Isn’t Shagari over-rated?

I attended one such gathering in Gothenburg, Sweden, in December. It was a dinner by the Nigeria Family Association, Gothenburg Chapter. The topic was surprisingly, northern Nigeria politics. And there was enough happening and to jaw-jaw on at the time. While defection was mowing down Vice-president Namadi Sambo’s saleability in Kaduna, the elections in Yobe […]

I attended one such gathering in Gothenburg, Sweden, in December. It was a dinner by the Nigeria Family Association, Gothenburg Chapter. The topic was surprisingly, northern Nigeria politics. And there was enough happening and to jaw-jaw on at the time. While defection was mowing down Vice-president Namadi Sambo’s saleability in Kaduna, the elections in Yobe state took place without the anticipated incidents. The governors of Sokoto and Kano, Aliyu Magatakarda Wamakko and Rabiu Musa Kwakwaso respectively, were also in the news for the receptions they got from their new party, the All Progressives Congress, APC. And because most Nigerians in Scandinavia are Southerners I found their choice of northern politics remarkable.
Typically, questions were always thrown at those who appear closest to the battleground and in this milieu the lot fell on me. I come from the North-east and have worked as a reporter in the North-west long enough to call it home.
Without being anti-social, I followed the discussions attentively and agreed to a large extent with most of the issues until it came to the much talked about potential Tambuwal presidency; will he, will he not, then the defection of the five governors. Former governor of Kano state, Mallam Ibrahim Shekarau had just received a delegation of the Peoples Democratic Party, PDP, at his residence and the news was that he was moving camp, if Kwankwaso was joining the APC. The matter remains in the winds.
When it got to Wamakko and Sokoto, I was amazed to hear Barrister Muntari Shagari who refused to defect to the APC with Wamakko getting a hero’s appraisal from the table. He was made to look all that and a bag of chips, even though facts from the talks showed that the discussants knew little more than the fact that Muntari Shagari is former President Shagari’s son. And that was the main plus, apart from his closeness to Obasanjo, which kept him as minister for water resources for six years until he resigned to seek election as governor of Sokoto. That dream crashed in quick time as he wound up being deputy to Wamakko, when defeat stared PDP in the face.
The simplistic approval Muntari Shagari is getting, which to one’s mind is a regurgitation of the general view of the man’s politics in the southern hemisphere, extends to the Jonathan presidency, and pushes one to wonder if Muntari Shagari, like all prophets, is under-appreciated in his own home.
As things stand, Muntari Shagari has parted ways with Wamakko. And the consensus in and around Sokoto state is that his name has sold the Jonathan presidency a pipedream. The presidency believes that Shagari’s reverie will coast to victory come 2015. Ahead, he is awaiting a legal rigmarole to declare the governor’s seat vacant for him to ascend. That would provide a smooth pedestal from where he plans, like all the others, to gallop to victory on the back of incumbency.  It is a road most travelled.
But this simplistic solution is unlikely. Although Shagari has a strong pedigree in Sokoto politics being scion of the Shagari political dynasty and having served under Mallam Yahaya Abdulkarim as Attorney General and Commissioner for Justice, proceeding, years later to become a minister, little can be said of his human relations and grassroots appeal in the state. Many people in Sokoto remain bitter that Muntari Shagari’s portfolio in water resources has not soaked the dry sands of Sokoto in any way. Instead, Muntari constantly sailed against the tides leaving, as many say, records that are far from presentable. For example, although the FG spent N180bn during his first two years as minister, at the Water Resources Ministry, little is done in Sokoto regarding potable drinking water for his people.
It was also during his tenure that Alhaji Abubakar Tsav, a former Commissioner of Police in Sokoto State alleged that N240m meant for water in Benue state had been embezzled. Shagari had dismissed the claim as “unfounded.” It was also under him in 2003 that the African Development Bank cancelled 80 per cent of its water projects in Nigeria citing “corruption and misuse of funds.”
Even today, the same reasons that gave PDP clay feet over his candidacy in 2007 are still very much around. Muntari Shagari may have remained a very loyal PDP member, having been in it since inception and come rain or shine, which is commendable in itself, but even the most optimistic of PDP members in Sokoto knows that getting Muntari Shagari into the Government House Sokoto as governor is as easy as getting the camel through the eye of the needle. For a quick time example, consider the defection this week of the 27 members of the Sokoto state House of Assembly, leaving only three behind. Of the three, each has his reasons, all unrelated to Muntari Shagari, including Bala Musa who represents Yabo constituency and Shagari Local Government. Gatau Mustapha is staying because of his friend Bello Suleiman whose vaunting ambition threw him out of favour with Wamakko, while Mustapha Hurumi representing Bodinga South is politically independent.  In that context, Shagari is a herdsman without a flock.
And if the imagination is stretched a little farther, unless something extraordinary happens, not even the older Shagari would shake a fruit from the Wamakko tree. Moreover, the likes of Arzika Tambuwal, Garba Ila Gada, Ladan Shuni and company who parade the presidency as PDP stalwarts in Sokoto are spent horses, and of no help to Shagari’s dream at all.