The presidential blunder in Kano

While millions of Nigerians are groaning in the difficulties of insecurity and poverty, the PDP government has clearly demonstrated that it is indeed the problem with Nigeria. The bombs are a daily affair in the North East, most tragically on Monday night, few hours before Jonathan went to Kano to say many lies and untruth, […]

While millions of Nigerians are groaning in the difficulties of insecurity and poverty, the PDP government has clearly demonstrated that it is indeed the problem with Nigeria. The bombs are a daily affair in the North East, most tragically on Monday night, few hours before Jonathan went to Kano to say many lies and untruth, several young girls in a secondary school in Chibok, Borno state were seized by men suspected to be members of the insurgent group, Boko Haram.
Pretending as if nothing was happening, the gang went to Kano a day after tens of innocent lives were lost in a senseless bomb blast in a motor park at Nyanya, a suburb of Abuja, to receive Ibrahim Shekarau who was a Governor in the state for eight years but had nothing visible to show for that tenure despite the resounding support that his party, the ANPP received from the masses of the people of Kano in 2003 and won reelection in 2007.
Ibrahim Shekarau changed from the APC to the PDP recently along with Attahiru Bafarawa, a former Governor of Sokoto State. Unlike Attahiru Bafarawa who single handedly struggled against dominant political forces in Sokoto to win the Governorship election in 1999, Shekarau was a beneficiary of the mass movement, which saw the entry of General Buhari into electoral politics in 2003.
In fact it was Ibrahim Ali Amin who won the party’s primary election in the state but Shekarau was preferred mainly by General Buhari and the voters in Kano returned him as governor after the election. As said earlier, he reigned for eight years but the only thing people heard from Kano was unfortunate religious sermonization with very little or no concrete achievement as far as infrastructure and development of human capital were concerned in the state.
When the current Governor, who was defeated by Shekarau in 2003 was elected to replace Shekarau eight years later, the result in Kano is visible and all of us from the Northern part of the country especially have seen the practical meaning of governance in contemporary Kano and I m not surprised therefore that a Shekarau would naturally be uncomfortable given the tremendous resources that accrued to the state during his tenure in comparison to what people can see as dividends of democracy in Kano state.
 I was not surprised when Shekarau changed tent immediately Governor Kwankwaso moved to the APC. My shock is at the level of low intelligence that the man is made of. For instance, it is on record that Ibrahim Shekarau did not have a hundred thousand Naira when he was elected Governor of Kano state. The man has forgotten that now and is assuming that, that election was won because of his popularity. The low intelligence is manifested in the failure to understand that he has an over bloated impression of his political personality and that was equally shown when he contested the presidency in 2011. The total number of votes he got if compared with the resources spent even on national campaign would show that each of the votes was so exorbitant because they were few in any case.
When the president was in Kano he told many untruths but I m not surprised because I know my president suffers from deficiency of vocabulary and grammar even though he is a doctor of philosophy in one of the biological sciences.
It is a comedy for a non-performing president to stand in Kano and claim that Governor Kwankwaso has embezzled local government funds. This is far from the truth given the massive projects that are visibly seen all over the state in the area of infrastructure and education especially.
Even those states in the Niger Delta area where billions are paid to them every month from the federation account in the name of derivation, I have not seen any that has sent as many young people to school as Kwankwaso did in Kano.
Possibly President Jonathan is confused on what embezzlement means in English. He lacks the moral capacity to stand before Nigerians to accuse any state government official of corruption or embezzlement in the face of the outrage we hear and see every day against very senior official of the federal state.
Are Nigerians that daft as to be taken for a ride by their president? I think what the president is facing at the moment is desperation and confusion that both himself and the ruling party are understanding very painfully the seeming definition and perception that they have run out of steam and are likely to be rejected Nigerians in 2015.
Bamanga Tukur has done a wonderful job in taking the party to its present ‘heights’. Power slipping off the hands incumbents is a traumatic experience which Nigerian political elites would rather not contemplate. This is about to happen and I see it happening soon.
This piece is of the strong view that what the president said in Kano on Tuesday was mere expression of desperation and inability to comprehend what political leaders can do when they are serious. It is advisable that another lie be couched for Mr. President but this one said in Kano was not only laughable but more implicating to both the President, his party and the so called ‘big catch’ they were welcoming into their fold. They need not to celebrate because their catch is a paperweight in contemporary Kano politics. I don’t hail from there but I am very interested in what is happening there in view of the gigantic achievements that we see and hear of on a daily basis.
I think it is better for the president and his party to concentrate on trying to resolve the endemic national challenges the nation is facing rather than this waste of time and resources. One of the benefits of periodic elections even in those societies where irregularities form the fulcrum of elections is that a lie told consistently and several times often looses meaning and acceptance by the people.
I have seen more justifiable application of resources in Kano in the last three years much more than we saw in the eight years of Ibrahim Shekarau. I have also seen more judicious use and application of resources in Kano than I have seen in the Jonathan presidency in the last five years that the president was in office.
It is an embarrassment that political leaders would resort to blatant lies and untruth just in order to cover up for their obvious failures. At least, the people are beneficiaries or victims of policies or the lack of them.