Tashikalmah Hallah
18 July 2008
opinion
By 2011, Bauchi Central will have held onto the governorship of the state for 12 uninterrupted years and based on this sentiment, political forces in both Bauchi North and Central are mobilising for the defeat of Governor Isa Yuguda in an election that will hold in about three year's time.
Although the battle royale is three years away, the race for the Bauchi state Government House has already begun as entrenched forces and political foes are engaging Governor Isa Yuguda in a game of wits in a bid to recapture the soul of the state from him.
The shape, texture and colours of forces that wrested power from former Governor Adamu Mu'azu are largely the same with those who now want to put an end to Yuguda's reign in 2011. Mu'azu himself has, according to reports, solidly pitched his tent with the opposition forces against Yuguda.
In fact, the calculations are that by 2011, Yuguda would have spent only four years in office and that would not have been long enough for him to have built a solid political network with which he could consolidate his hold on power.
Feelers from the State are that even if Yuguda builds a solid structure, it may not help see him scale the re-election hurdle. The argument is that in 2011, Yuguda should pave way for someone from either Bauchi North or Bauchi Central Senatorial district to step in the saddle. By so doing, according to the opposition, there will be equity and fairness in political power sharing in the state. Bauchi South, they argue, has had more that a fair share of the governorship, having produced Mu'azu and Yuguda. Opposition elements and analysts argue that to allow Yuguda to be governor in 2011 is to allow Bauchi South district to enjoy the governorship for sixteen uninterrupted years.
The campaign for equity and the push for Yuguda's ouster would not have assumed the current frenzy if governance has been popular, participatory and accommodating of the opposition. Presently, this administration is seen as Machiavellian in disposition. The governor, according to reports, has shown his intolerance to opposition elements all in a bid to hold on to power beyond 2011. On the eve of election, he caused the disqualification of about ninety-five per cent of PDP and AC candidates during the just-concluded local government elections. From the beginning, the integrity of the electoral process had been compromised.
Opposition elements see this as Yuguda's first mistake. They also speak of his government's non-performance compared with the Mu'azu administration. However, Muazu frustrated internal democracy in the PDP, thus forcing many politicians out of the party. These elements found accommodation in All Nigeria Peoples Party (ANPP) and Action Congress (AC). According to reports, these decampees are planning to return to the PDP ahead of the 2011 governorship race in a concerted battle to wrest power from Yuguda.
Although Yuguda has not begun to talk of re-election yet, his body language and the discernible consequences of his current moves and/or actions point to a second term agenda. However, Yuguda's publicists dismiss the report of a second term agenda at this point in time, as diversionary. In an interview, Malam Ibrahim Baba, the Special Assistant to the governor on Youth Development had said that his boss is more concerned about how to deliver on his current mandate. According to him, "what we are talking of now is how to serve our people and this is what is going on. Take, for instance, the education sector. His Excellency was able to, within a short period of time, rehabilitate so many secondary schools, award so many contracts for the renovation, reconstruction and actual construction of so many primary schools in the state; and the sinking of boreholes and provision of pipe-borne water. He further said that "the renovation and rehabilitation of secondary schools are on-going and most of them have been completed."
Feelers from Bauchi State say that the battle ahead is not about achievements. Rather, it is going to be about the determination of the entire Bauchi North Senatorial district (Katagum zone) to grab what it feels rightly belongs to it in 2011. The area believes that Yuguda is utilizing its slot as governor.
Indeed, Yuguda had emerged as governor in a compromise arrangement by the opposition elements in order to thwart Mu'azu's attempt to use PDP machinery to impose a successor on the people. This bid was scuttled through the collective and passionate determination of the people of the State to vote and police their votes and to ensure that they were counted and the results announced. This time around, political forces in Bauchi North are back into the trenches in what promises to be an acrimonious battle for the soul of the state.
Reports from the State say that the current Minister of Defence, Alhaji Yayale Ahmed and serving Senator Suleiman Nazif are the drum majors of the zone's battle to take what they think rightly belongs to it in 2011.
Significantly, Bauchi Central also wants one of its own in Government House in about three year's time. However, political realignments, according to analysts, may in the long run swing it in favour of the North because it has been more vocal and more cor-ordinated in the campaign for equity in power sharing in the State.There is the possibility that Mu'azu, Ahmed and Nazif, with their wide political structures, may strike an accord that would conduce to the defeat of Yuguda in 2011.
Significantly, Mu'azu has an axe to grind with Yuguda. Were it not for the opposition forces that rallied support behind Yuguda, Mu'azu would have defeated Yuguda in the 2007 governorship poll through his surrogate in the proxy battle. His political structures in the PDP are said to be intact and he is expected to rev them up to bolster the onslaught against the incumbent governor. Although, Yuguda won the last battle, Mu'azu, according to reports, is warming up to deploy everything at his disposal to ensure that the present governor does not get a second term in office. The 2011 election is a battle that Mu'azu and other forces, acting in concert, plan to win in order to shore up their political relevance in the state. He is expected to back a formidable candidate from Bauchi North in the race for the Government House.
Retired Head of Service (HOS) of the Federation, Yayale is another force to be reckoned with and the fact that he is the current Minister of Defence makes him formidable. An influential leader of the PDP in Bauchi State, he has built a structure that has assumed a life of its own, defining, as it were, a political trajectory aimed at Government House. Ahmed is said to be under intense pressure to join the fray for the 2011 governorship contest in the State on the PDP platform.
Suleiman Nazif is a serving senator representing Bauchi North on the platform of the AC and he is seen as stormy petrel of Bauchi politics. In the Senate, he is Vice Chairman of the Committee on Land Transport; he is a member of the National Assembly Joint Committee on Constitution Review (JCCR); he is a member of the ECOWAS Parliament and Public Relations Officer (PRO) of the Northern Senators' Forum (NSF).
As the youngest Senator in the current Senate, he has cut a niche for himself as a restless mobiliser, strategist and tactician in the politics of the Upper House. He was in the House of Representatives from 2003 to 2007 on the platform of the PDP before he left the party, due to reported lack of internal democracy, to found and fund the AC in Bauchi. Nazif who has provided the party with leadership, has a rich political pedigree starting from the ill-fated Third Republic when he pitched his tent with the defunct Social Democratic Party (SDP), through the Abacha transition when he was in the defunct Democratic Party of Nigeria (DPN). He was once President of All Nigeria Youth Federation (ANYF). He too is eyeing the governorship of Bauchi in 2011.
These are the forces that are arrayed against Yuguda. More personalities are expected to join the fray for the soul of Bauchi state in 2011. The totality of the political battle, the shape and texture of it will become more defined in the months ahead.
But ahead of the governorship election, the questions being asked are: will Yuguda be able to withstand the onslaught of the opposition against him? Will there be a change of baton in the Bauchi State Government House as it happened in 2007? The answers to these posers are buried in the womb of time.
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