By Khalid Ibn Abubakar
Political power play, power game as well as high political interests aggregation, are normal variables that define partisan politics. However, when these correlates are stretched beyond certain limits, there may be the likelihood of ushering in very dangerous instinctual reactions that have huge capacity for destabilizing the polity.
For all followers of the politics of Kano, Northwest Nigeria, particularly between May 29, 1999, to May 29, 2007, there is a tie-back to the historical precedence of the joint electoral victory between Alhaji Rabiu Musa Kwankwaso as then governor-elect and Alhaji Abdullahi Umar Ganduje, PhD, as deputy governor-elect, respectively.
These two gentlemen were members of the same political party, the Peoples’ Democratic Party {PDP}, but they had definitely passed through varying and divergent socialization processes. Even as it is a known fact that all deputy governors in Nigeria are hardly allowed to exercise full political authority, the duo of Alhaji Rabiu Musa Kwankwaso and Alhaji Abdullahi Umar Ganduje managed to work together in harmony during their first tenure.
For Alhaji Kwankwaso to consider the inclusion of Ganduje as running mate for the second term, however, it was a tug-of-war. Elders of the party, eminent citizens and significant others, intervened, persuaded and eventually prevailed on Kwankwaso to restore Ganduje to the joint gubernatorial ticket as running mate. They expectedly won the elections. So, they worked together for eight years.
Ganduje was to succeed Kwankwaso as governor, perhaps against the wishes of his former political principal and leader who, after his tenure as governor, was rewarded with a high end political portfolio as Nigeria’s minister of defence by the then President Olusegun Obasanjo.
Over time, Ganduje has achieved a solid political stature which tended to overshadow his former principal. The result is that Kano has been split between the two tendencies. The particular human behavioural trait at play here is none other than the human Ego. As a student of the Freudian tradition, one is quick to point out that the major behavioural set back that any political leadership, must avoid in his or her political career, is by avoiding a negative inter-play of the different roles of the three major clinical psychology properties that regulate the impulse of all human, namely, Id, Ego and Superego, respectively.
These three, when negatively influenced, can bring about the downfall of anybody who is somebody, irrespective of his or her social stratification in the larger society.
It is therefore imperative to point out within this medium that the ongoing struggle for political power, relevance and advantage between a former political principal, Alhaji Kwankwaso, and his “junior” associate, Dr. Ganduje — who by way of chronological and mental age is much more senior and better educated than his erstwhile political boss— can all be traced to politics. That is why there is a desperate plot by Kwankwaso and his group to oust Dr. Ganduje as the National Chairman of the All Progressives Congress (APC).
Part of the plot is the sinister scheme to destabilize the Tinubu administration using veiled propaganda, campaign of calumny and allied methods to tarnish APC and its leadership with the hope that such a distraction will add to the political fortunes of Kwankwaso and his NPP in Kano. The calculation is that once Ganduje is out of the way, Kwankwaso and his acolytes can have the whole of Kano to themselves.
Not surprisingly, the whole machinery of the Kano State Government has been deployed to achieve this end.
Dr. Ganduje in his eight years as governor of Kano State produced a very credible democratic scorecard, whose sectoral achievements are cogent and verifiable by any interested member of the public. Apparently not getting adequate results from all the failed plots so far executed by him and his lackeys, Alhaji Rabiu Musa Kwankwaso does not seem to have any iota of respect for seniority and civilized order.
Devoting and ploughing all his energies towards clandestine schemes aimed at pulling down the personality of Alhaji Ganduje who had paid his dues in society by Allah SWT’s divine blessings, is akin to trying the patience of the Almighty ALLAH SWT. The bitter jealousy of Kwankwaso and his men can be further understood when one considers the fact that Ganduje is an urbane intellectual who obtained his Doctor of Philosophy degree {PhD} at the famous University of Ibadan, in 1993, following his first degree in 1975, when Alhaji Rabiu Musa Kwankwaso had not dreamt of enrolling in any Higher School Certificate program.
The conditioned behaviour, which had always propelled Alhaji Rabiu Musa Kwankwaso, who has an affinity for wanting to show political dominance over every citizen from Kano State as an infallible dictator, was what made eminent personalities like Alhaji Ibrahim Shekarau and Distinguished Senator Jibrin Barau, just to mention a few, not stay in the same political camp with him.
In Kwankwaso’s world, his word is law. He cannot tolerate democratic tenets. He cannot work with intellectually endowed people. For him, getting Dr. Ganduje out of his current position as the National Chairman of the APC is his greatest headache. He is probably calculating that Ganduje’s ouster will enable him (Kwankwaso) grab a ministerial position as a pre-electoral bargaining condition and convince President Bola Ahmed Tinubu that he has the entire Kano State in his pocket and that his NNPP is waiting in the wings to play ball.
The NNPP gang is full of hypocrites. They demand integrity from others while lacking it themselves. An example: Governor Abba Kabiru Yusuf has appointed Kwankwaso’s son as a member of the Kano State Executive Council. It’s payback time. They are sharing the spoils as all the other parties do. There is no difference between the way they are carrying on and the way Ganduje ran the government. If anything, Ganduje was better. Time will tell.
When Governor Yusuf eventually finds out that he is not allowed to have a mind of his own and that Kwankwaso is supposed to be all-knowing, the current cosy relationship between them will disappear. Owing to the fact that Kwankwaso would always want every eminent political citizen in Kano State to submit to his overbearing and dictatorial tendencies, all who flock around him must play the dummy to be considered loyal.
In their desperation to pull down Alhaji Abdullahi Umar Ganduje, NNPP hirelings have embarked on senseless moves to procure fake “APC Executive Members”, at the ward and state levels, who are their sidekicks. They’ve tried impersonation, blackmail, open threats and all sorts of sabotage to no avail.
From the grapevine, Alhaji Rabiu Musa Kwankwaso’s most pressing need now is how best he can penetrate the APC federal administration to get a plum ministerial appointment when the president rejigs his cabinet as expected. To achieve this, he is persuaded that he has to destroy Dr Ganduje. But, if history is anything to go by, all their schemes will fail. For, history teaches us that those who plot the destruction of others often fall on their own sword.