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Baba, abeg free us

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By Tunde Olusunle

It is just fitting that several words and expressions which etymology derive from Nigeria, have found their ways into global dictionaries. As at 2020, nearly 30 such inventions had been accommodated by the Oxford Dictionary. They include: okada, tokunbo, gist, k-leg, mama put, danfo, bukateria, chop, eat money, among others. Kannywood, ember months, to put to bed, non-indigene, next tomorrow, and many others, have also been wholly adopted into modern day dictionaries. I wonder, however, if the expression, free me has been so taken in. “Free me” evolved from day-to-day conversations on the streets of the Niger Delta. Some people tell us matter-of-factly, that the expression was birthed on the alleys of Warri. The famous, multilingual city is at the heart of Nigeria’s oil-bearing department of the country, crisscrossed by intriguing creeks, breathtaking mangroves and infinite swamps. The Niger Delta region remains an immensely robust contributor to “Nigerian Standard English,” (NSE), as scholars of sociolinguistics will confirm. This is not forgetting the imprimatur of the zone on the entire gamut of contemporary arts and culture. Free me is a widely deployed expression which can be interpreted as “let me be” or “leave me alone.”

In a few weeks from now, maybe days actually, Muhammadu Buhari, Nigeria’s president in the last eight years will be out of office. Nigerians have endured eight long and forlorn, rough and tough, hungry and angry, famished and anguished, dreary and teary years under a man whose desperation to be president, knew no bounds. By his third attempt in 2011, he broke down in listless cry on national television, vowing never to run for the office anymore. Bola Tinubu who ran to succeed him, poked fun at Buhari, while on a pre-presidential primary consultation last year. He jived about Buhari’s trippings on his initial triple attempts, before he, Tinubu strung together the coalition which finally berthed Buhari in 2015. Buhari would, on his inauguration, tell us he was a “born-again democrat.” Buhari’s reelection in 2019 and the more recent pre-transition election last February, have been mired in more opacity than transparency. It has been described as the worst ever witnessed in our electoral history. Indeed, the 2007 elections previously ranked as the most dubious presidential polls, before Mahmood Yakubu led the Independent National Electoral Commission, (INEC), to deliver the most fraudulent elections in Nigeria, ever.

Buhari’s swansong after his largely catastrophic years as Nigeria’s head, however, consists of inflicting more hurt on the national psyche, rather than contrition for his multiple infringements on our collective wellbeing. For the avoidance of doubt, his scoresheet after his eight-year stint in office has been serially interrogated and certified wholly disastrous and grossly uninspiring. His sojourn in the highest office in the land has for the most part, been an earthquaking sham. The misery level of Nigerians have never been as markedly southward under his watch. Ethnoreligious schism; socioeconomic stasis; pervading mediocrity; legitimised corruption; systemic impunity; aggregate insecurity; staggering hyperinflation; disabling unemployment; accentuating poverty; overarching disillusionment have been the engraved insignia of Buhari’s administration. Under him, Nigeria wrested the pendant of nurturing the “most dangerous city to live in the world.” Our good old Lagos wilfully received that baton of dishonour from drug-crazed South American cities, while also being “chartered” as the “poverty capital of the world.” Under Buhari, Nigeria bested previous records of citizens of countries elsewhere in the world, worsted and wasted in peace time.

In recent weeks, Buhari has been soliciting forgiveness from the mass of Nigerians which his superintendence inflicted with discomfort, disorientation and grief. Before his recent supplications, however, his more sensitive spouse, Aisha, had volunteered apologias on his behalf. She recognises for a fact that her husband wilfully, almost, invented and foisted lachrymose on a preponderance of hapless country people, in the course of his tour of duty. Buhari’s sojourn as Nigeria’s political leader, soured the Chronicles of the Happiest People on Earth, as it were. This is the title of the most recent prose work authored by Africa’s first, and West Africa’s only Nobel Laureate for Literature, Wole Soyinka, which one is borrowing. Nigerians have been anything but excitable in the past 96 months of Buhari’s superintendence.

With a not-too-savoury performance curriculum vitae in the estimation of most Nigerians, it was expected that Buhari will quietly disembark from the national political scene when his time is up, and allow Nigerians pick up the smithereens of their lives. Oblivious of the causticity of bile and venom harboured against him by Nigerians, Buhari has been unduly, even irritatingly talkative in recent weeks. Thinking he will be missed while out of office for instance, he announced how very far away he hopes to stay from Abuja the nation’s headquarters. He wouldn’t want to be misconstrued as meddling in governance and administration of the nation, in the successor dispensation.

Buhari hopes to be in his birthplace, Daura in Katsina State in the initial six months of his disembarkation, before relocating to Kaduna, political headquarters of northern Nigeria. Should he find retirement in his primordial home bothersome, Buhari has threatened to migrate to Niger Republic. Daura he posited, is less than 10 kilometres from his traditional roots. Hope Buhari knows he will not be the first Nigerian leader, military or civilian to return to “base” after service to nation. Yakubu Gowon, Olusegun Obasanjo, Ibrahim Babangida, Abdulsalami Abubakar, Goodluck Jonathan before him, have had different addresses in their various home states since they left office. Shehu Shagari lived in his native Sokoto State before his demise. But Buhari has been whining in our ears like a swarm of bees as though his post-disengagement itinerary should be of any special interest or concern to us.

I wish Buhari knows how very eager Nigerians are to see his back. I wish he has an idea about how keen his compatriots Nigerians are about the coming of Monday May 29, 2023 when he will handover to a succeeding leadership. Of course there are genuine and subsisting issues arising from the last general elections. Buhari and his “un-Independent” National Electoral Commission, (INEC), torpedoed popular will and paved the way for the most contentious general elections in Nigerian history. At the last count, a record 1,044 petitions have been filed against the results declared by INEC in the 2023 polls. The National Judicial Council, (NUJ), recently released the names of 257 judges to adjudicate on fall-outs from the elections.

Rather than fizzle out as innocuously as possible, Buhari’s last days are days of accentuated tauntings for hapless Nigerians. Reminds of the Biblical expression in 1 Kings Chapter 12 verse 11, to wit: “My father made your yoke heavy, I will make it even heavier. My father scourged you with whips, I will scourge you with scorpions.” Nigerians were ushered into the new year by an ill-thought currency redesign and replacement. This sucked up liquidity in the economy in the name of inventing a pseudo-cashless milieu, and precipitated unfathomable inconveniencing for the people, and dislocation for the economy. The Poultry Association of Nigeria, (PAN), recently estimated the losses of the industry to be in the neighbourhood of N50 Billion, within the period.

Typical of the sloppiness with which institutions have been administered under Buhari, the national population census earlier fixed for Wednesday May 3 to Friday May 5, 2023, has been put off. This was after an estimated N400 Billion earmarked for the project had probably been released to the National Population Commission, (NPC). It was about the same sum that was spent on the largely controversial elections, results of which in many cases, will be decided by the judiciary. This is just as the lingering impasse about the removal of subsidy on petroleum products has been front-loaded to the incoming administration, another classic example of Buhari’s dodgy approach to issues requiring official willpower and decisiveness.

Still in the twilight of his government, the departing president recently signed up for a foreign loan to the tune of $800 million, from the World Bank. The said sum will, according to its very nebulous description, be used to cushion the after effects of the removal of fuel subsidy by the federal government. Small comfort. Having deferred the subsidy removal until the advent of a new government, popular opinion is that the loan be reverted to its lenders. This is to forestal the wilful siphoning of the fund by adept state officials who have been serially complicit in the impoverishment of Nigeria and Nigerians. This is just as the nation’s foreign indebtedness nears the N45 Trillion mark, with 96% of resources accruing to government committed to debt servicing.

Not done, Buhari this eve of his exit, has announced a regime of new taxes and tarrifs on certain goods, all calculated to further traumatise Nigerians. Finance minister, Zainab Ahmed listed products which will be affected by the new levies to include alcoholic beverages, cigarettes and tobacco. Motor vehicles and telecommunication services including mobile telephony, fixed telephony, internet services will also cost more for Nigerians. Yet these are Buhari’s constituents already groaning, grunting, grieving beneath the dead weight of erstwhile state-spun discomforts. Buhari’s end-time inventions, easily remind of anti-people rulers in the Holy Bible. But this is the parting banquet and bouquet Buhari has laid out for hapless Nigerians.

President Buhari should spare us his previews into his proposed retirement plans. Whether he opts for Maradi or Niamey or Ouagadougou or wherever is not of immediate concern to Nigerians. We should let him know that he will not be missed by most of us. Except of course those who profited from legitimised thieving under his watch, where reptiles, primates and insects became state actors. He will be missed by those suited by his wholesale dismantling of the bridges and binders that hitherto held our multicultural, multilingual, multireligious country together. He should please allow Nigerians pick up their lives from the dizzying abyss he brought them, so they can chart new courses. Introspection into his reign engenders spontaneous pangs of pain. They are better not in our remembrances. Buhari should please free Nigerians and stop taunting us, jare.

Tunde Olusunle, PhD, poet, journalist, scholar and author is a Member of the Nigerian Guild of Editors, (NGE)

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The Labour strike and FG’S Inertia – The way forward

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By Prof. Mike A. A. Ozekhom, SAN, CON , OFR, FCIArb, LL.M, Ph.D, LL.D, D.Litt, D.SC, DA, DHL

Labour has literally grounded Nigeria – from airports, hospitals, tertiary institutions, to electricity which has plunged the biggest black nation on earth into total darkness. I am in full, complete and total support of the Nigeria Labour Congress (NLC) and the Trade Union Congress’ (TUC)’s current national strike for upward review of the FG’s proposed minimum wage of N60,000 per month. NLC and TUC had also demanded that the government reverses the increase in electricity tariff to N65/KWH. When talks broke down with none of the parties shifting grounds, Labour commenced a strike action on the midnight of Sunday 2nd June, 2024. FG’s proposed meagre salary is certainly not a living wage in today’s Nigeria. At the current parallel market exchange rate of N1,470 to one dollar, the wage being conceded by the Federal Government to labour is a mere $40.82 per month (N60,000), while the NLC and TUC are asking for a whooping N615,500 per month.

By way of comparative analysis with some other countries globally, the monthly minimum wage in the United States is US$1,160 ( N1,705,200); UK  £1,376 (N2,528,950); Canada 2,464 CAD (N2,710,400); France £1,539.42 (N2,847,927); Ghana GHC 2,904 (N292,548.96) Rwanda RWF 56,668 (N64,602); South Africa R4,067.2 – R4,412.8 (N322,406.944 –  N349,802.656); Botswana P1,168 (N122,056); Germany £1,985.6 (N3,673,360) Australia AUD3531.2 (N 3,490,414.64); Kenya is KES15,201 (N172,683.36). In UAE, there is no general minimum wage as it differs from profession to profession. However, for skilled Labourers AED 5,000 (N2,019,435); people with University degrees AED12,000 (N4,846,644); qualified technicians AED 7,000 (N2,827,209); South Korea is 2,010,580 Won (N2,161,574.558). China differs from city to city. However, Shanghai is RMB 2,690 per month (N551,181) and Heilongjiang RMB 1,450 (N 297,105). Singapore does not prescribe a general minimum wage for all its workers. However, the minimum Singaporean wage is averaged at 6,792SGD/Month = N7,464,408).

Even though Rwanda and Botswana’s minimum wage per month which is RWF 56,668 (N64,602) and P1,168 (N122,056), respectively, appears meagre, the two countries have since put in place social services that cushion the masses’ suffering and put them on a developmental path. Imdeed, they are two of the fastest growing economies not only in Africa, but also in the world. We do not have such in Nigeria. Nigeria is perhaps the only country in the world that brazenly defies Isaac Newton’s Law of Motion to the effect that “what goes up must come down”. In Nigeria, once prices of good go up, they never come down.

Are these countries and us not living on the same Planet earth? We are, of course.

With the present spirally inflation, N60,000 cannot even buy one bag of rice which today sells for between N80,000 and N120,000 depending on the grade and quality.

What is the way forward from this FG-Labour face-off and stalemate? Part of the solution lies in steering a middle course between labour’s N615,500 per month demand and the FG’s proposal of N60,000 per month. This is more so having regard to the impossibility of the private sector, especially small scale businesses and private professions, having the capacity and economic wherewithal to pay such exorbitant wage. Another solution lies in public office holders making deliberate sacrifices in the midst of public angst and disenchantment by cutting down their ostentatiously vulgar lifestyle of ugly display of opulence and their sheer exhibitionism of wealth in mindless convoys of vehicles in the midst of grinding poverty and wretchedness of the masses. The Nigerian people are not happy at all. Anyone who advises the government to the contrary is nothing but a fawner, bootlicker, ego masseur, toady flatterer and clapper.

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Rivers political crisis: Fubara raves as Wike likely retreats (5)

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Wike, Fubara

By Ehichioya Ezomon 

Has the political heat in Rivers State simmered in the past week to suggest perhaps – just perhaps – that conventional wisdom has taken hold of the dramatis personae in the crisis to pull back from the precipice they’ve pushed the state in the last eight months? 
There’s nothing on the ground to suggest otherwise, even as Governor Siminalayi Fubara and Minister of the Federal Capital Territory (FCT), Chief Nyesom Wike, played their brand of politics at separate locations, trying to undo each other in showcasing achievements in their official jurisdictions, to mark one-year in the saddles in Rivers and Abuja, respectively.
 Amid “all the distractions from those that want to draw Rivers State backward,” Fubara invited prominent persons from within and outside Rivers – including Abia State Governor Alex Otti of the rival Labour Party (LP), and former Rivers Governor Peter Odili – to launch projects he “executed in record time, and with full payments to the contractors” – an obvious dig at Wike for allegedly failing to pay contractors for their services.
 As is the routine in Rivers governance, especially since the Wike’s helm, Fubara, using his “State of the State” address to render account of his one-year stewardship, revealed the “huge debts to contractors” that Wike left behind for his government.
At the Dr. Obi Wali International Conference Centre in Port Harcourt on Wednesday, May 29, Fubara said his administration “inherited 34 uncompleted projects, valued at over N225.279bn in 13 local government areas of the state,” adding that the contractors, who executed the 34 projects, have come to him for payments.
Fubara stated that though he inherited a state, “whose economy was on a declining trajectory despite its growth potential,” his government has changed the narrative for the better by “increasing astronomically internally-generated revenue from N12 billion to between N17 billion in off-peak periods and N28 billion during the peak months.”
 “Our liberalized business-friendly economic policies and programmes are boosting confidence and attracting local and international investors and investments into the State, judging by the expression of interest offers we receive every month.” Fubara said.
 “We have kept our taxes low, frozen the imposing of taxes on small businesses across the State, and increased the ease of doing business by eliminating bureaucratic bottlenecks. No request for the signing of a certificate of occupancy (CoO) remains in my office beyond two days, except if I am otherwise engaged beyond two days or out of town.
 “We have established a N4 billion matching fund with the Bank of Industry (BOI), to support existing and new micro, small, and medium-sized businesses (MSMEs) to grow their businesses to drive economic growth and create jobs and wealth for citizens. Over 3,000 citizens and residents have applied to access this loan to fund their businesses at a single-digit interest rate, and a repayment period of up to five years.”
Commissioning the completed projects – mostly inherited from the Wike administration (2015-2023) – the invited guests heaped praises on Fubara, not only for achieving commendable strides within a short time, but also for “liberating Rivers State” from Wike’s stranglehold – the same Wike that some of the invitees had praised to the heavens barely a year ago. 
  For instance, Dr Odili, an erstwhile ally of Wike, noted that Fubara “has taken full control of governance in the State,” stressing that the governor is “focusing on the people” in line with his chosen mantra: ‘People First’. It’s on Saturday, May 25, at the inauguration of the dualised Omoku-Egbema road in Ogba/Egbema/Ndoni local government area (ONELGA) of the state.
 An elated Odili even predicted a seamless second-term election for Fubara in 2027, and urged him to remain focused on the people, giving succour to the less-privileged and hope to those who do not have anyone to help them go through life’s challenges.
 “I can tell our people that the next election is very far, but what the Governor has done so far, is enough to secure the support of Ogba/Egbema/Ndoni Local Government Area going forward,” Odili said. “Thank you, Your Excellency, because the greatest assets of the State remain the people, not oil and gas.
 “The people of Rivers are behind you, rallying support for you because they trust you, believing in what you say and convinced that you mean whatever you say,” Odili said, adding, “I want to agree with you that the sky would become the takeoff point of your administration.”
Relatedly in Abuja, it’s Wike’s days in the sky. Though he didn’t have the luxury of throwing brickbats at Fubara – and there’s no surrogates to do same for him – Wike had the rare privilege of enlisting President Bola Tinubu to launch some of the projects that were “abandoned for decades,” and received applause from Tinubu for returning and restoring Abuja’s Master Plan, and transforming the Federal Capital Territory (FCT).
On Tuesday, May 28, at the commissioning of the Southern Parkway, which Wike proclaimed as “Bola Ahmed Tinubu Way” – a crucial infrastructure project that’s dormant for 13 years before Wike’s intervention – the President described the minister’s vision as “inspiring many and yielding remarkable results in the FCT.”
Tinubu said: “Barr Nyesom Wike, ‘Mr. Project,’ thank you for giving us this home and for your sincere commitment to shared values. Your revolutionary vision is inspiring many and yielding remarkable results in the FCT.”
Highlighting the significance of the road, the President said, “The Southern Parkway not only connects vital areas within the FCT, but also symbolises our collective aspirations for connectivity, ease of livelihood, and progress. This road will enhance mobility, ease traffic congestion, and spur economic development for residents and visitors alike.
“Infrastructure is an enabler of jobs, economic growth, and prosperity. We are committed to building a world-class capital city, and the completion of this road is a testament to that commitment. Making our citizens the central focus of our development is crucial for Nigeria’s success,” Tinubu stated.
Earlier, Wike noted: “This landmark project is the first amongst nine visionary projects scheduled for commissioning by Mr. President in the coming days. It represents a significant milestone in our collective efforts to enhance the infrastructure and livability of our great capital and her inhabitants.
“As we mark the first year of your transformative leadership, Mr. President, this event underscores our shared commitment to progress, innovation, and the enduring prosperity of Nigeria.”

Yet, the make-for-the-cameras pomp and ceremony, razzmatazz, accolades, hand-pumping and backslapping by politicians in Port Harcourt and Abuja are but a temporary relief or diversion to mask the “real politic” in Rivers, where Governor Fubara’s fighting the battle of his life to cage Chief Wike, and save his governorship and political career heading into the 2027 General Election. 
The fourth installment of this article on Monday, May 27, 2024, examined two strategies that Fubara could adopt to handle Wike and his sacked loyal members of the Rivers Assembly, and local council chairmen, whose tenure ends in June 2024, but have vowed to remain in office until “elected officials” were installed in the Rivers local councils. Below’s a recap:

First, Fubara could evict the lawmakers from the Rivers State House of Assembly Residential Quarters in Port Harcourt – where they and their families domicile, and use as a legislative chamber – to deny them the venue and avenue to make laws and/or plot his impeachment.
Second, Fubara could copy his counterparts, and withhold the lawmakers’ emoluments, and allocations to the legislature – as he’s allegedly done to the April 2024 allocations to the councils – to checkmate the legislators, whose seats have lately been redeclared “vacant” by a Rivers High Court.
Let’s now proceed to interrogate the remaining measures, beginning with the Third, as follows: When push comes to shove, Fubara could muscle the pro-Wike lawmakers by physical attacks on them, their homes and businesses, the aim being to overraw, and hound them, to sabotage their plans to make his government ungovernable, and pave the way for his impeachment – the aim of the lawmakers from onset of the Rivers crisis.
Recall Fubara’s declaration about the lawmakers early in 2024: “I think it has gotten to a time when I need to make a statement on this thing, so that they (lawmakers) understand that they are not existing. Their existence and whatever they have been doing is because I allowed them to do so. If I don’t recognise them, they are nowhere. That is the truth.
“I can say here, with all amount of boldness, I have never called any police man anywhere to go and harass anybody. I have never gone anywhere to ask anybody to do anything against anybody. 

“Even when I have all the instruments of State powers, I have shown restraint, I have acted as a big brother in the course of this crisis. I have not acted like a young man that may want the house to be destroyed but, I have behaved like a mature young man that I am.
 “This is because I know that no meaningful development will be achieved in an atmosphere of crisis. And because our intention for Rivers State is to build on the foundation that had been laid by our past leaders, it will be wrong for me to take the path of promoting crisis.”
Interpreted, the pro-Wike lawmakers – already in the lurch over series of court rulings sacking and re-sacking them, and voiding all legislative actions they took in the course of the Rivers crisis – shouldn’t underrate Fubara’s powers and resolve – if pushed against the wall – to roar like the lion, attack like the hyena and bite like the crocodile!
Barring any “political earthquake” this week in the Rivers crisis, the remaining measures Fubara could deploy to arrest Wike’s alleged hegemonic hold on Rivers State will be interrogated in the next installment of this running header!

  • Mr Ezomon, Journalist and Media Consultant, writes from Lagos, Nigeria

Sent from my iPad. Ehichioya
Ezomon.

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Nemesis as a short distance runner

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Mammoth crowd with Emir Sanusi in Kano Today after Juma'at prayer

By Tunde Olusunle

When he flung Sanusi Lamido Sanusi, (SLS) out of the window of the Emir’s palace in Kano four years ago, Abdullahi Ganduje would have least imagined what is playing out today. Ganduje was the “Lord of the Manor” in Kano State, the all-powerful chief executive. Recall video clips of Ganduje allegedly stuffing wads and packs of crisp, mint-fresh dollar bills into the bottomless pocket of his babanriga ahead of the 2019 general elections. They were reportedly gifted to him by some contractor ally of the erstwhile Kano governor who was repaying a good turn. Graphic and unassailable as that short motion picture was, former President Muhammadu Buhari who rode into office on the camelback of now suspect integrity in 2015, volunteered a baffling defence for Ganduje. He swore Ganduje was most probably participating in a Kannywood movie, the way the film industry up North is described. Buhari who has never been known to operate a tablet, nay a notepad, suggested that advanced technology could actually simulate what we all saw in that short clip!

Ganduje was the prototype alagbara ma m’ero as we say in Yoruba. This interpretes as the “maximally muscular, minimally reasonable.” He fought a few other prominent Kano leaders during his heydays in Government House. Recall he carried his unabated squabbles with one of his predecessors, Rabiu Musa Kwankwaso to the State House, Aso Villa, during the early weeks of the Bola Tinubu government. Told on one occasion that Kwankwaso was in a particular section of Aso Rock same time as he was in the complex, a vexed Ganduje said Kwankwaso should consider himself fortunate. He said he, Ganduje would have slapped Kwankwaso if he sighted him in the Villa! That would have caused a scene in Nigeria’s seat of power. I’m now just imagining how Tinubu would be trying to restrain Ganduje, in the forecourt of the office of the President, while Vice President Kashim Shettima will be pulling at Kwankwaso’s agbada in a bid to manage the situation.

Ganduje reportedly considered Sanusi too independent-minded and outspoken for a natural ruler. Sanusi was governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria, (CBN), before being appointed Emir in 2014. He had always had a radical streak about him which culminated in his suspension as CBN head in 2014 for blowing the whistle on the theft of $20 Billion in accruals from crude oil sales. As Emir he considered aspects of the religious and cultural practices of his emirate repugnant. He opposed the “ultra-conservative interpretation of Islam” in some parts of northern Nigeria, which discouraged girl-child education, family planning, even inoculation against potential healthcare afflictions. He had reservations about the style of Ganduje as governor and didn’t put a veil over his dislike for the return of Ganduje to Government House in 2019.

He believed Ganduje shouldn’t have made it back if the poll was fairly and transparently conducted. March 9, 2020, Ganduje upended Sanusi. He was accused of negatively impacting the sanctity, culture, tradition, religion and prestige of the Kano emirate, and disrespecting the governor’s office. He was also alleged to have disposed of property belonging to the state and the misappropriated of the proceeds. It was a case of digging several manholes for a prey in a bid to ensure he falls into one of the several traps. He was summarily banished to Nasarawa State for effect. Sanusi sought reprieve in the courts which ruled it was an overkill to fling him to a remote community faraway from his family and more accustomed home in Lagos. Within a few days, Nasir El Rufai, Sanusi’s longstanding friend who was governor of Kaduna State, personally enforced the evacuation of Sanusi from Awe local government area in Nasarawa State.

For whatever his contributions were to the emergence of Tinubu as president after the 2023 polls, Ganduje believed he would be compensated with a ministerial slot in the former’s regime. Like Nyesom Wike, David Umahi, Mohammed Badaru Abubakar, Atiku Bagudu, Simon Lalong, former governors of Rivers, Ebonyi, Jigawa, Kebbi and Plateau states, Ganduje dusted his curriculum vitae to pitch for a slot on Tinubu’s federal executive council. His five colleagues in the “2015 – 2019- 2023 class of governors” made the cut, not Ganduje. Tinubu spontaneously made him chairman of the All Progressives Congress, (APC], the vehicle which delivered him as president. Abdullahi Adamu his predecessor and former governor of Nasarawa State was, as has become standard practice in Nigeria’s notorious political rule book, schemed out and compelled to resign from office.

If Ganduje ever thought his chairmanship of the APC was going to be a walk in the park, he was thoroughly mistaken. Indeed, he’s grossed sufficient experience in his present office to know that there are sharp differences between wholesale insulation in Government House, and the inevitable overexposure of party leadership. Last April, a faction of the APC in Ganduje’s primary “Ganduje ward” in Dawakin Tofa local government area of his home state, Kano, suspended him from the party. Haladu Gwanjo, legal adviser of Ganduje’s ward led some party leaders to pronounce the suspension. They advocated the return of the national chairmanship of the APC to the north central zone, where Ganduje’s predecessor, Adamu, hails from. The young Turks canvassed due process in party administration, consistent with the “renewed hope” mantra of the APC. Ganduje made a hurried recourse to the law courts for momentary reprieve.

Thursday May 23, 2024, Sanusi Lamido Sanusi was reinstated as Emir of Kano by Ganduje’s successor in Kano State, Abba Yusuf. His cousin and successor, Aminu Ado-Bayero, was unceremoniously removed from office. The splinter emirates created by Ganduje in his bid to whittle down Sanusi’s authority as prime monarch in Kano, were similarly dissolved. The edifice which Ganduje built four years ago was apparently built of straw and spittle. Governor Abba Yusuf is a product of the Kwankwasiya political tendency in Kano politics, a creation of Rabiu Kwankwaso. Those who know a little about Nigerian politics will recall that Kwankwaso’s emergence in our politics, predates the fourth republic. He was an ardent student of the talakawa political orientation, pioneered by the venerable Kano-born leader, Aminu Kano. Kwankwaso was Deputy Speaker in the House of Representatives of the Ibrahim Babangida political experimentation of 1992 to 1993.

Whereas the Kwankwasiya movement had long been entrenched, it was not until the run-up to the 2023 elections that Kwankwaso adopted a new platform, the Nigeria National People’s Party, (NNPP), on which he is espousing the populist philosophy of the Kwankwasiya brigade. Abba Yusuf rode to office on the back of this invention. It was the same way Chukwuemeka Odimegwu Ojukwu the famous Biafran war lord, established the All Progressives Grand Alliance, (APGA) in Anambra State. The party has remained a force in the politics of the state and indeed the south east. It has produced three Anambra governors in succession, notably Peter Obi, Willie Obiano and the incumbent Chukwuma Soludo.

Abba Yusuf has made no pretences about his disdain for Ganduje and everything he represents. Much as some of Yusuf’s early actions in office were generally perceived as wasteful, he nonetheless brought down as many edifices in Kano as bore the imprimatur of Ganduje. The “Kano golden jubilee roundabout” built to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the creation of Kano State and structures built inside the filin sukuwa, (Kano race course), were hewn on Yusuf’s orders. The hajj camp which was reportedly bastardised by Ganduje who allegedly parcelled parts of it to his friends and associates was equally felled. There were suggestions that the value of the demolitions carried out by Yusuf could be in excess of N200Billion. Such is the anti-Ganduje sentiment in contemporary Kano State.

The way and manner the legacies of Abdullahi Ganduje are unravelling in Kano State should serve as a lesson to the shortsighted, incapable of seeing beyond the bridges of their nose. History is replete with the deconstruction of many leaders after their rulership and indeed keeps repeating itself in our sociopolitical experience. Those who are not circumspect, however, are too distracted by the allure and bliss of their immediate office, to think. They continue to drift, blunder and flounder, unmindful that time is their ultimate nemesis. Ganduje is just one year out of office, yet many of the decisions he made while in power for eight years are being unmade and thrown at his face like rotten tomatoes.

Until I joined him on the table he was seated at a wedding reception we both attended in Lagos a few weeks back, Rotimi Amaechi, governor of the oil-affluent Rivers State for eight years and Transportation Minister for another eight years was a lonely man. It turned out we flew back to Abuja on the same flight same evening after the event and sat not too far from each other. He opened the overhead locker atop his seat to bring out his luggage himself. Is anyone following the Yahaya Bello saga? He mindlessly trampled upon the hapless heads of his constituents in Kogi State for eight unbroken years? He left office last January and life has not been the same again. He has been declared wanted by at least one anti-graft agency. He will be arraigned in the rectangular, wood-panelled cubicle of the courtroom in a fortnight. A lesson for all.

Tunde Olusunle, PhD, is a Fellow of the Association of Nigerian Authors, (FANA)

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