2015: Sultan, NSA in cold war over Sokoto by Stephen Gbadamosi AS the preparations for 2015 general election hot up, cold war, intrigues and power play have hit the sultanate council over alleged allegiance of the Sultan and other Sokoto princes to different political parties. Investigations by Sunday Tribune revealed that the cold war is gradually blowing open as unconfirmed reports fingered the Sultan of Sokoto, His Eminence, Saad Abubakar, as a sympathiser of the All Progressives Congress (APC), while another powerful prince and the National Security Adviser (NSA), Colonel Sambo Dasuki, is believed to be a sympathetic to the ruling Peoples Democratic Party (PDP). The cold war is reported to be generating tension in the seat of the caliphate, as loyalists of the sultan are afraid that he may be dethroned, if a PDP government is elected at the state level in 2015. Supporters of the PDP in the state, however, have dismissed such fears, claiming it is a blackmail being employed by the APC to win people’s sympathy. They argued that the NSA is not involved in PDP activities at the state level and that the party has no agenda to remove the sultan on account of his open support for the APC in the state. Checks further revealed that royal hand is featuring at every stage of the ongoing campaigns by the various political parties in the state, with pro and anti-sultan forces squaring up long before the governorship elections. Former governor of the state, Attahiru Bafarawa, who installed the sultan while in office is now in the PDP and is pushing hard to deliver the state to his party in 2015. Bafarawa is said to be backing an undisclosed governorship candidate, who is known for his avowed loyalty to the PDP from 1999 and to whom House of Representatives speaker, Aminu Tambuwal, was a legislative aide at the National Assembly in 1999. Both Bafarawa and the said candidate have, however, denied reports of possible dethronement of the sultan, should the PDP win the state in 2015. Sunday Tribune learnt that the situation got to a head recently when some supporters of the sultan accused the NSA of scheming to become the sultan. It will be recalled that the father of the NSA was removed from office and is in exile in Kaduna. While the NSA has not publicly commented on the matter, some of his supporters have expressed outrage about the insinuations, describing it as baseless and a calculated attempt to distract the NSA from his current delicate national security assignments. A source close to the NSA and who craved anonymity said the «NSA is too busy to be involved in that type of local politics. He is not a politician and he is too engaged with combating insurgency to have time for those ludicrous rumours. If the sultan submitted himself to that level of political partisanship, that has nothing to do with the NSA,” the source said. The development has, however, heightened political tension in the state. The likely APC candidate, Tambuwal, and the state governor, Aliyu Wamakko, it was said, were already alleging that the Federal Government planned to massively deploy security agencies in service of the PDP. But the state PDP leadership had countered the allegation. While describing it as unfounded, it said the APC leadership was jittery of imminent defeat in the forthcoming elections. The party had held meeting of stakeholders on Friday night, where members reviewed the preparation for the elections.
Posted on: Sun, 30 Nov 2014 06:34:54 +0000
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