The governorship race in the North

The governorship race in the North

Mohammed Haruna

When the next general elections in Nigeria begin next month, the most interesting and keenest battles would probably be fought in the vast northern part of the country comprising three of the country’s six geo-political zones. These are the North-Central (a.k.a. Middle Belt), the North-East and the North West. The three make up more than two third of the country’s 924,000 square kilometers and has about 53 percent of its 120,000,000 people. The zone has 19 of the country’s 36 states and the country’s capital, Abuja, which constitutionally has the status of a state, is also located in the region.

At least two things will make the elections in the region interesting and keen. First, in the last general elections four years ago in the region, unlike in the South, none of the country’s three registered political parties— the Alliance for Democracy, the All Peoples Party and the Peoples Democratic Party – was able to monopolize power. In other words, whereas AD monopolized power in the South-West, and PDP monopolized power in the South-East and South-South power was shared in the North’s three geo-political zones between the PDP and the APP.

Of the region’s 19 states, the PDP won the governorship election in 10, i.e. Adamawa, Bauchi, Benue, Kaduna, Kano, Katsina, Nasarawa, Niger, Plateau and Taraba,

The APP, which has since changed its name to ANPP, won the governorship race in the remaining nine states i.e. Borno, Gombe, Jigawa, Kebbi, Kogi, Kwara, Sokoto, Yobe and Zamfara. In at least three of these nine, Kebbi, Sokoto and Zamfara, the PDP dominated the state legislature and the local government councils, the third of the three-tier government in the country.

All indications are that the region is set to repeat last four year’s keen contest between PDP and ANPP but this time with at least two of the 27 recently registered political parties joining the fray. These two parties are the National Democratic Party and the United Nigeria Peoples’ Party..

The North is the region to watch not only because several key states are likely to be a free-for-all in the governorship race, but also because it is the region where the contentious Sharia criminal code has taken hold. The religious code is unlikely to be an election issue at the state level, but in the presidential election where the two leading contenders, the ruling party’s Obasanjo and the main opposition ANPP’s Major-General Muhammadu Buhari, hold opposite views on the code, it will be a subject of underground but intense campaigning.

In the next general elections, it is only in the president’s geo-political zone, i.e. the Yoruba speaking South-West, that the results are probably a foregone conclusion—a clean sweep by the AD in the state, legislative and presidential elections. In the last elections, the AD rejected Obasanjo, whom the Yorubas saw as a Northern candidate, in preference to Chief Olu Falae, the candidate of the APP/AD alliance. This time, the South-West is determined to support their own son to the hilt. As a result, AD has decided not to field a presidential candidate in return for a substantial number of ministerial and ambassadorial jobs, among other things.

While this PDP/AD deal means AD will retain its monopoly of power in the South-West, in the remaining five geo-political zones, the elections will be keenly contested. It will be particularly keen in the North which is going into a presidential election without the advantage of incumbency at the centre for the first time since the country’s independence in 1960.

Among the 19 states, the flashpoints during the governorship elections are likely to be Kwara, Kano, Niger, Kaduna and Jigawa.

In the entire region, the electioneering campaigns have been at their most violent in Kwara State. In the last two years there has been violent clashes between two factions within the ruling ANPP. One is led by the governor, retired Rear Admiral Mohammed Lawal, while the other is led by his erstwhile mentor, Dr. Olushola Sraki, the godfather of Kwara politics. There has been several deaths, injuries and extensive damage to property, including the bombing of the premises of a newspaper owned by Saraki, as a result of the clashes.

Saraki, who has been behind the victory of virtually every governor in the state since 1979, appears to have lost control of the ANPP to Lawal; he moved out of it last year and joined the PDP. His son, Dr. Bukola Saraki has since been elected the state’s PDP governorship candidate.

The battle between Lawal and Saraki Jnr. is likely to be very fierce. Even then it is is not going to be a two-party battle because the a third party, the AD, has a strong presence in the state, which straddles the Yoruba speaking South-West and the North. The precursor of AD, the Social Democratic Party, actually ruled the state for three short months after the 1983 elections in September of that year. AD’s candidate is Alhaji Lai Mohammed, a former Chief of Staff of the Governor of Lagos State, Chief Bola Tinubu.

The three-way tussle for power is likely to be won by Saraki Jnr. inspite of Lawal’s power of incumbency. This is because where Ilorin, the state capital with more than half of the population of the state, goes is where the rest of the state goes. So far no governor has managed to break Saraki Snr’s hold on Ilorin politics. Besides, Lawal has on several occasions tried to humilate the town’s paramount traditional ruler, Alhaji Ibrahim Sulu-Gambari, whose office, as part of the North’s old emirates, is a highly respected.

Kano has not been as violent as Kwara, but it too has had its fair share of violent protests against visits by senior officials from Abuja including the president himself whose convoy was once booed and stoned by a crowd. This hostility is attributed to Abuja’s opposition to the Sharia criminal code, which is immensely popular in the mainly Muslim state, and partly because of what many see as President Obasanjo’s vendetta against the Abacha family, whose head, the late Head of State, General Sani Abacha, had sentenced Obasanjo to death for allegedly planning a military coup back in 1995.

Its PDP governor, Dr. Rabiu Kwankwaso, is staunchly pro-Obasanjo and for that reason is immensely unpopular in Kano. He is also unpopular because, like virtually all the governors in the country, his record in office has not been particularly impressive. Kwankwaso was also unenthusiastic about introducing criminal Sharia code in the state.

Kwankwaso is likely to face a stiff fight from Alhaji Ibrahim Shakarau, the ANPP’s flagbearer as well as from his former Accountant-General, Alhaji Umar Dan Hassan, the PSP flagbearer, who has the backing of Alhaji Abubakar Rimi, himself a former governor of the state, and one of its leading kingmakers. On the fringe is Dr. Rufai Madaki, a former Managing Director of the Nigerian Export/Import Bank and the flagbearer of the NDP.

Kano looks set to be the scene of a proxy fight between Abuja, which is fully backing Kwankwaso, and a combination of the Abacha family and a group of some kingmakers led by Rimi. Kwankwaso is unlikely to win the fight if the ANPP, as the main opposition party, is able to resolve its internal rift over the election of its flagbearer. The rift has since become a matter of judicial litigation.

Another state likely to be the scene of a proxy fight is Niger. Its PDP governor, Engineer Abdulkadir Kure, is well-known for his opposition to Obasanjo, partly because of Obasanjo’s stand on Sharia which Kure champions and partly because he (Kure) has shown unflinching loyalty to General Babangida in the cat-and-mouse game between the two generals i.e. Obasanjo and Babangida. For this reason, Abuja is determined to defeat Kure, through its support, financial and otherwise, for a former Minister of Commerce in Obasanjo’s government, Mustapha Bello, the governorship candidate of the Peoples Redemption Party one of the newly registered parties.

Most of the state’s elite are unhappy with Kure’s rule. So also are most ordinary people, including workers, whose salaries and pensions often remain unpaid for months at a time. However, the battle for the governorship of the state, like the battle in other states, is unlikely to be fought over performance. Instead, in the state is will be a test of will between Babangida who has reciprocated Kure’s loyalty, and Abuja, which is determined to humiliate Babangida as a payback for his widely suspected attempt to scuttle Obasanjo’s second bid for PDP’s ticket, an attempt which nearly succeeded.

In Jigawa, the race to Government House will be a keen one, complicated by a serious intra-party rift within the ruling ANPP. It will be a keen contest because of speculations that the ruling PDP is determined to wrest it, along with Kebbi State, from the ANPP. PDP is said to regard the two states as the weakest links in the ANPP chain. Jigawa is regarded as particularly vulnerable because its governor, Dr. Saminu Turaki, a brilliant computer expert, is notorious for ruling the state by e-mail.

Turaki has been challenged for the party’s ticket by Alhaji Bashir Dalhatu, a former Minister in Abacha’s cabinet and his son-in-law. Bashir had challenged the party’s declaration of Turaki as its flagbearer in the courts. The case is still pending at the time of going to press.

In Kaduna, the race to Government House is essentially a local affair. Its governor, Alhaji Ahmed Mohammed Makarfi, has done comparatively well in providing infrastructure and keeping the state’s civil servants happy. He has also done particularly well in balancing the conflicting demands by the Muslim and Christian halfs of the state over the introduction of Sharia in the state.

The elections would have been a shoo-in for the governor, but for his somewhat inexplicable falling out with his erstwhile campaign manager and Commissioner of Finance, Alhaji Suleiman Othman Hunkuyi, who has since decamped from the PDP to the rival ANPP. Hunkuyi was reputed to have mobilized grassroots support for the governor during the last election, at a time Makarfi was little known. He had remained the governor’s campaign manager until late last year. Speculations are that the two fell apart because the governor refused to support Hunkuyi’s wish to contest for a senate in the state.

Apart from the governor’s loss of a capable campaign manager now turned rival, Makarfi’s may also have difficulties because of his staunch support for Obasanjo. These two factors may cause an upset in the governorship race in the state.

The race is however not entirely a two-horse race between Makarfi and Hunkuyi, both of whom are from the Northern part of the state which is predominantly Muslim. Two other contestants, retired Major-General Joshua Madaki, a former military governor, Mr. Tom Mataimaki Maiyashi, a former Commissioner of Information in the state, are also major political figures in the state. Madaki is representing AD while Maiyashi is representing the PRP which once ruled the state. Both are from Southern Kaduna. Their entry into the race is likely to make some inroads in Makarfi’s support from that part of the state.

In Nasarawa, it looks like a straight fight between the incumbent, Alhaji Abdullahi Adam, and Senator Haruna Abubakar, former Deputy Senate President Abubakar won his senate seat on the platform of the PDP but has since moved to the NDP because of his bitter rivalry with the governor who has maintained a firm grip of the PDP machinery in the state.

The battle in the state would be closely fought if Adamu manages to scale through on-going investigations by the Independent Corrupt Practices Commission of serious allegations against him of fraud. Apart from the shadow the investigation is casting over his chances, the governor faces in Senator Abubakar an opponent who is reputed to be immensely wealthy, having made his fortune as the managing director of a subsidiary of the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation (NNPC) during the Abacha years.

Should Adamu be forced to step down because of the allegations, there are speculations that his former deputy, Mr. Solomon Ewuga, who later became a junior minister of the Federal Capital Territory on the governor’s recommendation, is being kept on standby by the authorities in Abuja, to replace Adamu. If this happens, the chances are that the next governor of the state will be Senator Abubakar.

Benue would have been an easy win for the PDP whose incumbent, George Akume, is in the good books of Abuja and is fairly popular in the state. However, the Zaki-Biam massacre in 2001 of Tivs, by far the largest tribe in the state, by the military, has been the party’s albatross and would probably lead to its loss to the ANPP, whose flagbearer, Paul Unongo,has been a perennial contestant for the state’s governorship since 1979. Here, it is significant that President Obasanjo campaign train which kicked off on February 14 from Makurdi, the state’s capital, presumably as a gesture of contrition over the massacre, was poorly attended. Also significant was that Akume was conveniently away abroad on medical grounds on the week of the campaign.

In Borno State the incumbent, Mala Kachalla, may return. If he does, the state will be lost to ANPP on whose platform he became governor. Kachalla lost the governorship primaries to his erstwhile mentor Senator Modu Sheriff, and subsequently moved to AD. He has since been elected its governorship candidate. His chances of retaining his job is mainly hinged on the support of he has from the Shehu of Borno, Alhaji Mustapha Umar El Kanemi, the second ranking traditional ruler in the North, after the Sultan of Sokoto.

Outside Kano, Kaduna, Niger, Nasarawa and Benue, the remaining five states governed by the PDP, are likely to return their governors with little fight from the opposition. The five PDP states are Adamawa (Bonni Haruna), Bauchi (Ahmadu Adamu Muazu), Katsina (Umaru Yar’adua), Plateau (Joshua Dariye) and Taraba (Rev. Jolly Nyame). The ANPP states whose governors are likely to come back are Kebbi (Mohammed Aliero), Yobe (Bukar Abba Ibrahim), Sokoto (Attahiru Bafarawa) and Zamfara (Ahmad Sani). In these states, opposition forces are either non-existent or they are too divided among themselves to pose a formidable threat to the ruling party.