Adamawa Election Re

Adamawa Election Re-Run: A Desperate Party Plays The Ethnic Card

Hamaseyo Mohammed

Since the appeal court sitting in Jos upheld the nullification of the Adamawa governorship election and consequently ordered a fresh election, there has been an intense revival of political activities in the state with the two major political parties in the state positioning themselves to win the fresh elections. The parties are the PDP, whose victory in the April 2007 elections was invalidated, and the AC, which is the main opposition party and the initiator of the legal process that led to the annulment. The AC is made up of supporters of former vice-president Atiku Abubakar who is an indigene of the state and who decamped from the PDP to the AC after he fell out with former president Olusegun Obasanjo. While the PDP made the fairly impressive performance of governor Murtala Nyako during the past eight months and the apparent non-performance of the last AC-led government in the state as the main themes of its campaign, the AC has resorted to playing politics of ethnicity and religion in a desperate bid to capture power.

Instead of highlighting its performance record during its eight year rule in the state to voters, the AC is instead focusing on governor Nyako’s eight-month rule and exploiting a presumed latent historical antipathy that other Adamawa tribes hold against the Fulani. The AC is circulating a hurriedly published journal titled ‘The Broom’ which contains articles that feature a Rwanda-style vilification of the Fulani ethnic group. The articles are deliberately written to incite ethnic hatred by portraying the Fulani as ruthless hegemonic schemers. However, this mean attempt at inciting ethnic and religious hatred throws up a lot of contradictions which the authors of the journal are too much in a hurry to notice.

The first obvious contradiction is that the AC itself is led by people who, at least politically, are considered to be Fulani. They are former vice-president Atiku Abubakar himself, the governorship candidate of the AC Ibrahim Bapetel and his campaign manager, Adamu Modibbo. The AC also boasts of other Fulani personalities like Alhaji Saleh Michika who is a former governor of the state, and Adamu Aliyu Mustapha who is a former commissioner and secretary to the government and a son of the Lamido of Adamawa. It is amazing that the AC, in its desperation to win the non-Fulani vote, could vilify Fulanis in its official journal while overlooking the fact that it is itself led by the same people it is villifying. The second contradiction is that the leader of the AC in Adamawa state, Atiku Abubakar has a close public relationship with the ruler of the Fulani, the Lamido of Adamawa. In addition he holds the title of Turakin Adamawa and is a son in-law of the Lamido. Therefore any scorn they heap on Fulanis in their journal applies to their pre-eminent leader as well.

Apart from the above contradictions, other allegations levelled against the Fulani simply cannot stand when examined closely. One of the main accusations is that the PDP linkman in Adamawa state, Professor Jibril Aminu brought Murtala Nyako into the governorship race in 1997 because he wanted to install a fellow Fulani as governor. If Prof. Aminu was merely looking for a Fulani, shouldn’t he have considered one of the Fulani who were already vying for governorship before Nyako came onto the stage, like Auwal Tukur and Adamu Modibbo? He didn’t do so because he wasn’t merely looking for a Fulani, but a candidate who was formidable enough to wrest control of Adamawa state from Atiku’s political machine and Nyako fits that role very well. In any case, if Prof. Aminu had a ‘Fulani agenda’ why did he help a non-Fulani (Dr. Aliyu Hong, a Kilba) to become a minister against so much opposition?

The AC is accusing governor Nyako of surrounding himself with Fulanis during his eight month rule but when the former Boni Haruna government came into power in 1999, it immediately spent tens of millions of Naira refurbishing the palace of the Lamido of Adamawa and appointed the Lamido’s son into the cabinet. Why did Boni execute his first public project at the Lamido’s palace instead of in non-Fulani areas if he really had their interest at heart? The AC also accused governor Nyako of having a small preponderance of Muslims in his cabinet, but if I may ask, didn’t Boni Haruna have a preponderance of Christians in his cabinet? Why is it suddenly wrong to have a slight preponderance of one religious group in the cabinet? Adamawa is the most unlikely place to lay an accusation of ethnic or religious dominance by one group over others, at least not in Governor Nyako’s eight month government. The four most senior government officials (governor, deputy governor, speaker of the house and secretary to the government) were all from different ethnic groups and three of them were Christians. There aren’t many states in Nigeria where such configuration exists. It is therefore a credit to Adamawa state and to governor Nyako.

Playing the ethnic card by the AC in Adamawa state is a mean-spirited and desperate attempt to grab power by a largely unpopular group who held the state in a vice-like grip of impunity, corruption and stagnation for eight years. After losing at the federal level, Atiku is fearful that losing in the Adamawa state election as well will complete his inevitable slide into political irrelevance. This is therefore his last stand and the end justifies the means. The people of Adamawa state on the other hand, are fed up with Atiku and his group and, by the grace of God, they will be sent into political extinction on 12^th April, the election day.

Hamaseyo Mohammed, Yola Town, Adamawa State.