Leadership (Abuja)
Suleiman Uba
16 October 2007
opinion
Abuja — The politics of blackmail, as played by many Buhari disciples in Kano (Buhari's main bastion of support) and elsewhere, succeeded in alienating the General from many respectable people in the state. It attracted a large dose of public sympathy towards his victims, especially Shekarau. Instead of campaigning for the General, many people in Kano did not even go out to vote for Buhari when the presidential election held a week later, eventhough the governor had made a passionate appeal for all his supporters to go out en-masse and vote for Buhari and the ANPP. Apart from the fact that Obasanjo's INEC supplied only about two million voters cards in Kano, the peoples disenchantment largely explains why Buhari got only barely a million votes, out of over four million registered voters in Kano, the one Nigerian state he received most support. The fact is many Kanawas opted to stay at home during the presidential election, out of frustration with his politics of vengeance.
Worse of all, Buhari had always claimed that he had nothing personal against the candidates he vigorously sought to undermine. But his handlers at the TBO had a contrary opinion, and they insisted and succeeded in having their ways. They pointed at a White Paper the PDP Government cooked up to create advantage for its own candidates. They made all sort of spurious claims. They insulted Shekarau and others and accused them of 'biting the finger that fed them,' while providing no credible, other than personal and selfish proof of such. They are so carried away by the political favours done to these people by Buhari that they shut their eyes against any good thing done to him and/or the TBO in return, by these people. No effort to appease them was ever enough.
Not even when Governor Shekarau led other ANPP governors to ensure victory for Buhari at the presidential primary election did they accept he is truly loyal to the man. They claimed General Babangida was instrumental to the withdrawal of the aspirants seeking the ANPP's ticket, for Buhari. But posterity soon proved them wrong, as Babangida was nowhere to help them during the election proper, as he is known to have wined and dined with the PDP. And even when Buhari had made a show of dissolving the TBO, it was only on paper, as its leaders allowed then Governor Ahmed Sani no room to operate in his position as appointed head of Buhari's campaign because of their distrust of anyone outside their fold. The man became so frustrated that he had to throw in the towel, diplomatically claiming he needed medical attention abroad, though he was later begged to recant and return to the fold.
In Kano when Shekarau's supporters took stock of the great role the governor played in ensuring Buhari's emergence as presidential candidate of the ANPP and opined that he has paid back the General for his earlier support in 2003, the TBO disagreed, claiming God and no one else made Buhari's victory possible. But when reminded in like manner that Shekarau's emergence in 2003 was also God's making, they always counter by crediting that victory only to Buhari. That is the TBO for you.
They were so sure that Shekarau and other ANPP candidates in their bad book could not make it to the governorship for the second time without Buhari's support, that in Kano for example, some TBO members destroyed most billboards showing the governor and General Buhari. They did not want the Governor to gain from Buhari's famed popularity. At the end, Shekarau rode on his own goodwill and won the election with God's support, while both Buhari and his TBO toiled in vain to make sure he failed the election! So unhappy with this victory is General Buhari that he could not, even as presidential candidate of the ANPP, call the governor on phone to extend his congratulations, several months after the deserved victory.
Talking about the government of national unity which President Yar'adua proposed to three opposition political parties that have succeeded in winning at least a governorship seat, what the ANPP did only amounts to democracy in action. When the idea was broached to the party, it consulted Buhari and invited him for discussion where decision as to whether to accept the president's offer or not would be taken. But what did Buhari do? He simply stayed away from the scheduled talks. Typical of him, Buhari did not take into consideration the fact that politics is all about consultation and not issuing directives. Anywhere in the world, politics is a game of number, with the majority always having their way and the minority having their say. Betrayal would only have set in if at the time the "carrot" was dangled on the ANPP, it did not inform or sought to involve Buhari in its discussion. He did not even give the ANPP the chance to resolve the matter on consensus as Daily Trust was advocating. He only insisted on imposing his personal opinion on the party, constituted of many established adults, in a manner school headmasters talk to their pupils.
As I said earlier, rather than healing wounds, Buhari only exacerbated them. For example when former governors Attahiru Bafarawa and Saminu Turaki of Sokoto and Jigawa States , respectively, left the ANPP for other political parties, Buhari woefully failed to play the role of an elder statesman that was expected of him. Instead of attempting to woo them back to the ANPP, he issued a statement describing their exit as good riddance to bad rubbish. The governors naturally felt offended, and this was how Bafarawa ended up contesting the presidential election alongside Buhari. The loser in this case is Buhari because if Bafarawa had supported him, he would certainly have got more votes in Sokoto and perhaps elsewhere, though Bafarawa himself ended up making a dismal showing in the election.
By his very exclusionist style, Buhari obviously thought that he could rely on his famed popularity and successfully go it alone. Those around him must have made him believe he is a man of limitless political possibilities. During a meeting of the ANPP's leadership, he once ordered Alhaji Bashir Tofa, one of the founding leaders of the party, out of the meeting for merely disagreeing with him on an issue. This is the quintessential Buhari, almost always believing only in his own ideas, refusing to even consider other peoples perspectives on almost any issue.
While I am not in a position to speak for the ANPP, I agree with its leadership's claims that it based its action of joining the GNU on survival of the nation's democracy. Whatever anyone might say, the acceptance by the ANPP has gone a long way to lessen the tension in the polity, which was fraught with possibilities of military take over, given the widespread condemnation of the conduct of the presidential election. The acceptance has served to remove any excuse that the military could possibly have latched on to seize power and once again derail the nation's democracy, which eventhough imperfect, is agreed to be better than the noblest military regime.
And in fairness to the ANPP, it accepted the GNU proposal with dignity, far from the impression of hungry and malnourished politicians that the Daily Trust created. It intended to pursue its petition against the presidential election to its logical conclusion, until TBO members characteristically started calling them names. Should the ANPP cling to the petition when the person in whose interest they instituted the petition no longer has confidence in them? Certainly there is no basis, and this is why the party had to withdraw. But talking about the coalition with Yar'adua, we should not forget the fact that this type of coalition has always been in our politics since the First Republic , and is very popular even with established democracies that resort to it for strategic reasons, such as what obtains currently in Germany , France , etc.
And apart from orchestrated cases of some negative write-ups in the media, I cannot remember any major case of disapproval of the party's acceptance of the GNU offer by its membership - apart, perhaps, from isolated individual cases - anywhere in the country. So we should not be disparaging our politicians and building unnecessary mountain out of molehill for accepting what is legal and conventional. Such respected national icons as the late Sardauna and Azikiwe did embrace the idea of GNU at one time in our history or the other, even when the election in their time was also reported to be massively rigged.
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