If any resident of Bauchi State can claim with any measure of certainty the exact whereabouts of Bauchi State Governor Isa Yuguda at any point in time, that person is most probably a permanent part of the itinerant governor’s travelling team. For a state that defeated the PDP rigging machine so convincingly in 2007, the expected rewards of good governance, job creation, justice and socio-economic development have not materialized. If anything, what promised to spark a revolution in the political culture of Nigeria has transformed to staid, reactionary absent dictatorship.
The general elections in Bauchi in 2007 was an experiment in peoples' power as voters in the state overwhelmingly booted out the ruling Peoples' Democratic Party (PDP) in favor of the underdog and grossly underfunded All Nigeria Peoples Party (ANPP). It demonstrated the powers of a mobilized electorate. Against all expectations and conventional wisdom, Isa Yuguda, freshly expelled from the PDP, found accommodation in the rival ANPP and won with such an overwhelming majority that the PDP conceded without as much as a whimper.
The entire conduct of the election and the results announced were test cases for our democracy. It showed that if we protect our mandates, our votes can matter and that people's power is the ultimate power. The magnitude of the victory and the expectations of voters in the aftermath put Yuguda in a unique position to reward the people of Bauchi with good governance.
Prior to the elections, Yuguda was a political orphan, having been expelled from the PDP after declaring his interest to contest for Governor. His bosom friend, then governor Ahmed Muazu was said to have sworn heaven and earth that Yuguda would never become governor. After representing Bauchi state in the Federal Executive Council as Minister of Aviation (that is another story) for several years, Yuguda found himself expelled from the PDP, and was said not to be an indigene of Bauchi. With public sympathy, he moved into the ANPP and won handsomely.
The ground was set for a political revolution in Nigeria, and Yuguda had the key. All that he needed to do was institutionalize the tenets of good governance: honesty, transparency and accountability, and voters in other states, seeing the success of the Bauchi experiment would have mobilized to eliminate rigging from the Nigerian electoral landscape.
Alas, once in office, Yuguda not only betrayed the people's expectations, but actually returned to the lion's den from where he was rescued by the people. It would be dangerous to dismiss the undercurrent of discontent and simmering anger in Bauchi, despite what the governor's minders might tell him. It is not an accident that the state has recorded a number of religious disturbances with numerous losses of lives of recent. These disturbances are symptomatic of deeper social dislocation.
The jobs he promised the teeming youth are nowhere to be seen. The infrastructure built by his predecessor has not been improved upon. His electoral promises are largely un-kept. But that is not the quarrel with the Bauchi state governor. The issue with Yuguda is not the fact that he has very thoroughly disappointed the good people of Bauchi, or the fact that in nearly three years of his administration, his most famous achievement was his grand wedding to the president's daughter.
The way Yuguda treated his former Deputy Governor, Mohammed Gadi isn't exactly a lesson in fairness either. If Yuguda's expulsion from the PDP was painful and unjust, the impeachment of Gadi on a flimsy excuse indicates that the Bauchi electorate did not really know the man they fought so gallantly to install as governor. The major disappointment with Yuguda is the way he beheaded the political revolution began by the people of Bauchi. After coming to office, all he needed to do was ensure that the voters' faith in him was justified. This, he would have done by institutionalizing the tenets of transparency and accountability. All Yuguda had to do was to provide the people with effective governance, and he would not have needed to marry President Yar’adua’s daughter for his political survival.
Indeed, if Yuguda had kept his electoral promises, it would have been so easy for the North, so desperately in search of leadership to look to him to fill the vacuum. A President Yuguda would not have been inconceivable. Indeed, it was within easy reach. Yet he chose to kill the political revolution that brought him to power. The problem with hindsight is that it is always right. All the same, it is now easy to see why former governor Muazu, who knew Yuguda better than most, tried so vigorously to keep him from Government House. Perhaps, Muazu was right.
The tragedy of the affair is that Yuguda, as the greatest beneficiary of people's power has done more than any despot in the history of Nigeria to undermine genuine democracy and popular participation.
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