Now that Ribadu has clinched the PDP ticket

The hallmark of an opinion columnist is that he maintains objectivity, and that the topical matters are not taken personally. I must admit that the better part of me tells me not to write on Nuhu, as it may be wrongly construed to mean it is a personal thing. Months ago, I had written this […]

The hallmark of an opinion columnist is that he maintains objectivity, and that the topical matters are not taken personally. I must admit that the better part of me tells me not to write on Nuhu, as it may be wrongly construed to mean it is a personal thing. Months ago, I had written this column under the heading “Nuhu Ribadu, don’t do it”, when the idea was mooted that a group in the Adamawa Peoples Democratic Party had approached and were proposing economic and financial crimes buster Nuhu Ribadu, to convert from the All Progressives Congress to the Peoples Democratic Party as the Party’s flag bearer for Adamawa Governor in 2015 or even earlier. I received email from not quite a few prominent elder statesmen who commended the passion with which I had appealed to Nuhu Ribadu not to cross the divide, thin as it may be, between All Progressives Congress (APC) and PDP.
The comments I received agreed that the posture I gave was touching, that “Nuhu Ribadu though young, has carved a niche for himself, not by any means as an accidental public servant like Nasiru el Rufa’i, but a dedicated and passionate professional law officer, catapulted by President Olusegun Obasanjo to direct the inception of the newly founded Economic and Financial Crimes Commission. Nuhu Ribadu left an admirable template for accomplishing his task. Nuhu is by no means a small fry in the Nigerian political scene, indeed so much clout did he command that in 2011, Action Congress of Nigeria fielded him as its Presidential candidate, and preferred to lose at the stakes than drop Nuhu and merge with Buhari’s CPC which could have won, were the merger consummated”.
I stated then that “my worry is for Nuhu Ribadu who has held promise to succeed Muhammadu Buhari as a principled patriot, building for himself a clean and unblemished record of never compromising with fraud. It disturbs, to imagine a betrayed Muhammadu Buhari whose name alone guaranteed some Governors in office today, the seats that they occupy, and Nuhu certainly, equally stands to benefit from the name. To carpet cross from APC to PDP on the promise of an automatic ticket is fraudulent and quite unlike Nuhu Ribadu, and the repercussion will be a lost character and bearing for such a brilliant promise. It would have served better if he had pocketed the dollars bribe millions in the Ibori case. It also assumes that PDP is the winning party by hook or by crook and watching what happened in Osun gives me hope that you do not have to be in PDP in order to win”.
My position then is my position today. It was not personal then, and it is not personal now. But things are not the same. Muhammadu Buhari is once more sweating it out to win the Presidential candidate nomination of the All Progressives Congress. If he does not succeed in this congress, it will be harder for his name to deliver any governorship position to any aspirant, more so for even serving APC Governors.
Invariably besides, people will choose between individuals as has always been the case. In Adamawa State as things stand, we will be looking at Nuhu Ribadu PDP, and Bindow Jubrilla APC. Fundamental of course would be the development master-plan – who offers one, and if they both do, who can be held to a promise between the two of them? It is therefore not as easy as choosing a political party from another. Then I expect that there will resource transfer and arm twisting whose outcome will affect the decision to migrate to another political party, revealing more options.
I do not lose sleep, much as I had expressed my motivation which was my wish for a clean break for Adamawa State, possible only with a clean starter which PDP had needed to offer in one of their non controversial hopefuls, and also likewise, APC in Ribadu, only if his promoters dared to test his popularity devoid of the nudging of the Aso Rock Villa cabal. But of course Nuhu Ribadu as an individual has every right to associate with any individual or any organization. That much also, the people of Adamawa do have a right to make their choices and express the choice they make with their vote. One right superseding another’s right is definitely unbearable and certain to undermine an already fragile stability. Hence my tweet in that outing to Nuhu Ribadu – please don’t do it. But Nuhu Ribadu did do it in spite of me, proof that the world turns independent of the opinion of anyone, least of all, me. Nuhu is a compatriot, full grown and definitely well accomplished. In that wise, I wish him well in the 2015 election in which for now the choice is between Nuhu and Bindow.
In years to come, history will regurgitate these events of the past weeks, and laying bare our own chewing of the harvests we made of our professed building of an enduring democracy. Would any dog eat the vomit? That, only time will tell. Have we heard the last of this? It depends on how the feet trampled upon in the PDP to make way for Nuhu Ribadu take it. In the party way, rules obtain that say something like the PDP makes you and unmakes you. You must learn to roll with the punches or brace up and take some body shots and at times knock out upper cuts. If you look at the party, its history is replete with people laughing once and crying at other times. And one who should remember is none other than the National Party Chairman, Ahmadu Adamu Mu’azu, today, playing god, making and unmaking. In 2007, we went to sleep on election night and woke up to find that Isa Yuguda in Bauchi, who had been banished and had carpet-crossed to CPC, eventually whipped our behind and rubbed our noses so hard, we cannot have forgotten, can we? If Bauchi in 2007 was lost to Isa Yuguda, we might as well brace up for the PDP loss of many States to ‘decampees’ given the many feet trampled upon, of people with say in the States. The bold bottom line is that we have not got the democracy right. We are breaking rules and the norms that in turn affect our being as humans and a nation. The challenge is bigger than electing the governor for a state.