Why sack Abba now, GEJ?

Presidential spokesman Reuben Abati said in a surprise statement yesterday that Jonathan relieved the Inspector-General of Police of his appointment and duties “with immediate effect,” a phrase we have not heard in this country since the dark days of military rule. Deputy Inspector-General Solomon Arase was appointed as Acting Inspector-General “also with immediate effect,” according […]

Presidential spokesman Reuben Abati said in a surprise statement yesterday that Jonathan relieved the Inspector-General of Police of his appointment and duties “with immediate effect,” a phrase we have not heard in this country since the dark days of military rule. Deputy Inspector-General Solomon Arase was appointed as Acting Inspector-General “also with immediate effect,” according to Abati. Arase is the current Head of the Force Criminal Intelligence and Investigation Department, FCIID.
I am intrigued by the use of this phrase “with immediate effect” so late in the day. How I wish the Jonathan administration had discovered this phrase much earlier than now. For example, how I wish they rescued the Chibok girls with immediate effect instead of saying it was a plot by some people to embarrass the president. How I wish the missing NNPC money was traced and retrieved with immediate effect, instead of dodging issues for many months. If only Jonathan’s administration had quelled Boko Haram with immediate effect, he would have won last month’s election with immediate effect as well.
Anyway, what is it that Abba did this time to warrant a summary sack? Abati’s statement did not give any reason, thus allowing rumour mongers to take over and fill in the void. Some people are saying that the president is furious that the police did not help him to win the election. I really see with him there because with all the MOPOL commands under Abba, he could have scattered all the voters, destroyed all the PVCs and jammed all the card readers. Some of the professors who were state collating officers could not even see their own result sheets very well, so what stopped Abba from lobbing a few tear gas canisters into the collation centres and make the old professors to go blind altogether so that PDP can write whatever result it wanted for President Jonathan? If Mr. Godsay Orubebe could singlehandedly disrupt the national collation centre, what stopped Abba from disrupting all the centres at once?
I really agree with Orubebe that Abba’s failure to disrupt the collation of results amounted to tribalistic and partisan political sabotage. After all, was he not the one who lobbed several canisters of tear gas at the Speaker of the House of Representatives to prevent him from entering his office because he defected from PDP to APC? Abba even appeared before a House committee probing the incident and said he received a security report that “one Aminu Waziri Tambuwal” tried to badge into the National Assembly illegally. Abba followed up by withdrawing the Speaker’s police orderlies. President Jonathan did not sack him with immediate effect for that action that almost trampled on the Constitution. Now he is sacking him for an undisclosed but certainly much more trivial reason.
Jo, it serves Abba right. It shows how one can survive a trailer accident only to be knocked down by a bicycle.
 
Kwankwaso, don’t bet heavily on Ganduje
Outgoing Kano State governor and senator-elect Rabiu Musa Kwankwaso was quoted yesterday as saying that he is sure his anointed successor, Governor-elect Dr Abdullahi Umar Ganduje will not betray him and will continue to uphold the tenets of Kwankwasiyya, the political movement founded by and centred on Kwankwaso. The governor’s reason for saying that is that he has known Ganduje since 1992, they have been very close politically since then and that in any case Ganduje will need the Kwankwasiyya movement for his future political survival.
Well, none of those is a complete surety. I am not saying that Ganduje will betray Kwankwaso but if it is only because of long association or working together, then the prospects are not good. Kwankwaso should ask his friends such as Ahmed Makarfi, Mohamed Adamu Aleiro, Ahmed Sani Yariman Bakura, Mohamed Danjuma Goje, Chimaroke Nnamani, Abdullahi Adamu, Ali Modu Sheriff, Jolly Nyame and Orji Uzor Kalu, among many others, what happened between them and their chosen successors. Sometimes it is the godfather’s fault, sometimes it is the godson’s fault, sometimes it is the machinations of underlings and sometimes it is just in the nature of power. So Governor/Senator Kwankwaso, don’t bet too heavily on Ganduje…