Talking silly on Bauchi [II]

Written by Adamu Adamu
adamuadamu@dailytrust.com

Immediately after the 2007 election, even though I am not in politics and will never be; and even if I were ever to be so, I wouldn’t be in the PDP from which he came or the ANPP into which he went, Governor Isa Yuguda offered me the post of Secretary to the State Government. I declined this immediately because I knew it was something I would not do under any circumstance. I told him why but promised to help in any way I could.

Even before the government had fully taken off, he appointed me chairman of the committee set up to review the work of the Transition Committee that oversaw the handover. We worked on its reports and produced the documents that became the subject matter of the judicial commission of inquiry that is currently looking into the affairs of the governorship of Alhaji Ahmadu Adamu Mu’azu; and this perhaps is the main reason why His Excellency decided to remain outside the country.

After the committee’s work, the governor asked me to accept the post of adviser to him on whatever it was I wanted. Here, in fact, the deputy put more pressure on me to accept than the governor himself did, perhaps believing that if I joined the government, it would help his position. But I made my position clear that I would not work for the government.

Later, in the presence of the deputy, the governor renewed an invitation he had earlier made to me to compile and document all the assignments he had given me and all the advice I had offered to him into a consultancy agreement so that I could be paid. Though I understood the concern behind all these offers and all the kindness intended, I felt insulted and declined.

Though there are many problems in Bauchi, the most unexplainable has been the failure of the government to utilize good counsel. And looking at a few of these self-created problems—or rather, solutions looking for problems—it is difficult to explain why they should exit in the first place. Let us look at three that Chaji touched and see why they cannot be my concern in the manner he suggested. He talked about Yuguda’s decamping, his conduct towards General Buhari and his plan to impeach his deputy.

To me as a journalist, the ANPP and the PDP were just political parties; and if I opposed Yuguda’s decision to decamp to the PDP, I didn’t do it as a result of some preference for the ANPP. According to him, I was the only one who opposed him; and I did so only on moral, not on partisan political, grounds. I told him if he did decamp, he would lose whatever political mutumci he had and the state would be out of his control. But Yuguda was made to believe that the people of Bauchi would not oppose his move; and that they were only apprehensive that if he did decamp, he might abandon his programmes. I told His Excellency that the majority of the people of Bauchi who overwhelmingly voted for him didn’t know or care a hoot about programmes.

They elected him for four reasons. First, there was this almost universal unpopularity of Ahmadu Mu’azu. Second, Mu’azu chose as gubernatorial candidate someone who was seen as his sheepish protégé, by reason of which he also became equally unpopular. Third was the non-threatening image of Yuguda and the belief that he would never be as high-handed as Mu’azu was, and the people’s desire for change which they hoped to realize in him. And finally, and most importantly, there was the decisive endorsement of Buhari that Yuguda received. Buhari not only endorsed him but took time off his own campaign to campaign for Yuguda; and he went round all but one of Bauchi’s 20 local governments for him. This was something he had not done for any other ANPP gubernatorial candidate.

A fifth reason that is often not mentioned is the directive by Abuja that the security forces shouldn’t allow the incumbent governor to rig the election. It is not mentioned because it will seem to have been cancelled by the armed turnout of the people of Bauchi to protect their votes. Nevertheless, without this decision, the electoral commission could still have rigged and announced a different result; but that day, the Federal Government knew that there would have been an unprecedented bloodbath.

Taking all this into consideration, it is indeed incomprehensible that Yuguda would ever speak about Buhari the way he did in that radio interview. But I couldn’t see how a personal decision to be ungrateful by an adult politician could be my problem, just because I am his friend. It was fortuitous and totally uncalled for and false—and to me embarrassing, no doubt, because even if Buhari had not done anything for Yuguda, and even if the office he held or the popularity he enjoys had not precluded a governor from speaking about him in that fashion, Yuguda’s knowledge of my closeness to the General should have been enough to make him think twice.

The charges against the deputy governor, which, it should be remembered, were being assembled only after the impeachment move had already been made, were all baseless; and it might in the end well prove to be more the result of incapable investigation than actual culpability. It would be a botched-up working back from a predetermined end.

It was indeed unfortunate that matters have had to come to this impasse. When the impeachment crisis erupted just before I traveled out, I met the governor in connection with it. Initially, the governor wanted to pretend that it was only an affair between the deputy and the state legislature, until I reminded His Excellency that he was talking to a journalist. Then he told me that the deputy had been disloyal to him. When I asked to know the disloyalty, it became apparent that it was his refusal to decamp along with the governor to the People’s Democratic Party, PDP. I reminded the governor that he could not complain to me about a matter that I myself opposed. Incidentally, this was the same thing I told him when he complained to me about my younger brother who was spearheading the opposition to him in the state legislature.

At any event, I could see that the governor had forgotten what I told him about his deputy; because immediately after the election, I told him that Alhaji Garba Mohammed Gadi, the deputy, was the administration’s most valuable asset; because he had all the qualities that the governor and all the other principal officers of his government lacked.

But really except for the close relationship between the deputy governor and me, it is really none of my business if he is impeached. That is the business of politicians; and since that is the way they play it here, the deputy governor must have known and accepted—or, at the very least, foreseen—the possibility, if not the inevitability, of such an eventuality, even if he will not ordinarily have expected it.

I cannot therefore see how my comment, if it comes, before or after the impeachment of Alhaji Garba, can constitute unfairness to the people of Bauchi State. The fact that it may happen, however, will not make the impeachment right; but neither will it be a shame for the deputy governor if eventually it does. And that’s exactly what I told the deputy governor when he asked my opinion whether he should resign or not. I told him not to resign under any circumstances. It would be more honourable for him to wait and be impeached.

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