Almost all the national dailies in the first week of this month carried the incredible story of how members of the Election Committee of the Peoples Democratic Party mandated by the National Headquarters of the party to conduct House of Assembly primary elections in Adamawa State were “kidnapped.”
The story read like a script from a Nollywood drama. It was in reality sourced from a petition signed by the Chairman and Secretary of the committee, Ambassador Tim Ihemadu and Mrs. Victoria Nyam-Isha respectively.
Captioned: “Forceful Abduction, Assault, Threat and Confiscation of Election Materials by Agents of the Adamawa State Government,” the petition gave an account of the traumatic experiences of the committee members in Yola in their bid to conduct the primaries. From their account, it would appear as if the governor, Bala James Ngilari collaborated with some chieftains of the party in the state viz Chief Joel Madaki and Mr A. T. Shehu in this criminal act. The petition did not spare even the Police Commissioner and Director of State Security Services in the state.
The Committee members complained that while they were held hostage, party thugs with the help of government officials freely rigged the elections and gave them the results which they announced to the media under duress. The panel disowned the results, and urged the party to do same. The Peoples Democratic Party subsequently ordered all Adamawa State primaries including state assembly, governorship and those of the national assembly moved to Abuja without giving any reason.
This has since been done and the results of such primaries held in Abuja announced. Unfortunately this has not restored harmony in the fractured status of the party in the state which has been the case for some years now.
All the governorship, senatorial and House of Representatives candidates of the party in the state with the exception of Mallam Nuhu Ribadu attended a press conference addressed by their spokesman Professor Andrawus Sawa last week.
They lamented that without due recourse to the party’s constitution of a 7 days notice, the purported Governorship primaries was said to have taken place at Abuja instead of Adamawa.
“More to that, the purported election was conducted in contravention
of a court order restraining the PDP and INEC from using any delegates list other than the one recognized by all the party executive at all
levels,” they added.
The situation in the Adamawa branch of the party where primaries are held, far away from the local constituents raises a number of fundamental issues. Primaries for such offices as state houses of assembly and governorship offices are supposed to be held in the locale of such offices. To take them far way in distant lands denies the local folks the sense of participation and political education which are all essential ingredients of democracy. And if the PDP, the ruling party cannot hold their primaries in a state they control, what is the guarantee that they can hold general elections in the state.
This abnormal practice has the potential of becoming the norm and all state primaries even for the local councils will be moved to Abuja. This will certainly raise questions about the federal system of government we are running. I raise this issue because following fast on the Adamawa example, the Yobe State gubernatorial primaries were held at the Legacy House in Abuja on the 9th December. This attracted an immediate response from three out of the four gubernatorial contestants. In a Newspaper advertisement, the three politicians, Dr Yerima Ngama, Malam Ibrahim Talbe and Alhaji Hassan Kafayos argued that the act contravened section 50 of the PDP Constitution and the 2014 electoral guidelines of the party.
At the personal level, I feel taken aback. Late In 1982, I took a flight from Kaduna to cover the NPN gubernatorial primaries in Yol, then the Gongola State capital. The major contestants were Alhji Bamanga Tukur and Edward Aliyedeno. On the flight, a rumour started making the rounds that Edward had stepped down for Bamanga. I drove straight from the Yola Airport to Lamido Cinema, the venue of the primaries. Initially it looked to me as if the flight rumour was true. It was yellow, yellow everywhere. Yellow was the colour allocated to Bamanga. But it turned out that Edward was still very much in the race.
Accreditation and voting soon began. It was an endless and boring but transparent process. At the end of the day, Bamanga won with a landslide. The loser Edward stood up and made a stammering but moving speech conceding defeat. Then Bamanga stood up to give his acceptance speech. It was all very moving. As a young graduate of political science and a reporter, I went to bed contented that I had just witnessed a practical example of what I had read in the books. Tragically, thirty two years after that demonstration of political maturity, Adamawa, which should have moved from there to the next level and be more civilized, has instead, degenerated into political rascality and suffocating corruption today.
The feeling in Adamawa is that Abuja is trying to impose a governor on the state. Reference is frequently made of how Murtala Nyako who was imposed on the state as a result of the Atiku/Obasanjo shootout in Abuja turned out to be a curse and a comprehensive disaster on the state.
Maybe the current happenings in Adamawa would not have been so significant if Nuhu Ribadu were not involved. As the founding Chairman of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC), Nuhu made global impact as a frightening thief catcher. Daily he railed the nation against corruption at every opportunity. It does appear to me now that his definition of corruption was rather limited to bribe taking, contract inflation and similar such acts of financial sleaze.
It is rather disheartening to hear that Nuhu is not only part of the conspiracy to deny the ordinary citizens of Adamawa the right to choose who should be their governor but is the chief beneficiary of the political heist in his home state. Bribe taking and contract inflation are corrupt acts and those involved in it should be despised by decent human beings. Politicians involved in swindling their less fortunate citizens of their rights are also corrupt and should be hanged in the market square in full view of the people. The ultimate consequences of their criminal acts on society are more devastating than “direct stealing,” if I may use Nuhu Ribadu’s words at his 2006 appearance in the Senate.
[myad]
