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The choice before the Gombe electorate in this weekend’s governorship election is a straightforward one: it is a choice between light and darkness, between reality and pretence, and between the truth and falsehood.
Governor Inuwa Yahaya represents all the positives because he has been a consistent bearer of good omens. In four brief years of superlative governance, he has changed the politics of Gombe from being one hitherto defined by brigandage, to one that has decency, decorum and adherance to law and order as most common denominators.
Gombe is a state many Nigerians look up to, owing to the prime of place it occupies in Nigeria’s economic trajectory. Like Kano and Lagos, it is a cosmopolitan melting pot with Nigerians from all nooks and crannies of the country living and earning their livelihood there. It is also home to some of the most hospitable people on planet earth.
For centuries, Gombe has been known as a frontline centre of trade and commerce. It somewhat took a back seat from the years 2003 to 2011 when the government of the day in those years allowed (some would even say deliverately promoted) thuggery in the politics and even moral fabric of the state.
In those years of the locust, for the first time in the history of this important state, a deadly cult group known as Kallare came into being and soon assumed a notorious reputation of silencing the opposition by all means, including numerous cases of untimely deaths.
That menace practically defined the eight years of the Goje administration, until Ibrahim Hassan Dankwambo took over as governor in 2011. Though he clearly tried his best, the menace was still very much around, up to four years ago when the charismatic Alhaji Inuwa Yahaya won the election in a landslide and took over as governor.
For the new helmsman, it was a choice between allowing terrible things that were truncating Gombe’s journey to greatness and generally destroying the society to continue, or stopping it altogether, in the overall interest of the people whose love for him remains evergreen.
But then there is a catch: stopping the menace will incur the wrath of some powerful persons, some of whom were from the same political party. And this, he was warned, could have implications on his re-election.
Governor Yahaya did not waste time to decide that the Gombe people, rather than an individual, matter most and that their interest supercedes that of any group or individual, no matter how powerful.
As correctly predicted, no sooner had the governor started putting things right than terrible storms started getting thrown on his path. But he was not in power to do the bidding of these dark characters. He entered politics, in the first place, assured that he has all it takes to restore Gombe to its lost glory, with positive impact flowing from that felt all over the Nigerian federation.
Like play, and without wasting any time, this individual set up a team saddled with the inglorious task of bringing down Governor Inuwa Yahaya.
An integral part of what they do on a regular basis is concocting audio discussions in which a voice mimicking that of the governor would be heard talking about things with tendency to lower him in esteem before the right-thinking people of Gombe State.
Artificial intelligence has made such pretty easy, with the implication that decent people personifying integrity can easily be blackpainted or blackmailed.
When they did not succeed in that, even though it remains their strategy of setting up the governor against the people, they thought they could get him in trouble by introducing dangerous dimensions in religious politics.
Some individuals were readily sponsored to release unto the social media space audios and videos alleging Governor Yahaya is averse to Christians native to the state.
Unfortunately for those purveyors of falsehood, that, too, failed to fly, as the Christians themselves, from the respected Deputy Governor down to traditional rulers and other noble men and women of virtue, know that Governor Inuwa Yahaya is one perfect example of a leader in whose lexicon tribal or religious discrimination does not have a place.
The Christian leaders know that Governor Yahaya is their best friend, and the records have proven exactly that fact. Here is a man whom many of his closest friends in Nigeria and elsewhere are Christians, and this has been the fact from his teenage years.
Of course, the governor is a Muslim, a pacticing one at that. But even Islam is against a Muslim leader discriminating against non-Muslims, as exemplified in Prophet Muhammad’s Treaty With Christians of St. Catherine Monastery.
In that treaty, the Holy Prophet categorically called Christians as his own people who must be protected by all Muslims. That same treaty even stipulated that a Muslim man marrying a Christian lady should respect her choice of religion and even personally accompany her to church for her worship.
This is the egalitarian sociaty that Governor Yahaya has been doing all he could to enthrone in the course of the last four years. He surely will have achieved lots more, but for dearth of adequate resources and these enemies of the people who have continied to up the ante in their vainful determination to entangle and wrestle him to the ground.
One thing the shadowy characters have forgotten to take into consideration is the fact that the people of Gombe are too politically sophisticated to be deceived or misled by one desperado who wants to continue lording it over them forever.
Faced with imminent defeat, these people are up in arms, coming up with one falsehood after the other. The people know, for example, that there now exists, a simple technology facilitated by artificial intelligence that makes it possible to mimic someone’s voice and use that to seriously malign or blackmail the person. That strategy, as mentioned earlier, has come out flat, unable to extinguish the deep flame of love and trust that the Gombe people have for their hardworking governor.
The people, and indeed the governor, are looking beyond this weekend’s gubernatorial election. They are resolute in their support for the one leader whose resolve to make life more meaningful for them is all too palpable and unmistakable.
It is about life-changing projects started by Governor Yahaya, many of which have been successfully delivered. But the fate of these projects that are still in the line of execution can only be left to the imagination if left in the hands of those who are desperate to return to power using a sleigh of the hand, with the one and only objective of making life miserable for the people.
The Gombe people have elected to have for the next four years, the continuation of Inuwa Yahaya’s leadership that has been defined by clear positive direction and all that is best and noble in governance. With the solid foundation now being set, even after Governor Inuwa Yahaya’s second term of office in 2027, God willing, they will not allow these shady characters to return to power as they are trying to do through their lackeys of doubtful chanracters.
The Gombe people cannot return power to people with itchy fingers, who will appropriate the peoples patrimony for themselves, and satisfy their insatiable greed even when the people were being beset by grinding poverty.
By the people’s assured support for Governor Yahaya, the era of accountable governance in Gombe is here to stay.
Is there any lesson to be learnt from what is playing out in Gombe? Indeed, it is that no matter how powerful a compromised politician thinks he might be, he can not be as powerful as God. Only the Almighty gives and takes away power, and anyone playing God lives to bitterly regret doing so. God does not share His Kingdom with a mere mortal, whoever he might be.
So the key lesson is that as a leader, the people will always stand by you, as they have been standing with Governor Yahaya, provided you are working for them. And this is even when all sorts of falsehoods are ingeniously being concocted to bring you down, as the enemies have been trying in vain for the past four years.
At the end of the day, the people’s power is the ultimate power. And definitely, no one or two or even more selfish individuals can be more powerful than the people as a collective.
Gaya is the immediate past Deputy President of the Nigerian Guild of Editors.
