…both Adam Jajimaji and Muhammed Babande got it wrong in different ways. Yobe politicians rarely show genuine interest in the welfare of the people. All the ‘sound and fury’ is a struggle for power. Muhammed Babande cannot deny the fact that Yobe State government has never hiden its intention to impose a gubernatorial candidate on the state APC; by hook or crook.
I read with keen interest long articles on Yobe politics by one Adam Mukhtar Jajimaji titled “Yobe’s Strange Politics” and a response to it by one Muhammed Babande, both published on the respected PREMIUM TIMES platform. Yobe’s political scene had been sleepy, while in other states all parties are busy gearing up for the 2019 elections. The few cases of political action by Alhaji Ibrahim Bomai and a couple of others were the only signs that the political scene in the State was not totally dead.
Both interventions by Adam Mukhtar Jajimaji and Muhammed Babande are also another sign of the fact that politics in Yobe State is moving from a pedestrian level of chatter, as that carried out under lush neem trees after sumptuous dinners of ‘taushe and burabusko.’ While Muhammed Babande did a good job tutoring us on the interesting work of Alhaji Ibrahim Geidam, the current governor, I also admire the incisiveness of Adam Mukhtar Jajimaji. Both are splendid citizens of Yobe State who we all should appreciate for engaging each other in a way that promotes debate.
Muhammed Babande took a lot of space in listing the achievements of Governor Ibrahim Geidam, which are largely the same achievements that have been repeatedly showcased in the last ten years by the State government – the same projects, the same teaching hospital and the same secondary schools renovated in Gwio Kura and Fika, etc. In ten years, if a government repeatedly recycles the same projects as achievements, one then wonders what happened to all the money that Yobe State earned from the federation account? What makes a teaching hospital an achievement if it is the only such project executed in ten years? That’s a whole decade? Neighbouring Gombe and even Jigawa States have achieved much more with the same resources, but Yobe State is still littered with ramshackle schools and deadly roads. Does Yobe state have any standard primary and secondary school? Are Yobe state students performing well in WAEC or NECO? The answer to these is NO.
Just to prove that the priority of Yobe State government could not be said to be its people, it is currently embarking on a white elephant project of constructing a cargo airport worth N11 billion. How relevant is that in a state without any industry or manufacturing? What happened to the only company in the State, Daforga Water, revived by the late Mamman Ali? How many quality secondary and primary schools will N11 billion build? What really is the point of an airport in a state with staggering poverty, where people rather go to the neighbouring Niger Republic, Gombe or Jigawa State for basic medical care? Only a census of Yobe State students in Jigawa State secondary schools will prove the fallacy of Muhammed Babande’s claims. What happened to the special primary schools project started by the late Governor Mamman Ali? Those schools were meant to rapidly provide standard primary education across the State. But this is a matter for another day.
On the political scene, both Adam Jajimaji and Muhammed Babande got it wrong in different ways. Yobe politicians rarely show genuine interest in the welfare of the people. All the ‘sound and fury’ is a struggle for power. Muhammed Babande cannot deny the fact that Yobe State government has never hiden its intention to impose a gubernatorial candidate on the state APC; by hook or crook. It is widely known on the Yobe political scene that the agenda is tribal. Nothing else. Because the governorship of Yobe State has stayed for almost two decades in Zone A, the plot is now to move it to Zone C: but within the same tribe and clique. Already the name of a person from Machina has been circulating. But time will tell. Trying to use the State’s resources to impose that person on the people would not even be as bad as the fact that the motivation for doing this is tribal, and aimed at keeping Yobe within the control of an empire that doesn’t exist any more.
Information filtering across Yobe State shows that a group headed by Alhaji Baba Gana Kingibe is the one pushing this agenda. Kingibe is not an indigene of Yobe State, and his interest in who becomes the next governor of the State is quite obvious and needs no mention. For so long those who expressed interest in the governorship of Yobe have been subjected to all kinds of intimidation and public insults. It is widely known in Damaturu that thugs called ECOMOG, taking orders from a commissioner, have been pulling down billboards and posters of aspirants that the state government doesn’t like. If this is not a suffocation of the political space, what name can we give to this act of crass political brigandage? At a point, the political space was dense, until Alhaji Ibrahim Bomai took his campaign to all parts of Yobe State. Other aspirants and their supporters thereafter went underground out of fear.
The general idea across Yobe is that State government wants to eat its cake and have it. One can then ask: Why does Yobe State government want to use every means to ensure that direct APC party primary elections are not adopted? Why do they want to use their connections within the APC national leadership to ensure that only handpicked delegates elect the gubernatorial candidate of the APC? What are they afraid of? Why are they trying every means possible to prevent the people of Yobe State from choosing their leaders? Of course APC has a grip on the politics of Yobe State, but using the resources of the state government to impose a candidate on the basis of a tribal consideration only may not augur well for the party. Competence and the freedom of people to choose should be the priority for selecting the next gubernatorial candidate in the State. Yobe belongs to all, and not one tribe should be allowed to lord it over the rest. We are not in the era of slavery. All aspirants for positions must be allowed a fair and level playing field. Anything contrary will be unacceptable.
One thing Muhammed Babande and anyone else cannot deny is the fact that poverty, abject poverty, is real in Yobe state.
Ahmed Bulama Gulani is a PhD candidate in the School of Law, University Of Sheffield, Winter Street, Sheffield S3 7ND, UK.
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