Opinion
Interrogating Buhari through the prism of Ishaya Bamaiyi
By Tunde Olusunle
Except for the release and launch of his controversial book, *Vindication of a General* in 2017 which accorded him some media visibility, Ishaya Rizi Bamaiyi, has maintained a very low profile over the years. For those who do not know, or who have forgotten him, Bamaiyi, a lieutenant general, was the last Chief of Army Staff, (COAS), under the rulership of Sani Abacha, Nigeria’s one time Head of State. Abacha was in office between November 1993 and June 1999. Bamaiyi spent eight years, in the aftermath of the enthronement of civil rule in 1999, in prison. He was supposedly implicated in the attempted murder of Alex Ibru, founder and publisher of *The Guardian* newspapers who also served as Minister of Internal Affairs, under Abacha.
Ibru who allowed professional independence for his newspaper stable under Abacha’s unpopular fistic rule, was shot on Falomo Bridge in Lagos early February 1996, by suspected agents of state. Principal suspect in the attempted Ibru murder case, Barnabas Jabila, known by the alias “Sergeant Rogers” a notorious hitman for the Abacha killer squad, had framed Bamaiyi for ordering the annihilation of the newspaper magnate. Bamaiyi was released from incaceration April 2008, after being discharged and acquitted of all four counts of the murder allegations. Ishaya Bamaiyi’s elder brother, Musa Bamaiyi, a famously moustachioed major general, was equally very prominent during the Abacha government. He was the dreaded Chairman of the Nation’s Drug Law Enforcement Agency, (NDLEA), in that dispensation, who kept no prisoners.
Bamaiyi’s book stoked quite some embers of discontent, especially among people who didn’t share his representation of issues in the publication. The soldier-author maintained, for instance, that he was singled out for vilification by the administration of President Olusegun Obasanjo, because he opposed Obasanjo’s succession of Abdulsalam Abubakar. Abubakar, also an army general, was enthroned head of state, following the demise of Abacha in June 1998. He handed over power to Obasanjo, a former army general and military head of state in 1999, a succession arrangement Bamaiyi claimed he opposed.
Bamaiyi contends that the public image of the military had received severe battering because of the long and controversial involvement of the institution in politics, over time. He claims he supported the candidature of a thoroughbred civilian in the mould of an Olu Falae, a very experienced economist and technocrat who once served as Secretary to the Government of the Federation, (SGF). Falae, a banker, equally served as Minister for Finance, Budget and Planning, also under Nigeria’s former military President, Ibrahim Babangida.
Arising from his once-upon-a-time stature in the nation’s political organogram, Bamaiyi who will be 73 in September, is by right a senior citizen and an elder statesman. For the avoidance of doubt, the pyramid of authority in a military regime, privileges the Chief of Army Staff. Immediately following the President or Head of State, depending on the preference of the Commander-in-Chief, (C-in-C), in order of seniority, is the “Chief of Staff, Supreme Headquarters,” (CSSH). Babangida redesignated the office as “Chief of General Staff,” (CGS), in his time, a title retained by Abacha and Abdulsalam, respectively. Next to this office is that of the “Chief of Defence Staff,” (CDS), who sometimes doubled as “Chairman, Joint Chiefs of Staff,” (CJCS), a nomenclature borrowed from the United States military.
Following this position, is the COAS, who is the most senior of the group of Service Chiefs, including those heading the navy and the airforce. But the COAS, in a way, towered even above the CDS. Avid followers of Nigeria’s political history will recall the weight of authority and power wielded by iconic army chiefs of staff, like Theophilus Yakubu Danjuma, Alani Akinrinade and Samuel Victor Leonard Malu. Apart from commanding the military service with the largest number of troops, the soldiers reported directly to the COAS, from the level of the platoon, to that of the division, and so on. The COAS, therefore could be nominally Number Four in the hierarchy of a military government, but in reality, be the Number Two, only next to the C-in-C. Bamaiyi is rarely heard in the marketplace of public engagement, but he remains a respectable voice in the sociopolitics of the country.
I came across a recent interview granted by Bamaiyi and conducted by Thecla Wilkie, for the Nigerian Television Authority, (NTA). I’m occasionally impatient watching long, dragging interviews, I must confess. I have, however, been recently delighted and enriched, staying through those of some of Nigeria’s military greats, including Malu and his exploits in Liberia and Sierra Leone. The Bamaiyi interview covers his early years; desired profession; odyssey in the army; ascendancy through the rungs of the military pyramid; tenure as COAS and relationship with Abacha, among others.
Instructively, Bamaiyi contends that Abacha “never cared about anybody’s religion… Until his death, all his service chiefs were Christians. He worked with people who could do the job for him, whose assurances he could take at the surface level.” Bamaiyi equally spoke of his concerns about national security, particularly at the onset of the *Boko Haram* insurgency in the North East of the country, midway through the administration of former President Goodluck Jonathan. I indeed enjoyed my self-imposed task of transcribing parts of the dialogue, something I’ve not done in a while.
The former military chief recalls that he put a call through to Jonathan’s aide-de-camp, (ADC), Ojogbane Adegbe, (who was then a lieutenant colonel but is now a brigadier general), who expedited the meeting with the former President. Bamaiyi applauded Jonathan’s warmth and humility, for a man who was the leader of Africa’s largest country. He expressed his worries about the prosecution of the battle against terrorism which was restricted to the North East, at the time. Rather than abating, the insurgency was spreading.
Jonathan, Bamaiyi observed, shared similar concerns about the military operations in the area, noting that his government’s fiscal provisions for the armed forces, were not justified by the performance of the military on the frontlines. Bamaiyi, who still wears the scar of a bullet shot on his left knee from the 1967 to 1970 Nigerian civil war, stopped short of telling Jonathan he was evidently being fleeced by his service chiefs and their accomplices.
With the nationwide spread of insecurity vis-a-vis re-vigoured terrorism, banditry, kidnapping, killings and bloodletting, under the Muhammadu Buhari government, a concerned Bamaiyi wrote to request an appointment to see the President. His words: “I wrote to General Buhari at the beginning of the Fulani herdsmen clashes with farmers. I had a relationship with him and I thought I could offer some assistance. I was Commanding Officer, (CO) in Keffi, with responsibility for the security of the upcoming federal capital, Abuja, when he was Head of State.
I wrote that I wanted to see him. The letter was delivered. I was told by telephone that my letter had been received and I will be scheduled to see him in two days. On the day I was to meet him, somebody called me and said my appointment had been put off. He said to me in Hausa, that some people who sighted my correspondence in the State House system, said *I will stop water from running or flowing,* should they allow me to see the President.” I understood what they meant and I kept quiet. And I never, ever applied again to see him.”
Bamaiyi, who holds the second highest national honour, Grand Commander of the Order of the Niger, (GCON) which is primarily reserved for Vice Presidents and Presidents of the Senate, continued: “Many of us are concerned about goings on in the country. Unfortunately, your experience in these matters cannot reach the person who should know when access to him is blocked. At my age and level, I cannot be transmitting critical information meant for the ears of the President, through proxies. You can be misconstrued, you can be nailed, just the way I was thrown into prison for eight years.”
Wilkie, Bamaiyi’s interviewer, pressed to find out what he thought was wrong in the communication chain to the President and what Buhari needs to do. “Get the truth,” he said. “Get the proper intelligence reports from all the security agencies.” Bamaiyi senses that something may be genuinely and gravely wrong with the President. His words: “To me, the Buhari I know, except something has gone wrong, is not the kind of person that will tolerate or keep quiet in the face of all that is happening. The truth is that so much is being concealed from the President. And there must be a way for him to know the truth about what is happening in the country.” The former top centurion proceeds: “I am not sure that General Buhari is regularly and properly briefed. That is my own assessment. And unless that is done, the sycophants around him will continue to mislead him.”
Alluding to the governance model of his former boss, Abacha, Bamaiyi said. “Abacha was ahead of all of us with up-to-date intelligence gathering. By the time you go to him to give him what you consider privileged or first hand information, he will just look at you and smile. He would have gotten that same report, the correct one before your arrival. And whether you like it or not, as far as I’m concerned, Abacha did well in security and economic management of this country. Nobody can deny that even if you don’t like him.”
If you’ve ever been disturbed by sociopolitical developments in Nigeria under the incumbent administration, if you’ve been worried about your country as an irredeemably sinking ship, Bamaiyi seems to have provided a crucial lead. The President, it would seem, has wilfully surrendered himself to complete encirclement by grovelling praise singers, *“yes Sir-ring”* hangers-on, boot-licking louts and squirming laggards. I deploy the expression about “wilful surrender,” advisedly, by the way. The President always had the option of being more proactive, more pushful, more dynamic, rather than recline into the uncanny inertia, indulgence, indolence and inefficaciousness which has characterised his style in nearly eight years.
It looks like everything gets done for him, with minimal mental perspiration by him. His comments in the “visitor’s book” on the occasion of his inspection tour of Dangote Refinery, Lagos, were very evidently written out for him, while he simply appended his signature, using the same green ink. You don’t need a forensic expert to spot that. And it does look like the television sets in his office and residence, are permanently calibrated to feature principally his official events, before switching automatically to *Telemundo* and similar soaps. That is the level of sickening pampering which our grandpa President avails himself.
In a very, very rare demonstration of responsiveness, albeit tepid and lack lustre, Buhari visited the Kuje Correctional Centre early July, after it was attacked by insurgents, who freed hundreds of inmates. On that occasion, he asked a self-indicting question about the possible absence, or failure of intelligence, wondering why preemptive measures were not taken by relevant departments of government. A few days after, Ahmed Idris Wase, Deputy Speaker of the House of Representatives announced to parliament, that a record 44 intelligence reports were received by relevant agencies of government ahead of the Kuje saga. The intelligence leads were jettisoned in the continuing acquisitive rat race by schedule officials and agencies. President Buhari, the C-in-C, on whose table the buck stops therefore, is personally culpable if all these briefs passed through his desk without being acted upon.
The entire country is a sprawling pool of crimson blood, no thanks to the cold-blooded exploits of sundry sadists and sauntering savages of various hues and colours. The Islamic State of West Africa, (ISWAP), the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, (ISIS), as well as rampaging bandits, kidnappers, gunmen, make up the list of non-state actors ravaging the land. They are in the deathly enterprise of mauling and maiming Nigerians, inflicting pain, anxiety, anger and anguish on our people. Hundreds of billions of naira, hundreds of millions of dollars are regularly voted and released for the military without commensurate, nay salutary results.
Insecurity has become a big, booming, bustling industry for the security establishment, whose top brass in many instances, have reportedly transformed into spontaneous multibillionaires, at our collective expense. I once heard about two service chiefs from the insurgency-ravaged North East, being supposedly locked in a contest for the bragging rights about who was the richer, all from the insurgency scamming. They are the ones who will stop at nothing to ensure that nobody, absolutely nobody, *stops the water from flowing,* to return to Bamaiyi’s narrative. And the President hangs in there, seemingly unperturbed.
Kaduna State governor, Nasir El Rufai attests to Buhari’s characteristic insularity when he said recently that the President was not aware of a threat to kidnap him, by some faceless terrorists. It seemed a joke, but now we can relate to the President being cocooned in a fantasy island where all is well and seemingly blissful with his constituents, which explains why he is never aware of anything. It is for this same delusion that he repeatedly boasts he will leave Nigeria better than he met it. *The Guardian on Sunday* of July 31, 2022, aligns with the President’s emblematic aloofness even when the nation is on fire.
I almost forgot to allude to the musical performance of the Nigerian-born international artiste, *Asa,* at a recent event in the State House, with the President in attendance. On that occasion, she sang one of her hit songs, “Fire on the mountain,” in direct reference to the state of anomie in the country, which has not been matched by requisite concern and urgency, by the leadership. Back to the Sunday July 31 edition of *The Guardian.* It had a dominant photograph of the President in the comfort of his living room, sitting all alone and picking his teeth, on its front page. He seemed totally oblivious of the all-consuming fire on the nation’s streets!
Can Buhari minimally, just symbolically redeem himself in the remaining 10 months of his rulership so that history will find columns of positives in his overall performance evaluation report? We may yet cut him some slack, if only he can return the security of our country, to the period preceding his ascendancy in 2015, where the home was not a house of horror, where the road was not a nightmare of a killing field. We’d pick up our lives therefrom and move on.
Olusunle, PhD, poet, journalist, author and scholar, is a Member of the Nigerian Guild of Editors, (NGE).
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.
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.
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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