PEOPLE AND POLITICS BY MOHAMMED HARUNA

The ABC of the Storm in Power State

kudugana@yahoo.com

            Penultimate Sunday, Thisday reported the Governor of Niger State – a.k.a. Power State, not, as is widely but mistakenly believed, due to the fact that it probably has the country’s single biggest collection of retired generals including two former heads of state, but due to the fact that all the hydroelectric dams in the country are in the state – Dr. Muazu Babangida Aliyu, as reproaching the retired generals in his state for fiddling while the state burnt as a result of the on-going feud between himself and his predecessor, Engineer Abdulkadir Kure.

            “It is surprising,” Thisday quoted Governor Aliyu as saying, “that with elders like General Ibrahim Babangida, General Abdulsalami Abubakar, General Gado Nasko and General Garba (sic) Wushishi… in the state, no meaningful effort has been made to resolve the crisis when it is a clear fact that people come from outside the state to seek solutions to their problems.” The governor reportedly said this - and more - at a forum on national electoral reform organized by the Economic and Social Advisory Council of Niger State (ESACON), headed by Alhaji Shehu Ahmadu Musa, Makama Nupe.

            The genesis of the crisis the governor referred to goes back to the primaries for the governorship of the state’s ruling Peoples’ Democratic Party in December last year. During the primaries, the party was split right down the middle between a faction led by the then governor on the one hand and the party leadership under Alhaji Abubakar Magaji, on the other. Whereas Kure supported Alhaji Jibrin Bala Guna Alhassan, his permanent secretary for Local Government Ministry, Alhaji Abubakar, hitherto the governor’s political alter-ego, insisted on Alhaji Idris Abubakar Azozo, the governor’s initial choice.

            The feud between Kure and Abubakar became so bitter that the governor was said to have prevailed on the paramount ruler of his emirate, Lapai, to strip Abubakar, who also happened to come from the same emirate, of his traditional title. But as is often the case with so many political feuds, in the end the two kissed and made up, metaphorically speaking, of course. The party primaries then went off somewhat smoothly if not fairly and freely and, as was to be expected, the governor’s candidate prevailed; Alhassan came first with 3,579 vote while Azozo, Abubakar candidate, came a distant fourth with 542 votes.

            Then when everything seemed to be going smoothly for Kure, the EFCC suddenly renewed its long-running investigations of corruption allegations against his administration. Alhassan, as co-signatory to the Local Government Joint Account that governors all over the country routinely raided as their piggy banks, became a primary target of the renewed investigations. This clearly undermined the viability of his governorship bid.

            It is not clear how it happened but in mid February Kure seemed to have been forced by some superior force to drop Alhassan and replace him with Dr. Muazu Babangida Aliyu, in spite of the fact that Aliyu was not even a card carrying member of the PDP. He was a permanent secretary in Abuja when the replacement took place. This apparently sowed the seed of the rift between the two, a rift which seemed to have only deepened and widened with time.

            Less than a month after Aliyu was sworn in as governor, he set up a Debt Verification Committee to look into a flood of claims for unpaid bills for the contracts Kure awarded. At the end of the exercise the Committee reported widespread misappropriations of the state’s resources, the sordid details of which need not detain us here.

            Predictably Kure saw this exercise as aimed at his reputation and fought back. In what many presumed was the handiwork of Kure, Alhassan went to the Federal High Court, Kaduna, on November 16, to challenge the election of Aliyu as governor. His replacement by Aliyu, he said, was illegal and unconstitutional. He therefore prayed the court to annul Aliyu’s election and declare himself as governor.

            Kure followed up Alhassan’s petition with a one-page paid advert titled ‘No Cause for Alarm’ in the Leadership WEEKEND of December 1. “I am”, he said, “aware of the setting up of Kangaroo administrative panels of inquiries and its white papers written by government cronies. The government embarked upon this fruitless venture because of the court case in Kaduna Federal High Court challenging the legality of the substitution of the PDP candidate Jubril Bala Alhassan with Dr. Muazu Babangida Aliyu in the last governorship election. The entire case is POLITICAL and therefore it shall come to pass”

            Again predictably, the Niger State authorities replied Kure, albeit by proxy; one Comrade Bala Umar, speaking on behalf of a Movement for Progressive and Better Niger State, signed a two page advert that appeared first in Daily Sun on December 5 and in Daily Trust the following day. In the advert, Umar said, among other things, that “It is unfortunate that Kure’s Imperial reign for 8 years was sustained unchallenged because several individuals in high places were compromised with unsolicited patronage which explains why nobody could talk to him and he got away with everything.”

            Finally last Friday the Niger State Government set up a judicial commission of inquiry into Kure’s management of the state’s finances during his tenure.

            The following Sunday, Leadership SUNDAY reported Governor Aliyu as further lambasting the retired generals for doing nothing about his feud with Kure. The generals, he reportedly said, had become liabilities instead of assets to the state.

            Last Monday, however, Leadership reported the governor as denying that he had condemned the generals. His chief spokesman, Malam Jibril Suleiman, told the newspaper that his boss was quoted out of context. The governor, he said, was too mature, too educated and too experienced to dismiss the generals in his state as liabilities rather than assets.

            Whatever Governor Aliyu may or may not have said, few Nigerians would be surprised at the feud between himself and his predecessor, especially because they both belong to the ruling party whose leadership has shown zero tolerance for internal democracy. It is one of the big ironies of the recrimination between Kure and Aliyu that both were beneficiaries of the manipulations of the party’s affairs by the powers-that-be in the party at both the local and national levels.

            Even then I believe Governor Aliyu has been somewhat unfair both to himself and to the retired generals in accusing them of fiddling while their state burnt. The governor certainly does need not only the retired generals but other elders in the state to help him put out the fire in the state. Their intervention, however, is only a necessary but not sufficient condition for putting out the flames.

             As governor, he should know that the buck stops on his table. And as someone who clocked 50 recently, he should know that he is no longer an adolescent, much less a child. As an adult and an experienced civil servant surely the governor knows that decisions have consequences and therefore his decision to accept the ticket of a party he had not been a member of, at least officially, was bound to have consequences.

            The governor has also been unfair to the generals because he himself knows that at least some of them have indeed tried to intervene to settle his feud with his predecessor. I know for fact that General Abdussalami Abubakar tried not less than three times to sit the two of them together in a room to iron things out, but for some perhaps not-so-inexplicable reason, Kure always backed out.

I also know for fact that both General Abubakar and General Babangida and the Etsu Nupe, Alhaji Abubakar Yahaya, as the chair of the Niger State Council of Emirs, had severally pleaded with Alhassan, Kure’s candidate, to withdraw his court case. In all cases he merely promised to consult his people but continued with the case regardless.

            Having said this, it must also be pointed out that the generals on their part - General Babangida in particular – are not entirely blameless. Whether it is true or not, Babangida has come to be widely regarded in Niger State as the only voice Kure listens to, especially given the fact that back in 2003 he stood alone of all the elders in the state, both ex-soldiers and civilians, in his support for Kure’s second term.

            Most Nigerlites believe Kure has stubbornly refused to talk his difference out with Governor Aliyu because Babangida has not mounted enough pressure on the former governor. This belief may be wrong but it is a stubborn fact that only Babangida and Kure can do something to change.

            I said all this on the two occasions I offered a word of advice on these pages to Kure and Babangida, the first time on February 25, 2004 and the second on February 7, this year. On the second occasion, Babangida, in his characteristic tolerance, only gave me a gentle wrap on the knuckles. Kure, on the other hand, subjected me to a lengthy diatribe on the phone at the end of which he told me Allah Ya isa, meaning God will judge between the two of us.

            In this particular case it does look like the good Lord has been swift in His reckoning. My only prayer is that the feud between Kure and his successor should end quickly so that the poor and hapless people of Niger State will begin to see an end to their seemingly eternal suffering.