How Governor Aliyu lost senatorial bid

Governor Mu’azu Babangida Aliyu even as a sitting governor, began his journey for the Senate when he picked the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) ticket last December.Announcing the election result, the Returning Officer of the senatorial district election Professor Ali Audu Jigam declared the APC candidate, David Umaru as winner of the election having  polled a […]

Governor Mu’azu Babangida Aliyu even as a sitting governor, began his journey for the Senate when he picked the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) ticket last December.
Announcing the election result, the Returning Officer of the senatorial district election Professor Ali Audu Jigam declared the APC candidate, David Umaru as winner of the election having  polled a total of 257, 831 votes as against the governor who polled 82, 094 votes.
Others in the contest for the senatorial seat were Musa Hassan of ADC, Hajia Inno Ibrahim of Labour Party, Mohammed Audu of NNPP, Musa Yusuf of PPA and Shuaibu Dikko of SDP.
At the polls on Saturday, however, analysts say Aliyu failed in his bid to secure the senatorial seat because of the general disenchantment by most members of the public with the ruling party.
Despite the high level of disenchantment among the electorate, the governor failed to see the hand writing on the wall as the election approached, which many say would have accorded him an opportunity to re-strategise toward a resounding victory.
Another impediment for Governor Aliyu, political observers say, was that his administration wasted a lot of quality time, which was supposed to be for image laundry with an idea to promote the diminishing popularity of his government, following series of allegations bordering on under-performance, by responding to trivial issues raised by members of the opposition.
In the eight years of Governor Aliyu’s administration, a lot of promises were made to the electorate, but many of them are yet to be delivered even as the tenure of his government ends soonest.
Another factor that greatly worked against Governor Aliyu’s Senate bid, analysts say, was the problem of ethnicity, the governor being a non-Gbagyi man but was not only contesting in a Gbagyi dominated senatorial district but also against a Gbagyi man. Therefore, this and many other reasons exposed him to an easy defeat.
To most pundits, apart from the Buhari factor that played a significant role in the defeat of the incumbent governor, Aliyu was not also in high spirit because from the ban on campaign was lifted, one could count the number of times he was seen campaigning actively, compared to the way he campaigned for a PDP candidate in August last year during a by-election of the same senatorial district.
Most analysts argued that there was a seeming lack of steam in the election, which many viewed as a must-win for Aliyu, who is known as a great mobiliser. But this time around, he failed to act in his usual characteristic of directing all senior civil servants and relevant as well as irrelevant stakeholders to move to individual localities to mobilise the electorate.
Another factor that contributed to the failure of  Governor Aliyu, who is the chairman of the Northern Governors’ Forum, was his failure to identify with grassroots politicians, but he instead relied so much on technocrats who lack the wherewithal of changing the game, especially at the time when the going gets tough like now.
Aliyu, whose oratorical power is most captivating among his contemporaries, failed to use the endowed treasure to his political benefit, instead whenever he speaks, it generates a controversy, which most times turns out to be a minus to his person as well as his government.
These and many other reasons culminated in what brought about his awful performance in Saturday’s poll, analysts say.
As it is, Governor Aliyu’s hope of moving to the Senate as his tenure expires on May 29, has been dashed.