Eight forms in Tafki State

However, my campaign team’s chairman Alhaji Gohe told me that we should return home quietly and lie low for two days before we begin to campaign again. That is because the people of Tafki State were not happy that eight of us from the state went to Abuja and paid the stiff deposit fee to […]

However, my campaign team’s chairman Alhaji Gohe told me that we should return home quietly and lie low for two days before we begin to campaign again. That is because the people of Tafki State were not happy that eight of us from the state went to Abuja and paid the stiff deposit fee to collect the nomination forms. Within a day one poet in Tafki State even composed a song describing us as indararo, i.e. drainpipes. Indararo means someone who channels water to the outside when the inside of his house is parched.
I think the people of Tafki State were incited against us by the outgoing governor. He was the one who said that there should be a consensus first, that the state party branch should go and buy one form so that whoever is adopted as the consensus candidate will just fill it. Of course we didn’t agree because we realised that Governor was playing a game. He wanted to force us to adopt Goshin Bauna as the consensus candidate after they reconciled. People are even saying that they never quarrelled in the first place, that it was all fake, designed to make the other aspirants to drop their guard so that Goshin Bauna will sail through easily.
After we bought the form, we heard that the Governor was very angry with us. Staff of the Government House said he did not do any work throughout that day. He was just complaining. That why should eight people from Tafki State go and pay millions of naira each to collect nominations forms for the governorship election? That it portrays us in Tafki State as unserious people who could not trim the number of our aspirants. That we wasted money and went and paid millions to Abuja when our own people are starving.
We heard that when the Governor was complaining, party chairman Sallama Maikudi joined him, saying yes, what the aspirants did was very bad, that we refused to attend the meeting he called to achieve a consensus candidate. That party chairman is a real hypocrite because at the party secretariat they are quietly celebrating. For the party officials, the larger the number of aspirants the better. They believe that this is the season when they will chop because once the elections are over, people who are elected to public office on the party’s platform will abandon them and go and eat alone with their families and relatives. Maikahon Karo even said that the party deputy chairman has one storey office building near the market. He started building it after the 2011 election, got only to linter level before he abandoned work on the building. It has been there, rusting. It is full of lizards and snakes and people from the market even defecate inside it. Recently workmen were seen cleaning it up and preparing to resume work.
However, I was surprised that up to eight of us collected the nomination forms. One newspaper said Tafki State has got the second highest number of governorship aspirants in the country, which I think is not good. Among these eight, I think it is only three of us that I will say are serious aspirants. That is I, Goshin Bauna and Senator Burudu. Me, I am a serious candidate because I have been campaigning actively since last year. I am known all over the state and I have got a solid structure, including powerful youth and women’s wings. Goshin Bauna is not as popular as I am but because he has got the Governor’s support, I will say he has hope too. We really celebrated last month when the two of them quarrelled but they have now reconciled. Goshin Bauna went and sprawled in front of the Governor and begged for forgiveness, and His Excellency forgave him. The other candidate that I will say is serious is Senator Audu Burudu of Tafki South. He was once the chairman of Marmaro Local Government before he became a commissioner and later went to the Senate.
The other five people who collected the form are really unserious aspirants. Imagine, the former minister Dokin Karfe also went and collected the form after assuring everybody that he will not collect it. After the humiliation he suffered at the caucus meeting, I never thought he will be shameless enough to go and collect the form. I don’t even know where his power base is. The chairman of his own Kwazazzabo Local Government stood up at the caucus meeting and said they do not know Dokin Karfe. That when he was the minister in Abuja, he used to lock his house by 7pm and people who travelled all the way from home will not even be given water to drink. Imagine a man like that coming to say that he wants to contest for governor.
Dokin Karfe’s case is even better than that of another aspirant called Lawal Kankajeli. Can you believe it! The man was a storekeeper in the Ministry of Health and they said he was stealing government medicine and selling it to private pharmacies. Everyone in Birnin Tafki knows him to be a thief. One day his colleagues told him that a black Toyota van suspected to belong to EFCC was seen approaching the town and he just fled. He phoned his family three days later and said he was on his way to perform the lesser hajj. When he did not come back after a month, his elder brother wrote a resignation letter on his behalf, signed it and took it to the Civil Service Commission. That was how he left the service. It even turned out that the van they saw was from one cosmetics company. It was coming to Birnin Tafki to sell a new shampoo on the streets and the foolish man ran away.
There is also this man they call Ciroman Bidi’a, one hedonistic man like that. He knows nothing but enjoyment, throwing parties, drinking, womanising. Anytime you see him he is tipsy. He went and bought the form, to show you how unserious the whole thing is. Then one woman collected the form, one Hajia Dije. The form is free for women so she did not pay anything. I don’t even know where her aspiration will go because her husband told people that she did not tell him she was going to Abuja to collect the form. She only told him that she was going to visit her sister. Then she sneaked into the secretariat and came out with a form.The day we were coming back to our state capital Birnin Tafki after collecting the nomination forms, we were thinking of making a big splash of it. However, my campaign team’s chairman Alhaji Gohe told me that we should return home quietly and lie low for two days before we begin to campaign again. That is because the people of Tafki State were not happy that eight of us from the state went to Abuja and paid the stiff deposit fee to collect the nomination forms. Within a day one poet in Tafki State even composed a song describing us as indararo, i.e. drainpipes. Indararo means someone who channels water to the outside when the inside of his house is parched.
I think the people of Tafki State were incited against us by the outgoing governor. He was the one who said that there should be a consensus first, that the state party branch should go and buy one form so that whoever is adopted as the consensus candidate will just fill it. Of course we didn’t agree because we realised that Governor was playing a game. He wanted to force us to adopt Goshin Bauna as the consensus candidate after they reconciled. People are even saying that they never quarrelled in the first place, that it was all fake, designed to make the other aspirants to drop their guard so that Goshin Bauna will sail through easily.
After we bought the form, we heard that the Governor was very angry with us. Staff of the Government House said he did not do any work throughout that day. He was just complaining. That why should eight people from Tafki State go and pay millions of naira each to collect nominations forms for the governorship election? That it portrays us in Tafki State as unserious people who could not trim the number of our aspirants. That we wasted money and went and paid millions to Abuja when our own people are starving.
We heard that when the Governor was complaining, party chairman Sallama Maikudi joined him, saying yes, what the aspirants did was very bad, that we refused to attend the meeting he called to achieve a consensus candidate. That party chairman is a real hypocrite because at the party secretariat they are quietly celebrating. For the party officials, the larger the number of aspirants the better. They believe that this is the season when they will chop because once the elections are over, people who are elected to public office on the party’s platform will abandon them and go and eat alone with their families and relatives. Maikahon Karo even said that the party deputy chairman has one storey office building near the market. He started building it after the 2011 election, got only to linter level before he abandoned work on the building. It has been there, rusting. It is full of lizards and snakes and people from the market even defecate inside it. Recently workmen were seen cleaning it up and preparing to resume work.
However, I was surprised that up to eight of us collected the nomination forms. One newspaper said Tafki State has got the second highest number of governorship aspirants in the country, which I think is not good. Among these eight, I think it is only three of us that I will say are serious aspirants. That is I, Goshin Bauna and Senator Burudu. Me, I am a serious candidate because I have been campaigning actively since last year. I am known all over the state and I have got a solid structure, including powerful youth and women’s wings. Goshin Bauna is not as popular as I am but because he has got the Governor’s support, I will say he has hope too. We really celebrated last month when the two of them quarrelled but they have now reconciled. Goshin Bauna went and sprawled in front of the Governor and begged for forgiveness, and His Excellency forgave him. The other candidate that I will say is serious is Senator Audu Burudu of Tafki South. He was once the chairman of Marmaro Local Government before he became a commissioner and later went to the Senate.
The other five people who collected the form are really unserious aspirants. Imagine, the former minister Dokin Karfe also went and collected the form after assuring everybody that he will not collect it. After the humiliation he suffered at the caucus meeting, I never thought he will be shameless enough to go and collect the form. I don’t even know where his power base is. The chairman of his own Kwazazzabo Local Government stood up at the caucus meeting and said they do not know Dokin Karfe. That when he was the minister in Abuja, he used to lock his house by 7pm and people who travelled all the way from home will not even be given water to drink. Imagine a man like that coming to say that he wants to contest for governor.
Dokin Karfe’s case is even better than that of another aspirant called Lawal Kankajeli. Can you believe it! The man was a storekeeper in the Ministry of Health and they said he was stealing government medicine and selling it to private pharmacies. Everyone in Birnin Tafki knows him to be a thief. One day his colleagues told him that a black Toyota van suspected to belong to EFCC was seen approaching the town and he just fled. He phoned his family three days later and said he was on his way to perform the lesser hajj. When he did not come back after a month, his elder brother wrote a resignation letter on his behalf, signed it and took it to the Civil Service Commission. That was how he left the service. It even turned out that the van they saw was from one cosmetics company. It was coming to Birnin Tafki to sell a new shampoo on the streets and the foolish man ran away.
There is also this man they call Ciroman Bidi’a, one hedonistic man like that. He knows nothing but enjoyment, throwing parties, drinking, womanising. Anytime you see him he is tipsy. He went and bought the form, to show you how unserious the whole thing is. Then one woman collected the form, one Hajia Dije. The form is free for women so she did not pay anything. I don’t even know where her aspiration will go because her husband told people that she did not tell him she was going to Abuja to collect the form. She only told him that she was going to visit her sister. Then she sneaked into the secretariat and came out with a form.