In Nasarawa, a different kind of ‘PhD’

As popular as former Governor Akwe Doma is in the politics of the state, officials of the government concluded that Doma did not win even a single councillorship seat in Doma LGA. This is one burden that will continue to haunt Al-Makura and his co-conspirators. This ugly trend in Nasarawa is known in local parlance […]

As popular as former Governor Akwe Doma is in the politics of the state, officials of the government concluded that Doma did not win even a single councillorship seat in Doma LGA. This is one burden that will continue to haunt Al-Makura and his co-conspirators. This ugly trend in Nasarawa is known in local parlance as ‘PHD’. Do not be deceived, the three letters do not stand for the academic title. Far from it: It simply means Pull Him Down, a cruel disposition targeted at achievers.
The incumbent government’s phobia for Akwe Doma did not just start with the LG polls, but right from the inception of the administration. As it were, since he got into office in 2011 as the governor of the state, Al-Makura has consistently been working to run down the image of his predecessor. For a better understanding of what is stake, let us race down memory lane. In the heat of the campaigns for the governorship election in 2011, Al-Makura’s supporters pelted the convoy of President Goodluck Jonathan in Lafia on February, 7th 2011 with sachets of pure water. A day after the election, and just as he was about being pronounced governor-elect, his supporters invaded Government House, Lafia, seeking to forcibly oust the PDP-led government under Doma. A week to the hand over date, they also descended on the PDP-dominated House of Assembly and sacked the entire complex.
Immediately he took over the reins of power from Aliyu Doma, Al-Makura began upturning all policies and programmes of his predecessor, prompting well-meaning Nigerians to wonder what happened to continuity in governance. Determined to portray his predecessor’s administration as spend-thrift, the governor on assumption of office told the bewildered people of the state that his administration inherited a whopping debt N27bn in debt from his predecessor. Shortly after, Al-Makura reversed himself by saying that the debt was no longer N27bn, but N30bn. Some few months later, the confused administration shamelessly upped the debt profile to N36bn. So, which one do Nigerians believe?
A brief account of what transpired will suffice. Doma inherited a liability of N17 billion from his predecessor, Abdullahi Adamu in 2007 and succeeded in offsetting N13bn out of it. As at the time he left office on May 29, 2011, Doma tentatively left a liability of N20bn, but not after collecting a loan for counterpart funding totaling N4bn—-N2.5bn from Zenith Bank to enable the state access UBEC fund and N1.5bn to finance state counterpart funding for MDGs, all of which were in the state treasury when Doma left office. This effectively reduced the liability to N16bn, out of which N12bn was for various jobs done by contractors for which certificates had been issued for payment. Al-Makura went a step further by saying the N17bn Paris Club refund during Doma’s administration disappeared from the state treasury. 
Even the communal crises that have ballooned out of control under this administration have been blamed on the PDP. As a matter of fact, inability to deliver on electoral promises has been apportioned to PDP. It is often said that the roots of evil are three—arrogance, envy and greed. Arrogance prevented Satan from bowing to Adam; envy led Cain to kill Abel and greed took Adam out of Paradise. In the same vein, it is the combination of arrogance, envy and greed that is driving the officials of Nasarawa State nuts.
They have read the writing on the wall that the ground under their seat is caving in because the people of the state have come realize they are being short-changed and taken for a ride. Because there are no longer new diversions to tell against Doma to justify their woeful failure, they have resolved that the only way to clip his wings politically ahead of the much-anticipated 2015 general election was to attempt to re-direct the LG poll in Doma LGA. Unfortunately for them, Akwe Doma remains unruffled.
Ochela wrote in from Abuja