About a month back, I wrote the postmortem of the Nyako administration in Adamawa State. I briefly discussed the people who are warming up to occupy his former office. Although I mentioned about a dozen people, close to another dozen called me to wonder why I diminished their aspirations because I did not include their names on the endless list. One of them did not call personally but a friend of ours drew my attention to his non-inclusion in spite of his engagement with ejecting Nyako which no keen observer, he argued, could ever miss. I tendered an unreserved apology for my failure to include his name. It is Dr Umar Ardo. I am returning to the topic again because of the interest the campaign to rule Adamawa State has generated since that article was published and how it has made me a clearing house of the matter, junk and all. Again I would have simply side stepped it but for the tension and the casualties it is leaving behind even in areas far away from Adamawa State. And in all of these, the former Chairman of the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC), Malam Nuhu Ribadu has featured prominently. I am even more emboldened to return to the matter because of the repartee of my big brother and senior colleague, Timawus Mathias’ on the subject of Ribadu’s candidacy. In it he begged Ribadu not to jump ship from APC to PDP saying Ribadu can win the race from any party. But he argued, rather glibly, that the implication of the move is that Nigerians would construe it to mean that the PDP is the only winning platform and therefore render other platforms sterile. It has been widely circulated that the presidency is behind the move to get Ribadu in so as to redeem the party in the state. It is also believed in presidential circles that Ribadu is the only man with the nerve to deny Atiku any hold on the state, as the others will buck at the sight of the former VP. The argument is valid, to a large extent. But even if Ribadu rode on a corn stalk (read: dokin kara) as kids used to do, he could clinch the office, if antecedents are a factor of this race. So why jump ship? A bird in hand they say is worth ten in the bush. In these days of grand deceit, if Ribadu had an 80-20 chance of getting the office before now the invitation by President Jonathan as is widely touted to Ribadu to join his party and be helped to office should not be seen in any other way than as a boost to the aspirations of the people of the state who yearn for genuine change. I believe without fear of contradiction and Nigerians will bear me witness, that Ribadu may not exactly require this Greek gift. It is mere icing on pancake. To the people of Adamawa it will ferry their desired infrastructural reawakening home, fast and devoid of anxiety. What Adamawa needs today is sudden and total change. About a month ago I said the state was not even good enough for a graveyard. But we have parents who live in it. We have brothers, sisters, friends and relations and I can say without fear of equivocation that those of them who are not living on the brink are mere walking corpses who do not understand the brink. Folks may abhor the PDP but if it will make Ribadu governor, they will hate the option but love the result. The extent of havoc on ground in Adamawa state dictates this thinking. Before Nyako’s departure, the governor’s restroom required a bucket of water each time the governor needed to go. Part of the office is licking whenever it rained. The Adamawa presidential lodge, which was built less than a decade ago, has no cooling system. There are no road signs in Jimeta-Yola but you can drive faster than 40kph at your own peril. Pregnant women have since learnt to avoid travelling by car or bus. They walk. The same goes for the rest of the state. Yet in the preceding years most of the top officials of the state have been guests of the EFCC for financial crimes. Who else would clean the Augean stable than a man with a record of a Czar and the drive of a bull-dozer? However, many people have expressed their misgivings about Nuhu. He had played politics at the highest level, they argue, first as a kitchen cabinet member of OBJs and later as a presidential candidate. They believe that stepping down on his aspiration is worrisome. That he would mistake governing a state for a piece of cake. That he would not pay adequate attention to the job at hand. But wise men say that the challenge of revamping your state could excite every single nerve in a patriot. They argue that Nuhu has a name to protect and an impression to correct – that he does not hunt enemies but does what is necessary. And besides, Adamawa is in dire need of a paradigm shift. Imagine that in 1983, Bamanga Tukur was the governor of the defunct Gongola State and 31years later, he was PDP chairman and is today the chairman of the Railways yet he wants his son as governor; Murtala Nyako was governor of Niger State in 1976 and 36years later, he governed Adamawa State and he wants his son to be governor; Atiku Abubakar was governor in 1999, later vice president but wants to determine who is governor. These men have shackled the state perpetually in darkness and only brutal frankness can get their hands off the stake.
Posted on: Fri, 15 Aug 2014 16:23:19 +0000