Yahaya Bello and the manna from heaven

Alhaji Yahaya Bello will be beaming with smiles today when APC national chairman Chief John Odigie-Oyegun formally introduces him to newsmen as the party’s nominee to replace its late Kogi State governorship candidate, Prince Abubakar Audu. Ambitious politicians all over Nigeria will be biting their lips at Yahaya Bello’s good fortune. He is the first […]

Alhaji Yahaya Bello will be beaming with smiles today when APC national chairman Chief John Odigie-Oyegun formally introduces him to newsmen as the party’s nominee to replace its late Kogi State governorship candidate, Prince Abubakar Audu. Ambitious politicians all over Nigeria will be biting their lips at Yahaya Bello’s good fortune. He is the first person in Nigeria since Rotimi Amaechi to be nominated straight into a waiting governor’s chair. Amaechi was overwhelmingly elected by the Supreme Court to be Governor of Rivers State; Bello won his landslide victory in the APC National Working Committee.
True, Bello will not be declared as Kogi State governor by the INEC-appointed returning officer until a supplementary poll is conducted in 91 polling units this weekend. Everyone however knows that this is a mere formality. Even as Oyegun holds up his hand, Bello has inherited 240,000 votes cast in a governorship election. His main rival on Saturday, Governor Idris Wada of PDP, has not a dog’s chance of overcoming his electoral deficit. If state-wide voter turnout in the November 19 election is any guide, less than half of the 40,000 people eligible to vote in the supplementary election will turn up at the polls.  Indeed, a report said only 25,000 of them have permanent voters’ cards so even if all of them turn up and vote for Wada, he will still fall 16,000 votes short of Bello’s haul. We have been hearing of the biblical manna from heaven all our lives but this is the first time that we are seeing it with our own eyes, electorally speaking.
Yahaya Bello is however not sleeping with his two eyes closed. Daily Trust on Sunday reported yesterday that he was frantically holding meetings with Audu’s top aides and had made a “mouth watering” offer to them in return for their support. Although Bello holds most of the trump cards in Kogi politics right now, he does not hold all of them and there are some deft moves that he must make in order to prevent the manna from flying back to heaven. His dangling of juicy carrots before Audu’s men is more than an act of charity. Sure, it was a combination of their late principal’s forceful personality, his strategic genius, his rich political experience, his deep pockets and his never say die attitude, coupled with the good fortune of his coming from the state’s largest ethnic group, that enabled the APC ticket to garner all those votes and to stand a hair’s breadth short of outright victory in the election. Audu and his top aides have won three governorship elections in Kogi State since its creation in 1991; they are far and away the state’s most redoubtable politicians.
Right now, there is almost nothing they can do to stop Bello from clinching the crown this weekend. Though most of the supplementary votes are coming from Kogi East, their main stronghold, Bello will win even if he loses all those votes. It was with good reason that Audu’s men came up with the idea that APC should nominate Prince Mohammed Audu to replace his father as governorship candidate. In Nigerian political terms this idea made a lot of sense. I do not know if the junior Audu has the educational, career, character and political qualifications to govern Kogi State. All I know is that he cannot be worse that many men who became governors of their states. For the Audu men, the most important thing is not whether Mohammed Audu will govern the state well. It is that he is the person who can be relied upon to fulfil all the personal promises of appointments and contracts that his father made in the course of the campaign and the election.
Mohammed Audu was said to be a top aide of his father who controlled financial disbursements during the campaign. In which case he already knows everyone who contributed to the campaign’s success and probably also knows most of the promises that Audu made. Even if he doesn’t, he only has to be told that “your father promised me so-and-so” and he will inherit the promise. Such an arrangement would have borrowed one of the strengths of royal palaces. When a new emir succeeds his father, you only have to tell him that “our father the late emir, may Allah be pleased with him, promised me so-and-so.” 
Yahaya Bello may not need Audu’s men and their political sagacity to win Saturday’s supplementary election but he will surely need them to stabilise the party and the state. Some youths were already rioting in Kogi East and only Audu’s men can silence them. Bello knows the stuff that Audu’s men are made of since he came up against them in September’s APC primaries. They are now saying that Bello did anti-party activity after Audu defeated him in the primaries. Results of the election also indicate that voters in Bello’s Kogi Central mostly voted for PDP. As a Nigerian politician sees it, neither Bello nor his Igbirra kinsmen deserve the governorship on APC’s ticket. Yet, APC national leaders are correct in that not nominating the man who came second in the primaries could open them up to the Taraba Condition, where Governor Ishaku’s victory was annulled because PDP didn’t hold proper primaries. Bello also has little to lose by granting key posts to Audu’s men. With their leader no longer alive, most of them will migrate to Bello’s camp if he co-opts them.
There are however problems standing in the way. For one, Yahaya Bello has his own people, those who fought for him in the bitter primaries against Audu. They had already given up on any rewards but now that the roasted bird landed smack in their leader’s laps, they expect to have the richest pickings. Bello can borrow a leaf from President Muhammadu Buhari, who appears to value the persons who stood with him through thick and thin more than those who joined him later and enabled him to win the election.
Apart from Audu’s men, Yahaya Bello also has James Abiodun Faleke to worry about. Audu’s old running mate wants the governorship for himself. He has written two angry letters to APC leaders and is likely to go to court as well. The best soap Bello can offer is to retain him as the deputy. If however Faleke quits the ticket in anger, then Bello would have a chance to nominate a running mate from Kogi East. One option is Mohammed Audu. That is, if “Muslim-Muslim ticket” is not a repelling factor in Kogi politics.
There is also PDP to worry about. It has reportedly gone to court to say its candidate Wada should be returned elected [on a platter of diamond] because APC no longer has a candidate in the polls. I doubt if there is a judge in his right mind who will buy this argument. A slightly more viable option for PDP, I think, is to urge the courts to order a fresh election. Even though Wada’s personal unpopularity was a major factor in PDP’s defeat in this election, he could suddenly find himself in an advantageous position in a fresh election, him coming from Kogi East while APC’s candidate is from Kogi Central. Hence the biggest danger to Yahaya Bello’s manna flying back to heaven is for the courts to order a fresh election in Kogi. If that ever happens, APC will badly wish that it fielded Mohammed Audu.