It’s true and it has been hypothesised in so many instances that those who don’t have anything to offer in leadership should not in any way come close to power. This is hinged on the fact that they will always fail woefully and at the end of the day leave their people in despondency and despair.
In many instances, people who don’t have leadership capacity and dexterity to turn things around for the better as expected by their followers, resort to unprovoked blamestoming and engage in a needless political hugger mugger ostensibly to hoodwink the public, hide their apparent ineptitude, incapacity and inefficiency to get some level of undeserved sympathies.
Today, some governors, after struggling to get hooked on to power unprepared, are now crying more than the bereaved – the people who they are representing have been denied good governance and dividend of democracy in all ramifications.
The case of Governor Bello Matawalle of Zamfara state defines all of the above and even more scenes of inefficiency in governance, indifference and misplacement of the much needed priorities.
Governor Matawalle mounted the mantle of leadership by the special grace of Allah, not for his political wherewithal, fatness of his bank account or by the popular votes of the good people of Zamfara state who have shown open preference for the All Progressives Congress (APC).
In fact, a lot transpired in the state before and during the 2019 general elections to pave the way for the emergence of Matawalle and his near dead team, especially at the national level (both Senate and House of Representatives), the then Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) to become governor and members not by the power of votes but the will of God through an accidental judicial process.
It’s pertinent to recall that Zamfara has been an APC fully controlled state under the leadership of the former Governor Abdulaziz Yari who had overwhelmingly defeated an incumbent Governor Mahmud Shinkafi of the PDP in 2011 to become the governor of the state on the platform of the All Nigerian Peoples Party (ANPP) – this underscores how strong Yari is as far as Zamfara state politics is concerned.
Matawalle, since his providential declaration as the governor of Zamfara state, certainly not by the electoral umpire, the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC), but by the Supreme Court, has been engrossed in a political cum administrative quagmire. He should instead be grateful to Allah by making his former party, the PDP, stronger and viable and administer governance to the people, especially by curbing the ceaseless and reckless killings and abductions for ransom by the daredevil bandits
Unfortunately, the governor has become more concerned with how to remain in power beyond 2023. This has pushed him to betray even God that made him governor after being declared a loser.
Matawalle first abandoned the PDP and now the people of Zamfara state by unilaterally locking down the state in all spheres of life, including communication, schools, market, freedoms, etc. After publicly vowing by Allah that he will align with the people to suffer together, he sent his darling wife to America to give birth, and thereafter took more than 20 people along with him to help her baby sit!
He sent all his children to study overseas at the expense of the state. He forgot that God made him governor. After so much insinuations, rumours and counter rumours over his plans to defect to APC, Matawalle publicly declared that he will never join the APC.
But in a twist of events, like his friend, the former Minister of Aviation, Femi Fani-Kayode, who vowed that he will rather die than join the APC but later ate his words and joined the party, Matawalle finally decamped to the APC, pretending that he will be opportune to fight the bandits as if the security apparatus of the country belong and only work for the APC.
Today, Matawalle is in the APC and the bandits are still wrecking havoc in the state. But what is more worrisome is his overriding interest on how to get re-elected than to focus on governance which has virtually collapsed at all levels in the state..
He has, unfortunately, since reneged and has shamelessly joined the same APC he cursed, castigated and demonized time and time again. Even then, instead of walking in silently and working with the founding fathers, owners and custodians of the party, he created needless faction and choas in the party to the extent that the party is today sharply divided between Yarima/Matawalle minority faction of deceit and lies and Yari/Marafa faction majority tasted and trusted APC mainstream.
Matawalle’s political miscalculations has resulted to APC’s inability to hold congresses in the state till date. Matawalle and his co-travellers fully know that Zamfara APC without Yari and Marafa is like signing a death sentence on the party; an already subsisting court order and substantive case challenging the legality of the Mai Mala Buni Committee and the dissolution of the state exco by Buni is going to strip APC of all future electoral victory (if any)
Indeed, with the recent successful and rancour-free convention conducted by the opposition PDP in Abuja, the APC should be by now be buckling up to put its house in order ahead of the 2023 general elections rather than indulge in the ongoing blamestorming and smear campaign against Yari and his team who have laboured to build the party that Matawalle is now enjoying.
It’s sad that the smear campaign went to an ugly level of accusing Yari of supporting and planning to defect to the PDP. This is ridiculous! Who is in the APC that will smoke Yari out of the house he so passionately built?
The emerging threat posed by the PDP isn’t something APC and its founding fathers should treat with kid’s gloves. This is the time for them to come together and put square pegs in square holes to be able to confront the opposition parties come 2023. This negative ‘pull him down’ machination by some political prostitutes should be condemned by all well meaning party members.
Umaru writes from Kauran Namoda
