Buhari Campaign: One Problem Too Many

By

Hassan S. Indabawa

indabawa20022000@yahoo.com

 

 

Governor Ahmed Sani of Zamfara state was reported by the media Thursday March 15, as having resigned his appointment as Director General of the Buhari Campaign Organization. He is said to have cited health reason for his decision to resign. A national daily quoted an unnamed source as linking his resignation to “a serious backache for which a doctor has advised him to take total rest.”

 

Ahmed Sani became the chief driver of the Buhari campaign machine only last month, February 12, when he was also mandated to head the finance committee of the campaign group. Then why would Ahmed Sani resign just 31 days after holding his new office?

 

National chairman of All Nigeria Peoples Party (ANPP) and running mate to General Muhammadu Buhari (Rtd.), Chief Edwin Ume-Ezeoke, has denied knowledge of Sani’s alleged resignation. But there can be no smoke without fire.

 

The Zamfara state governor may heed entreaties on him to remain head of the Buhari campaign efforts, but his resignation or rumour of it is an open sign that the Buhari presidential drive has a long way to go. It evidently suffers from the presence of people who are doing more to stall progress than those genuinely working to push the campaign.

 

We have warned enough of how ANPP lost leading members across the north where the party has its biggest following. We have mentioned the cases of Jigawa where Governor Saminu Turaki joined Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) from the ANPP, Sokoto where Attahiru Dalhatu Bafarawa defected to newly formed Democratic Peoples party (DPP) and where the only person sustaining the ANPP, former deputy governor Aliyu Magatakarda Wammako, left for the PDP. More recently we saw Kebbi state Governor leave the ANPP upon complaints that the ANPP lacks the desired focus and cohesion. We are also witnesses to how Yobe State Governor Bukar Abba Ibrahim is one leg in PDP and the other leg outside for sundry reasons, the latest one of which is the rancorous way the party’s initial gubernatorial aspirant, Senator Usman Albishir, was dropped for his fellow senator, Mamman Bello Ali, because Albishir happened to be in EFCC’s controversial list of party candidates for the April election.

 

We have equally dwelt on how The Buhari Organization (TBO) has refused to leave the scene months after it was supposedly “collapsed” into the mainstream ANPP, and how its members have continued to make new enemies for their principal, Buhari.

 

We have warned Buhari to beware of them, to ask himself why his personal ambition to become Nigeria’s next president is steadily losing the support of people who matter a lot, how he is so ill advised, and how he seems to be taking the wrong steps nearly all the time.

 

Buhari’s indifference to issues involving those who could make a difference to his drive for the Presidency defeats logic. We’ve seen how at a time when Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) released a list involving candidates for different positions under different parties and officials of such parties were disputing the legality of such a list, Buhari would say offhandedly that “indicted” members of the party would not be fielded for the offices they were seeking.

 

Nobody is asking Buhari to disrepsect democratic norms or flout provisons of the constitution. But we have since found out how the EFCC list and government’s white paper can actually not stand the test of time. Unlike Buhari who treated the list as if it was the gospel truth, more self-preserving politicians were able to see the double-dealing nature of it and therefore contested it. Such astute politicans are vindicated today. The nation’s electoral body, Indpendent National Electoral Commission (INEC) acted true enough to the ideal of democracy to have cleared many in that list, including Kano State incumbent governor and ANPP’s gubernatorial candidate for the April election, Malam Ibrahim Shekarau.

 

Buhari was helpful in 2003 in efforts to get Governor Shekarau his first term. No attempt will be made here to deny this. But it is also important to note that Buhari himself was a product of Kano people’s desire to have Sharia fully implemented in the state. Buhari happened to be a symbol of sharia that time. That symbol and the equally appreciated resolve of Shekarau to implement Sharia added together to make Kano give their votes to ANPP’s Shekarau.

 

This equation has long changed. Buhari has now distanced himself from the Sharia project while moving closer to some ethnic groups such as Afenifere, the Yoruba fascist group. He now addresses his northern audience in a language which majority of the Talakawa does not understand. Rather than gaining more states for ANPP, the “Buhari factor” is also costing the party more states less than one month to the general elections. The Buhari–ANPP storm which gathered enough votes for Buhari to come a respectable second to PDP’s Obasanjo in 2003 is a storm terribly whittled down. We hope somebody will note this.

 

As for Shekarau and Kano state, the governor’s second term is just a matter of April 14 when the gubernatorial election will hold. It took only the laucnhing of his campaign on Sunday March 11, for those who doubted his popularity to swallow their disbeleif.

 

While the Nigerian media described Shekarau’s supporters who thronged to the Sani Abacha Stadium for the launch as mammoth, foreign media which chose to give the size in numbers put it in millions. The BBC Hausa service, for instance, estimated the number to be over three million – A very big chunk off the four million registered potential voters.

 

The spectacle of Shekarau’s flag-off re-election campaign and the position of the ANPP on Shekarau both in Kano state and at natonal level must have brought down the heads of his antagonists down in shame. The unprecedented crowd at the stadium and on the streets of well over 3000-long car convoy effectively punctured the claim of self-styled “crowd pullers” who have lost relevance because of their own greediness and anti-people conducts.

 

As the state chairman of the ANPP’s Elder’s Committee, Alhaji Bashir Othman Tofa said at the stadium, it is Kano people who will decide Shekarau’s fate. And Kano people, by all accounts, want Shekarau back by May 29, 2007 for his second tenure.

 

 

Indabawa lives in Kano