By Aminu Aliyu Yantagwaye
Between President Bola Ahmed Tinubu (PBAT), Malam Nasir El-Rufai, and Malam Nuhu Ribadu, many people are confronted with the difficulty of understanding the Maradonian political theatrics that is taking on a new, vibrant dimension and most likely leading to the precipitation of an unprecedented political bankruptcy of warring elephants because of El-rufai’s Machiavellian pursuit of power without actual power and authority. This situation is a copycat of what transcended following the end of Peloponnesian War and Socrates was executed on the accusation of worshipping new gods and corrupting the youth.
President Tinubu and his inner circle as the participants of the birthplace of democracy called “Athens”, realised that El-rufai due to his political past, nature and relationship with the people of Kaduna, ruled under the distinctive form of Spartan oligarchy, where El-rufai and his deputy governor were kings and his commissioners, such as Bashir Saidu, Jafaru Ibrahim Sani and co were the council that controlled everything under their power. This was the sordid nature of the day that consumed one of his council members when he addressed his oligarchic companion, as “former emir of kano”.
It is not out of political permutation, if Tinubu and his cabals used El-Rufai and dumped him in fear of El-Rufai corrupting their hard-earned popularity in the same way he exacerbated his political career in Kaduna. However, the quick nature of political defections from one political party to another, is a fraudulent political exercise and speaks volumes about why moral, social and political disorder continues to darken the democratisation struggle in Nigeria. As such decision are influenced by unjustifiable caprice and not true knowledge or concern of the human plight.
As a free nation, it is the right of any politician or Nigerian to transfer to any political party whose ideas best uphold his political thought and philosophy upon which the citizens or states trust him or her with the organisation and purpose of their democracy. This was the case that informed the coalition of the “willing” under the political platform of the APC in Nigeria.
However this time around, with the nature of political crisis surrounding the defection of Elrufai and his coalition to SDP, it cannot be guaranteed that Nigerians, particularly Northern Nigerians and Kaduna people would believe, that such “gangs of giants” are united by a unanimous political ideology to deliver Nigeria and Nigerians from the failed promises of the APC government. How is the coalition sure that with people like El-Rufai, it will not most likely ended up with the themes of power struggle, loyalty, betrayal and consequences of violence in the British television series of “Gangs of London”.
Particularly for El-rufai, he has been known for his pride and lack of public sympathy in the discharge of law and order in Kaduna and Abuja. His insistence on demolition of the led APC government is the precipitation of his public “declaration of war of all against all” his former friends in the APC and camaraderie with all his former adversaries in the SDP coalition. His media massages and egoistical rants on Arise Television, TikTok and X, is enough to tell careful readers of Nigerian politics, government and governance, that El-Rufai is uniquely being unneedly needed and unpopularly popular but as he said, 2027 polls will show who is relevant and not. We will wait and see.
As for Kaduna, the clouds are still not gathering in the direction the Indian gods of El-Rufai promised him it would rain. Perhaps, this is why instead of focusing in where the votes will predominately come from, he is going around, attending funerals, weddings, naming ceremonies, Friday sermons and umrah, party conventions and conferences. This is like having your domestic challenges with your wife in Kaduna, but asking your concubine in adamawa you have come to learn how to live peacefully with the wife in Kaduna. Does this make any sense at all?
At the end, this crisis of personalities, is confirming a situation where the political doings of Tinubu administration and his cabals in the affairs of local politics is unnecessarily overheating the Nigeria’s democracy and therefore signalling a flood that can have both positive and negative consequences on Nigerians. His personalisation of the politics and Nigerian legislative function is becoming too obvious and when Nigerians wake up to the calling of SDP coalition about important national issues being held to ransom by frivolous events, such as the one in Rivers, Natasha and Akpabio alleged personal sexual Romantisation, Presidency will be a lost residency.
The PBAT led administration will continue to wake up every day to a national issue at hand that is not guided by rules and regulations of Nigeria as the case of Rivers state is concerned. As it is, already the PBAT’s appointments, quest for power and government have been surrounded by religious, regional and tribal interpretations and the marks via which Nigerians view and analyse his response to national issues.
The constitution says the President is wrong and does not have the right to remove a sitting governor because of state of emergency but his led aides and diehards say the president is right and capable of making such a decision. I ask you, is it the constitution that is wrong or you? This is the kind of question that will continue to be asked by the likes of SDP coalition and El-Rufai, and until addressed, its interpretation will have meaning to many Nigerians.
Yes, in 2004 and 2006, Obasanjo declared state of emergency in Plateau and Ekiti and removed sitting governors, but does that give PBAT the legitimacy to do so or the right to reiterate such flagrant constitutional adultery in broad light? Except if it’s a cultural thing ̶ which I am certain it’s not ̶ that they both suffered from the spirit of “area boy diplomacy”, looking at their history and inclinations. It is the constitution that the president should be guided by, or the action of one so-called repented military dictator.
