Strange things are happening in the politics of Adamawa State in North Eastern Nigeria. The Governor, Murtala Nyako, a.k.a. Baba mai mangoro (Hausa for the baba with the mango farm), a retired navy admiral who was reluctantly drafted to be PDP candidate by Olusegun Obasanjo in 2007, has gone berserk, riding roughshod over the people of Adamawa State in his re-election bid. Adamawa is one of the states that had re-run elections in early 2008, after the initial April 2007 elections were cancelled by the courts.
Strange things are happening in the politics of Adamawa State in North Eastern Nigeria. The Governor, Murtala Nyako, a.k.a. Baba mai mangoro (Hausa for the baba with the mango farm), a retired navy admiral who was reluctantly drafted to be PDP candidate by Olusegun Obasanjo in 2007, has gone berserk, riding roughshod over the people of Adamawa State in his re-election bid. Adamawa is one of the states that had re-run elections in early 2008, after the initial April 2007 elections were cancelled by the courts.
Having gained from the “new” four year tenure, he is now deeply in the politics of becoming one of the few governors that would rule a Nigerian state for more than eight consecutive years. Nyako was initially uninterested in politics or power before 2007. The story is that then President Olusegun Obasanjo (OBJ) had procured BARC Farms (near Jos in Plateau State) from Nyako. Having paid only part of the hundreds of millions of the cost of BARC Farms to Baba mai mangoro, OBJ dragged a reluctant Nyako to come and become governor and use the position to make up the outstanding cost of BARC Farms. Classical PDP-style agreement by two “babas”! The OBJ and Iwururu tactics that brought Nyako to election victory in 2007, as well as during the repeat elections in 2008 need no repetition here.
The rash and uncultured Murtala Nyako, surrounded by his family members (who constitute the bulk of his senior aides), PDP bootlickers and other beneficiaries of patronage that include extraordinary political prostitute and former vice president Atiku Abubakar have completely occupied the state! Other key PDP stakeholders like Prof. Jubril Aminu and Bamanga Tukur have been pushed out of the power game, left out of the dubious umbrella.
No pity for them anyway. Jubril Aminu and the dictator-governor Nyako were in the forefront when Atiku was frustrated out of the PDP from the Adamawa home base through to Abuja in 2006-2007. Now, Atiku has gone around and is back with the governor while Aminu has become an adversary of the governor within the PDP…what goes around comes around. No pity for these political cannibals that fight for the control of the umbrella.
By the end of December, 2011, it would be three whole months that Adamawa government workers have not been paid their salaries. The workers embarked on strike in September, after the General failed to pay them the newly negotiated 18,000 naira minimum wage. The General was recalcitrant at first, and then later agreed to begin paying them the new wage from November 2011. After the agreement, the workers ended their strike and returned to work in October, but have never been paid. The Muslims workers had a dull Sallah in November; it’s very likely that the Christian workers will also “celebrate” a penniless Christmas season. Rumors have it that the leadership of the labor union in the state has long sold out.
On another front, the executive branch has become the absolute government in the state. The state Chief Judge position has been vacant since the past three months because the General reportedly doesn’t like the next qualified Justice in the seniority order of the state judiciary. Reports say he does not like the 3 top senior justices, and in his wildest dreams and in deference to the constitutional provision for leadership succession in the noble judicial institution, is allegedly trying to “import” a Chief Judge from outside the current bench in the State Judiciary. The NBA in the state has boycotted the courts in protest against this shenanigan.
Three weeks ago, the General sent armed policemen to shut down the Adamawa State Legislature because the members dared to replace the (then) Speaker, Mr. Ibrahim Sadiq and (then) Deputy Speaker, Ms. Wale Fwa. The police first escorted protesting thugs of the governor, watched them brandish guns, daggers and sticks, before sacking all workers and setting up camp outside the assembly. Right at this moment, there are not less than three dozen armed policemen keeping vigil on the assembly complex. And opposite the complex is the camp for PDP thugs of the governor, this bunch of igbo-smoking miscreants are also to be seen and heard occasionally raining insults on “enemies” governor and promising hell should such “enemies” try anything “funny”. The miscreants also do daily shifts and daily stipends are given to them openly by people riding in the governor’s branded campaign vehicles.
The “honorable” members of the legislature themselves are completely helpless as they have no clue to any way forward. The assembly members have always been powerless stooges and tools in the hands of the governor. They simply rubber-stamped the governor’s choice for speaker and deputy speaker. When they became dissatisfied with the performance of their “leaders”, they decided to replace them and elected Mr. Umaru Ahmadu and Mr. Laori Kwamoti as speaker and deputy speaker respectively. The baba mai mangoro promptly became uncomfortable with the new leaders because of their occasional tendency to maintain some level of independence on some critical issues.
The reason(s) for the baba’s fears and discomfort were soon exposed: the deposed deputy speaker, Ms. Wale Fwa was a mole and an informant to baba mai mangoro. Soon after her removal in the chamber, Ms. Fwa moved towards the chamber’s ladies bathroom presumably to ease herself, a move that was strange to most members because she had never used the chamber’s convenience in her over four years in the assembly! Suspicious members asked one of them to go after her: she was allegedly caught frantically reporting unfolding events in the assembly to “His Excellency”.
Nobody knows when this will end, but the governor and his PDP has launched his reelection campaign, with Vice President Namadi Sambo heading the onslaught in the usual PDP style of employing the entire government structures from Abuja to the local levels, to capture states by winning elections at all costs and using any means but fair play. As the Adamawa “democracy” is going on, all the citizens are just watching in awe, “praying” for God to “intervene”.
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