Ahead of the 2019 elections, the political firmament in Kaduna State has already been set aglow with some fireworks by various combatants.
Surprisingly, the burgeoning rift is more pronounced within the ruling All Progressives Congress, as political rivals engaging one another in a war of words.
Taking pundits off-guard, the combatants, in addition to forging and perfecting alignments and realignments towards 2019, have resorted to all sorts of deft covert and overt means to ‘undo’ one another in the ongoing war of attrition for the number one political office in the state.
Two of them in particular, Governor Ahmed El-Rufai and Senator Shehu Sani, representing Kaduna Central in the National Assembly, have, however, taken the 2019 contest some steps further by incessantly throwing poisoned darts at each other over who occupies the coveted seat of the governor of the state after the forthcoming governorship poll in the state.
There is no doubt that El-Rufai wants to continue to call the shots and dictate the tune of politics in the state beyond 2019. Senator Sani has equally left no one in doubt that he’s determined to upstage the incumbent governor from his seat.
One will, therefore, not be wide of Continued on page 20 the mark to say that that the contest for the governorship ticket of the APC in the state in the run up to the 2019 elections will be a do-or-die affair between El-Rufai and Sani, as their respective supporters in the state are already pitched in an epic battle against each other for the coveted number one political office in the state.
In 2019, while El-Rufai will fight tooth and nail to retain the governorship seat, his archrival, Sani, will do battle with the incumbent with the sole aim of upstaging him from the prime office.
Interestingly, the two major combatants at the forefront of the raging battle for the soul of Kaduna in 2019 are from the same party, the APC.
As part of the means adopted by the Kaduna governor to deal with the ‘recalcitrant’ senator, El-Rufai is said to have begun moves to position a former special assistant on public communication to ex-president Olusegun Obasanjo, Malam Uba Sani, who is now the governor’s Special Adviser on Political Affairs and Intergovernmental Relations, to replace Sani in the Senate come 2019.
El-Rufai’s aide is now being recruited into the contest for the seat of the incumbent Senator Sani by his immediate Kaduna Central constituency and growing army of additional supporters with the alleged instigation and backing of the governor.
Consequently, the incumbent senator is, understandably, at daggersdrawn with both the governor and his aide, Uba Sani, because he sees the raging battle as a war bearing on his personal political survival.
In fighting back, in recent months, the incumbent senator has employed massive media campaign against Governor El-Rufai as a strategy for remaining in political contention.
The political chessboard in Kaduna, according to observers, would best be appreciated from a chain of events that created the ongoing rigmarole.
The incumbent Senator’s media diatribe against the governor’s camp intensified with the 11-month suspension placed on the lawmaker by the Kaduna State chapter of the APC.
While the suspension lasted, the senator did not waver in his media campaign, apparently designed to get the governor off his back. That was not to be, as his Ward Exco members handed down an indefinite suspension to the embattled Sani.
The governor, according to observers of the current political circus in Kaduna, is also facing a massive gangup by hidden and bare-faced political rivals.
The incumbent Senator is believed to be working in cahoots with other bigger rivals, notably former vice president Atiku Abubakar, who engaged the governor in a war of words some months back.
Another thesis suggests that the shadow of three political giants in the Senate has loomed behind the ongoing battle. Yet another thesis holds that there is concerted effort to thwart all of the incumbent governor’s political arsenals to ensure that he does not return to power in 2019.
The governor is, however, said to be set to clip the wings of his new and emerging rivals, when the chips are down.
At the moment, the combatants’ foot soldiers have moved the battle between El-Rufai and Senator Sani to the airwaves controlled by three major private electronic media houses in the state, where they now slug it out at short intervals.
Pundits are united in the view that when the push comes to shove, incumbent Senator Sani may lose the APC as the platform to realise his return to the Senate in 2019.
One of the reasons advanced by proponents of this view is that with a no-love-lost relationship between him and his party, getting a return ticket in 2019 could be a mirage for the lawmaker.
There are strong indications that the climax of the ongoing battle would become manifest by the time the incumbent senator decides to defect to another party, most likely the PDP, assuming its ongoing internal crisis ends soon.
What is at stake is a battle that may turn into a ‘big war’ by 2019 in Kaduna. Sani is likely to stick to his gun, while Governor El-Rufai may use his various projects as the launch pad for his re-election campaign.
As the leader of the party in the state, the governor has an edge over Senator Sani in terms of securing a return ticket. But as a politician, who seldom gives up, Senator Sani wouldn’t go down without a fight. What is obvious is that between the incumbent Senator and the governor, one would definitely be a big loser in the long battle for political supremacy in the state.
For now, political watchers say, the odds are not in favour of the embattled senator. Given the nature of contemporary Nigerian politics, however, Kaduna’s political chessboard as it presently looks, promises so many possibilities.
By and large, both Governor ElRufai and Senator Sani are, no doubt, fighting a political battle of their lives, the result of which may make or mar their chances on the state’s political turf.
For Governor El-Rufai in particular, there are indications that some APC chieftains have already moved against him over the memo he wrote to President Muhammadu Buhari in September last year, the content of which was leaked to the media in March, 2017.
These party stalwarts, according to findings, have vowed to ensure that El-Rufai neither gets a second term as governor nor replace Buhari as the APC presidential standard bearer in 2019, if the former decides not to recontest.
The APC chieftains, it was learnt, have gone as far as listing two persons, including Senator Suleiman Hunkuyi, currently representing Kaduna North in the National Assembly and Hon. Isa Ashiru, a former member of the House of Representatives, as possible replacement for El-Rufai in the 2019 governorship election in the state.
El-Rufai, with the backing of Buhari, narrowly defeated Ashiru to secure the governorship ticket at the APC primary for the 2015 polls. Both Hunkuyi and Ashiru have an axe to grind with the incumbent governor-both of them are not pleased with the way and manner El-Rufai is running the affairs of the party and the state.
The Kaduna North senator, analysts say, though still appears friendly with the governor, is likely to fall out with him eventually over the 2019 governorship contest in the state, a development that will further erode El-Rufai’s support base.
Governor El-Rufai had been engaged in a running battle with a faction of the APC in the state, known as APC Akida long before the leaked memo saga.
The APC Akida, however, used the leaked memo issue to launch a public attack on El-Rufai, accusing him of accusing Buhari of things he, too, had been found wanting about.
APC –Akida Chairman, Mataimaki Tom Maiyashi, said that Governor ElRufai lacked the moral right to write such a memo to the President, adding, “It was a case of a pot calling the kettle black”.
Maiyashi stressed that the governor’s approach to governance was not different from the observations he made in his memo to Buhari.
Southern Kaduna’s grievances over El-Rufai’s lopsided cabinet While Kaduna State consists of 23 local government areas, the state is further divided into three senatorial districts-Kaduna North, Kaduna Central and Kaduna South.
But only eight of the LGs belong to Kaduna South, which is predominantly Christian, while Kaduna North and Kaduna Central, with their majority Muslim popula – tion, share the remaining 15 councils between themselves.
Interestingly, two of the LGs under Kaduna Central also have Christians in the majority. Despite this configuration, however, in all the three senatorial zones, there are pockets of Muslims and Christians, who are indigenes of these areas, as well as a substantial population of non-natives, who belong to both religions.
To gain political benefits, a Muslim can easily claim to have come from either the North or Central Senatorial Districts of the state, but for a Christian from the two districts to do same is like making a futile attempt to push a camel through the eye of a needle.
Similarly, Christians from the Kaduna South Senatorial District would vehemently oppose the idea of a Muslim representing them at any level.
Therefore, a Muslim from the North and Central senatorial districts of the state has the latitude and leeway to hover between the two areas for the purpose of aspiring and contesting any political office.
Due to the peculiarity of the political situation in Kaduna State, deliberate efforts are usually always made since 1999 to balance power between the Muslims and the Christians in the state.
Southern Kaduna had always produced the deputy governor and the Secretary to the State Government before Patrick Yakowa, a Christian from the area, became governor in 2010. Contrary to the usual practice, Yakowa retained the SSG from Southern Kaduna.
But following his victory at the 2011 election in the state, Yakowa appointed the first Muslim to occupy the position of the SSG since 1999 in the person of Abdullahi Samaila Lawal Yakawada.
However, after Yakowa’s unfortunate death in an air crash, his deputy, Ramalan Yero, who took over as governor, sacked Yakawada as the SSG and replaced him with another Muslim from the Zaria axis.
With this act, the political balance of the state had once again been tilted. Those who had thought El-Rufai would correct this anomaly were soon disappointed. With his election as Kaduna governor in 2015, the political situation in the state took a turn for the worse.
Analysts say that El-Rufai has not only tilted the political balance in the state, but has continued to pretend as if the people of the Christian-dominated Southern Kaduna zone are of no use to his future political ambition.
Political watchers in the state have continued to accuse El-Rufai of nepotism for appointing his Zaria kinsmen and fellow Muslims as SSG, Chief of Staff and the Head of Service.
Also, his appointment of 10 Muslims from the Northern and Central senatorial districts and only five others from Southern Kaduna has continued to generate ripples.
The people of Southern Kaduna are also said to be reading some meanings to El-Rufai’s recent minor cabinet reshuffle in which he removed the commissioner for Agrculture, Manzo Daniel Maigari, a veterinary doctor and Christian from Southern Kaduna, and replaced him with a Political Scientist and Muslim, Professor Kabiru Mato, from the Northern Senatorial district.
Maigari is now Commissioner for Trade and Commerce. Certain actions of the El-Rufai administration has also given the people of Southern Kaduna the impression that the governor has an axe to grind Chime with them.
The state government has, since 2015, jailed no fewer than five youths, including a traditional ruler, from Southern Kaduna.
KADUNA APC MEMO
When the APC memo to became public knowledge, the chairman of the APC caucus in the state and an ally of the governor, Alhaji Ahmed Tijjani Ramalan, surprisingly fired back at El-Rufai.
Ramalan in his memo to El-Rufai on repositioning the APC and the government of the state, said, “The party is docile in its statutory duties and activities as a political party. No excos, and stakeholders’ meetings from the ward to state levels.
“Most stakeholders and members are feeling used and dumped and lack of consultations in decision making processes as it affects the party at the Local, State and National Levels.”
The party caucus also kicked against the seeming influence of Governor El-Rufai’s long-time ally, Jimi Lawal, on the governance of the state.
Senator Sani has declared that he may run for the Kaduna governorship election in 2019 against Governor El-Rufai. But ElRufai recently said on a radio programme to mark the second anniversary of his administration that only God and President Buhari could determine his faith in 2019
EL-RUFAI’S REACTION
Reacting to the APC allegations by the APC caucus in the state, the governor said, “I will talk about Jimmy Lawal. Those that said he did not contribute to our election are totally ignorant. He was a member of the CPC from 2010. He was in the presidential campaign council of President Buhari in the 2011 elections. After we lost the election and started the process of merger, he was in the renewal committee. He was a member of the APC Merger Committee under the chairmanship of Tom Ikimi, representing the CPC.
“The people, who are making that claim are those from the PDP who joined the party after we had struggled and formed it. With the intensification of the ongoing war against him over his 2019 re-election by his different opponents, Governor El-Rufai has handed over his political fate to God and President Muhammadu Buhari.
Senator Sani has declared that he may run for the Kaduna governorship election in 2019 against Governor El-Rufai.
But El-Rufai recently said on a radio programme to mark the second anniversary of his administration that only God and President Buhari could determine his faith in 2019.
“If the president comes and meets me and said I want you to re-contest or otherwise, I have no option than to obey his command.
“After all, in 2014 or thereabout, I had my own plans before the President asked me to contest the exalted position of the governor and the rest is now history,” he said.
