now and there is nothing Hajia Alhassan or anybody who is not happy about that reality can do about it. Hajia Alhassan should publicly acknowledge what she did in Jalingo as a mistake and apologise to Governor Ishaku. That is the most appropriate act of civility expected of her in this case. After that, Governor Ishaku should also publicly acknowledge the gesture and forgive the minister.
The people of Taraba State haven’t yet forgotten the political upheavals that preceded the birth of the present administration in the state. The state was at some point a theatre of bitter and bloody political crises. Hundreds of innocent souls were lost in the process. Healing those wounds left in the trail of these crises has been a major preoccupation of the Ishaku administration. It will be unfair to the people of the state and to Governor Ishaku if deliberate attempts are made by anybody to truncate genuine efforts at achieving social and political restoration.
The state cannot risk another spectre of bloody crisis. Not anymore. Any attempt to drag the hand of the clock back is unpatriotic and must be rejected. The times call for peace and understanding on the part of all indigenes. It is not a time to sow seeds of political discord and further stoke the flickering embers of crisis that the state experienced in the past. What is required is the support of all the leaders and people of the state for the governor.
Yaro, a public affairs analyst, wrote this piece from Abuja