Nemesis as short distance runner

By Tunde Olusunle

Ganduje was the prototype “alagbara ma m’ero,” as we say in Yoruba. This interprets as the “maximally muscular, minimal¬ly reasonable.” He fought a few other prominent Kano leaders during his heydays in Govern¬ment House. Recall he carried his unabated squabbles with one of his predecessors, Rabiu Musa Kwankwaso, to the State House, Aso Villa, during the early weeks of the Bola Tinubu government. Told on one occasion that Kwank¬waso was in a particular section of Aso Rock same time as he was in the complex, a vexed Gandu¬je said Kwankwaso should con¬sider himself fortunate. He said he, Ganduje, would have slapped Kwankwaso if he sighted him in the Villa! That would have caused a scene in Nigeria’s seat of power. I’m now just imagining how Tinu¬bu would be trying to restrain Ganduje, in the forecourt of the office of the President, while Vice President Kashim Shettima will be pulling at Kwankwaso’s “agbada” in a bid to manage the situation.

Ganduje reportedly considered Sanusi too independent-minded and outspoken for a natural rul¬er. Sanusi was governor of the Central Bank of Nigeria, (CBN), before being appointed Emir in 2014. He had always had a radi¬cal streak about him which cul¬minated in his suspension as CBN head in 2014 for blowing the whistle on the theft of $20 Billion in accruals from crude oil sales. As Emir, he considered aspects of the religious and cultural practic¬es of his emirate repugnant. He opposed the “ultra-conservative interpretation of Islam” in some parts of northern Nigeria, which discouraged girl-child education, family planning, even inoculation against potential healthcare af¬flictions. He had reservations about the style of Ganduje as governor and didn’t put a veil over his dislike for the return of Ganduje to Government House in 2019.

He believed Ganduje shouldn’t have made it back if the poll was fairly and transparently con¬ducted. March 9, 2020, Ganduje upended Sanusi. He was accused of negatively impacting the sanc¬tity, culture, tradition, religion and prestige of the Kano emirate, and disrespecting the governor’s office. He was also alleged to have disposed of property belonging to the state and the misappro¬priated of the proceeds. It was a case of digging several manholes for a prey in a bid to ensure he falls into one of the several traps. He was summarily banished to Nasarawa State for effect. Sanu¬si sought reprieve in the courts which ruled it was an overkill to fling him to a remote com¬munity faraway from his family and more accustomed home in Lagos. Within a few days, Nasir El Rufai, Sanusi’s longstanding friend who was governor of Ka-duna State, personally enforced the evacuation of Sanusi from Awe local government area in Nasarawa State.

For whatever his contributions were to the emergence of Tinubu as president after the 2023 polls, Ganduje believed he would be compensated with a ministerial slot in the former’s regime. Like Nyesom Wike, David Umahi, Mohammed Badaru Abubakar, Atiku Bagudu, Simon Lalong, former governors of Rivers, Ebonyi, Jigawa, Kebbi and Pla¬teau states, Ganduje dusted his curriculum vitae to pitch for a slot on Tinubu’s federal execu¬tive council. His five colleagues in the “2015 – 2019- 2023 class of governors” made the cut, not Ganduje. Tinubu spontaneously made him chairman of the All Progressives Congress, (APC), the vehicle which delivered him as president. Abdullahi Adamu, his predecessor and former gov¬ernor of Nasarawa State was, as has become standard practice in Nigeria’s notorious political rule book, was schemed out and com¬pelled to resign from office.

If Ganduje ever thought his chairmanship of the APC was going to be a walk in the park, he was thoroughly mistaken. Indeed, he’s grossed sufficient experience in his present office to know that there are sharp dif¬ferences between wholesale in¬sulation in Government House, and the inevitable overexposure of party leadership. Last April, a faction of the APC in Gandu-je’s primary “Ganduje ward” in Dawakin Tofa local government area of his home state, Kano, suspended him from the party. Haladu Gwanjo, legal adviser of Ganduje’s ward led some party leaders to pronounce the suspen¬sion. They advocated the return of the national chairmanship of the APC to the north central zone, where Ganduje’s predecessor, Adamu, hails from. The young Turks canvassed due process in party administration, consistent with the “renewed hope” mantra of the APC. Ganduje made a hur¬ried recourse to the law courts for momentary reprieve.

Thursday, May 23, 2024, Sanu¬si Lamido Sanusi was reinstated as Emir of Kano by Ganduje’s successor in Kano State, Abba Yusuf. His cousin and successor, Aminu Ado-Bayero, was uncere¬moniously removed from office. The splinter emirates, created by Ganduje in his bid to whittle down Sanusi’s authority as prime monarch in Kano, were similar¬ly dissolved. The edifice which Ganduje built four years ago was apparently built of straw and spittle. Governor Abba Yusuf is a product of the Kwankwasiya po¬litical tendency in Kano politics, a creation of Rabiu Kwankwaso. Those who know a little about Nigerian politics will recall that Kwankwaso’s emergence in our politics predates the fourth re¬public. He was an ardent student of the “talakawa” political orien¬tation, pioneered by the venerable Kano-born leader, Aminu Kano. Kwankwaso was Deputy Speaker in the House of Representatives of the Ibrahim Babangida polit¬ical experimentation of 1992 to 1993.

Whereas the Kwankwasiya movement had long been en¬trenched, it was not until the run-up to the 2023 elections that Kwankwaso adopted a new plat¬form, the Nigeria National Peo¬ple’s Party, (NNPP), on which he is espousing the populist philos¬ophy of the Kwankwasiya bri¬gade. Abba Yusuf rode to office on the back of this invention. It was the same way Chukwuemeka Odimegwu Ojukwu, the famous Biafran war lord, established the All Progressives Grand Alli¬ance, (APGA) in Anambra State. The party has remained a force in the politics of the state and indeed the south east. It has pro¬duced three Anambra governors in succession, notably Peter Obi, Willie Obiano and the incumbent Chukwuma Soludo.

Abba Yusuf has made no pretenses about his disdain for Ganduje and everything he rep¬resents. Much as some of Yusuf’s early actions in office were gen¬erally perceived as wasteful, he nonetheless brought down as many edifices in Kano as bore the imprimatur of Ganduje. The “Kano golden jubilee roundabout” built to commemorate the 50th an¬niversary of the creation of Kano State and structures built inside the “filin sukuwa” (Kano race course) were hewn on Yusuf’s orders. The “hajj camp”, which was reportedly bastardised by Ganduje who allegedly parcelled parts of it to his friends and asso¬ciates, was equally felled. There were suggestions that the value of the demolitions carried out by Yusuf could be in excess of N200 Billion. Such is the anti-Ganduje sentiment in contemporary Kano State.
The way and manner the leg¬acies of Abdullahi Ganduje are unravelling in Kano State should serve as a lesson to the shortsight¬ed, incapable of seeing beyond the bridges of their nose. History is replete with the deconstruction of many leaders after their ruler¬ship and indeed keeps repeating itself in our socio-political expe¬rience. Those who are not circum¬spect, however, are too distracted by the allure and bliss of their immediate office, to think. They continue to drift, blunder and flounder, unmindful that time is their ultimate nemesis. Ganduje is just one year out of office, yet many of the decisions he made while in power for eight years are being unmade and thrown at his face like rotten tomatoes.

Until I joined him on the ta¬ble he was seated at a wedding reception we both attended in Lagos a few weeks back, Rotimi Amaechi, governor of the oil-af-fluent Rivers State for eight years and Transportation Minister for another eight years, was a lonely man. It turned out we flew back to Abuja on the same flight same evening after the event and sat not too far from each other. He opened the overhead locker atop his seat to bring out his luggage himself. Is anyone following the Yahaya Bello saga? He mindlessly trampled upon the hapless heads of his constituents in Kogi State for eight unbroken years? He left office last January and life has not been the same again. He has been declared wanted by at least one anti-graft agency. He will be arraigned in the rectan¬gular, wood-panelled cubicle of the courtroom in a fortnight. A lesson for all.

*Dr Olusunle is a Fellow of the Asso¬ciation of Nigerian Authors, (FANA)