Third Term and Northern Governors

Third Term and Northern Governors

Sam Nda-Isaiah

Many Northerners are beginning to complain about their governors. They feel embarrassed that despite their overwhelming opposition to the third term project in the North, their governors could not adopt a common position on the issue during the just concluded meeting of the Northern Governors Forum (NGF).

Governor Bukola Saraki of Kwara State, who is the current chairman of the NGF and who on their excellencies’ behalf read out the communiqué, said they (the governors) had agreed to consult widely with their constituencies on the matter of third term.

What else do they need to know that their people have not said loudly enough? Is it not clear enough what the views of their people are by now? And if I remember well, it is not too long ago that their excellencies in the NGF read a communiqué to the public in which they declared that they would accept nothing other than power shift to the North in 2007. What has changed since then?

I am not exactly an advocate of power shift as I believe that democracy should be allowed to have its way, but if anything has changed since the last time the governors took a position on it, they should inform Nigerians.

If the governors are no longer interested in power shift, they should simply call an emergency meeting of the NGF and renounce their early position or, better still, declare that they now want Obasanjo to continue for another 12 years since he has performed so well in the last seven years in uplifting the living standards of their people.

But from the picture that was presented by the Northern governors after their meeting last week, it was clear that five of the governors didn’t need to do any further consulting with their people. Governors Abdulkadir Kure, Boni Haruna, George Akume and Ahmed Sani had their own separate press conference in which they restated that they and their people were opposed to any greedy third term agenda.

The fifth governor, Dalhatu Bafarawa of Sokoto State, who was absent from the meeting because he was attending to issues relating to the burnt Sokoto market, had consistently made himself clear on the matter. He is against the third term agenda, as are his people and he owes no one an apology about that.

During the public hearing on the amendment of the 1999 constitution, only two members of the NGF, as far as I can remember, came out openly to declare their support for the hated third term project. Governors Modu Sheriff of Borno State (I don’t know whether to call him SAS of GAS now) and Bukar Abba Ibrahim of Yobe State. But, even then, it was obvious that their views were self-serving and not representative of their people’s views.

In Borno, for instance, the governor formed a committee of elders to advise him on the third term project and the committee’s findings were clear and unmistaken: The people of Borno state were overwhelmingly against the loathsome third term project.

Even the government officials on the committee did not differ. But the governor who is not even a member of the president’s PDP wanted to railroad everyone into believing that his people supported the Obasanjo third term project, so much so that they were only waiting for an opportunity to vote for it. But if anyone needs to know the view of Borno people on third term, all he or she needs do is ask Senator Umar Hambagda how he escaped death by the skin of his teeth last weekend.

The Borno governor really amazes people with his position on the third term issue. He is currently the caretaker chairman of the ANPP, a party that fate had entrusted with the challenging position of opposition party.

So, if he is now Obasanjo’s stooge, as we all know he is, are we to expect that he will deliver the ANPP root, stem and leaves to Obasanjo?

With the way he has carried on the issue of third term, is there any reason to believe that he was not planted by Obasanjo in the ANPP, the same way that he (Obasanjo) planted Alhaji Ahmed Abdulkadir (Joe) in the AD a few years ago?

Abdulkadir is now special adviser to the president on manufacturing after he successfully handed over the AD to Obasanjo for peanuts.

Does it not bother SAS (or GAS, whichever he prefers) that Nigerians who are now yearning for an alternative to the PDP mess are not trooping into his ANPP but the new ACD? Does he care for his political future? As a young governor, who I am told is also a performer, he should care.

What bothers me is that many of these governors should be aspiring to be president of Nigeria after performing creditably as governors for eight years.

Or is it, as Boni Haruna said recently, that many of those pretending to support Obasanjo’s third term bid have a lot to hide or are afraid of going to jail? Why should any young, dynamic and performing governor – and there are many of them that fit this description – sacrifice his political future for the old age of one greedy man?

Why should these governors, a majority of whom are in their 40s and 50s, be afraid of someone like Obasanjo who does not even have a political base?

Why can’t they, like Gov. Bola Tinubu of Lagos and Orji Uzor Kalu of Abia State, just call the president’s bluff and tell him the truth to his tired face; which is that their people are against him and they can only tolerate him up until May 29, 2007? Who is Obasanjo anyway that they can’t tell him that?

If the president is blackmailing them, as we all know he is delightfully doing, and holding them hostage, why can’t they also tell him to his face that he is the more corrupt one and mention his association with Transcorp, corrupt fund-raising for his presidential library, fiddling with excess crude earnings as if they are part of his ancestral estate, the privatisation exercise and the several other abuses of his office as incontrovertible evidence?

Or, as we all know, why won’t they use the excessive bribing of members of the National Assembly that is currently taking place as evidence of massive corruption against him?

I will like to advise their excellencies, many of whom I admire greatly for different reasons, to tread the paths carved by their more intrepid (and now immensely popular) colleagues Kure, Bafarawa, Haruna, Akume and Yariman Bakura. The third term issue must never be underestimated. It is the most potentially precarious matter since 1999 and people, especially their people, are not even going to accept fence-sitters.

If they don’t all come out now and save what is remaining of democracy, they will all be the losers. And when the day of reckoning comes, the only question that would be asked would be, “What did you do to stop the third term?” And when that time comes, it is the answer of the people, and not their own, that would matter.