Reuben Abati
Mama Taraba is Senator Aisha Alhassan, the current Minister
of Women Affairs in the Muhammadu Buhari cabinet, and arguably the most
influential female politician in Taraba state today.
Eid-el-Kabir holidays. While paying homage to former Vice President Alhaji Atiku
Abubakar, she addressed him as follows: “Your Excellency, our father and our
President by the grace of God, come 2019…”
with her since then…
They have labeled Mama Taraba a
traitor, and an ingrate and have even called for her immediate sack, disgrace,
humiliation and outright dismissal for “anti-party activities”.
to “an anti-party activity.” Atiku whom she visited is a member and one of the
leaders of the APC, and she has since made it clear, not only in private, but
through the BBC, that she regards Atiku as her political godfather and mentor,
and should he decide to run for President in 2019, she will support him, not
Buhari.
She does not deserve the hate speeches she is getting from the
Buhari apologists. If Kaduna Governor Nasir el-Rufai is to be believed, Mama
Taraba has never regarded President Buhari as her political mentor. He was not
even her choice as presidential candidate in the 2015 APC primaries. She voted
for her mentor, Alhaji Atiku Abubakar who contested against the incumbent
President at the time.
She deserves high marks for her consistency,
honesty and courage. Any close watcher of Nigerian politics can easily
appreciate the gravity of the risk that she has taken. It is that kind of risk
that could attract a punishment worse than dismissal from the Cabinet. In the
estimation of those who are asking for her to be punished by both the ruling
party and the President, Mama Taraba has crossed certain “red lines”.
In
the first place, she did not go to Daura to pay homage to the President, instead
she went to Adamawa to visit former Vice President Alhaji Atiku Abubakar, a man
who has declared interest in sending President Buhari out of Aso Villa. In
Nigeria’s unwritten manual of politics and governance, political appointees are
not to be seen with those who are considered enemies or rivals of the ruler.
Mama Taraba not only crossed that line, she went many steps further.
It
is also the rule in Nigerian politics that political appointees are expected to
sing the praise of their bosses in public all the time, and should they have any
misgivings they can only express those misgivings privately. The problem this
has created is that most political appointees are as subservient as civil
servants. They don’t express independent opinions as they should, not to talk of
misgivings. They just act as directed. The President or the Governor is
considered the wisest man exercising a divine mandate that no man should
question.
state for example, the new Speaker of the State House of Assembly was asked if
the legislature under his watch would avoid the temptation of becoming the
Governor’s rubber stamp. The fellow reportedly responded: “I tell you, this
House of Assembly will not only be the Governor’s rubber stamp, we will be his
Seal!”
Mama Taraba has chosen to be different. Those who are criticising
her are not stupid either, but it is just so convenient for them to play the
role of sycophants and court jesters. They know when Mama Taraba says President
Buhari should not run in 2019, what she is really saying is that she does not
consider him fit enough for that office. She is more or less passing a vote of
no confidence in the President. She is by the same token advertising Atiku
Abubakar as a better person. The crabs in the corridor of power have amplified
these suggestions to the level of blasphemy.
opinion, who are secretly working against the Buhari Presidency, but they would
never admit doing so publicly. These green snakes under the green grass, are the
hidden saboteurs, the Judases President Buhari must beware of.
They are
like the members of the Akintola group in the First Republic in the then Western
Region. In the fight for political supremacy between Samuel Ladoke Akintola, who
would later cross to the NNDP (or Der-mor as the people called it) and Chief
Obafemi Awolowo of the Action Group, many supporters of the former openly
supported Awolowo, but they were loyal to Akintola and the NNDP. There was even
a famous song on this: “Bi o ri owo mi, o o ri inu mi, Demo ni mo wa.”
politics. In this instance, Mama Taraba has boldly called the bluff of her
adversaries: she says she is ready to quit the Cabinet if she is asked to leave.
How many of her colleagues feel the same way but too scared to say
so?
With Aisha Alhassan, President Buhari knows where he stands. It is
better for him that this is so. Ordinarily, Mama Taraba should support him. In
2015, she contested for the Gubernatorial position in Taraba state on the
platform of the All Progressives Congress, and lost. She petitioned the State
Election Tribunal and won, but this victory at the Tribunal which would have
made her the first elected female Governor in Nigeria was later upturned by the
Appeal and Supreme Courts.
By bringing her into his Cabinet, President
Buhari rehabilitated her. He was advised against offering her the position then
because she was a known Atiku person. President Buhari needs not regret the
choice he has made. His appointment of non-Buhari persons into his Cabinet,
including persons who refused to leave the PDP and join the APC, and are still
in the PDP or other parties, is an indication of his own largeness of heart and
statesmanship.
He should be glad that this particular Minister has spoken
honestly. At least, he now knows that he cannot rely on her political structures
in Taraba state and wherever else she wields influence. In case he plans to run
in 2019, Mama Taraba has already served him an early notice – he would have to
build his political machinery in that state around someone else. Her critics
insist that she should on her own resign and go back to her Atiku.
This
raises the question of the nature of loyalty in politics. What determines
loyalty? There is a lot of obsession with loyalty or disloyalty in Nigerian
politics. Did Aisha Alhassan take an oath of office to serve Buhari or the
Federal Republic of Nigeria? What we know is that political leaders in Africa
place loyalty to themselves above loyalty to the state. Which is why our
security and law enforcement agencies are so mercurial; they are ever so busy
protecting the political interests of the incumbent, and will change should the
incumbent change, rather than focusing on their core mandates. If Mama Taraba is
efficient in the discharge of her duties as Minister, President Buhari should
ignore those who are asking him to sack her.
What cannot be ignored
though, is that the ruling APC is truly and terribly in crisis. The subsequent
attacks on Alhaji Atiku Abubakar by the pro-Buhari wing of the APC, following
his declaration that he was used and dumped by the President further confirms
the depth of this internal turmoil. But was Atiku really used and dumped, or to
use his word, “sidelined?” He says: “I was sidelined, I have no relationship
with the government. I’ve not been contacted even once to comment on anything
and in turn, I maintained my distance. They used our money and influence to get
to where they are but three years down the lane, this is where we are.” These
are strong words.
The bitterness in Alhaji Atiku Abubakar’s tone touches
the heart. But can he really claim that he has been sidelined when Mama Taraba,
his loyalist and at least one or two others from his political camp are playing
key roles in the Buhari government? Could they have gone to work for Buhari
without his “permission” or knowledge? The side-talk that they got the job on
their own merit is opaque given the clientelist character of political proximity
in African democracies.
With Mama Taraba’s statement, Atiku’s protest,
and the epigrammatic statement by Senator Shehu Sani about Asiwaju Bola Ahmed
Tinubu, that was thrown in, the support base for President Buhari’s likely shot
at a second term in office appears shaky.
reach out to the aggrieved but silent Lagoon Lion so that he doesn’t explode
like the Hippo. The Lagoon Lion controls waters that can drown… The disloyal
Cobra who spat venom before you and the friendly Viper who sprayed venom behind
you are all snakes. In comparison the former is of lesser evil than the
latter.”
to drown politically if he does not pay homage to “the silent Lagoon
Lion.”
The tragedy of the APC is that a party that came to power as a
party of change-agents has in all of two years and four months become a party of
lions, hyenas, jackals, snakes and rats. Those who have been using these animal
kingdom references so freely are party insiders who obviously know the
circumstances of their own party. What is seen is an increasingly atomistic
political party, looking hubristically, like the dominant party it displaced. It
is worse that the party leaders are now speaking in tongues.
In a
statement issued on September 25, 2016, Asiwaju Bola Tinubu sounded a note of
warning asking for an urgent reform of the party. He was ignored. As at this
moment, the APC is yet to hold a national convention; it has no Board of
Trustees. Internal party processes have broken down. It should also be recalled
that when Senator Bukola Saraki made the moves that saw him emerge as Senate
President of the 8th National Assembly in 2015, the first and the only prominent
party leader he visited was Alhaji Atiku Abubakar.
It was a very
sensitive move in the APC chess game – the anti-Saraki and anti-Atiku groups
within the party are still fuming two years later! In the 2015 election,
President Buhari got close to 2 million votes from Kano state. Today, Kano is
divided against his Presidency. During the last Sallah, supporters of the
incumbent Governor, Abdullahi Ganduje, and loyalists of the former Governor
Rabiu Kwankwaso turned the prayer ground into a battle-field, using machetes
freely on a Holy day! Ganduje is pro-Buhari. Kwankwaso nurses a Presidential
ambition.
The big threat to the Buhari Presidency is not the likes of
Aisha Alhassan, who speak their minds, but the possible union of the lions,
snakes, the hyenas and the rats, hiding in dark corners, waiting to take their
pounds of flesh from the party and the Buhari Presidency.
