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The entire Nigerian nation was agog a few days after the governorship election last month when information started filtering in that, for the first time in Nigeria’s history, a northern woman, Senator Aishatu Binani, had won a gubernatorial election and would assume office in May to give direction to Adamawa, a state observers see as having the misfortune of being beset by poor leadership by a men clique.
But how come the Adamawa people were wildly celebrating Binani’s victory, though the result was not formally declared? The 2023 election was structured in such a way that candidates to different political offices could know their true fate a few moments after the conclusion of voting.
In the case of Adamawa, those on the ground, who had the real results from the polling booths, knew that Binani, the woman they came to love and passionately support, had beaten the incumbent, Governor Umaru Fintiri, hands down, and they could not help trooping to the streets to celebrate the unprecedented feat, which represented, for them, the end of a dark era and the beginning of a new one laced by hope.
At last, the glass ceiling had been shattered. But while all the celebration was ongoing, some shadowy men had other ideas. For them, the idea of a woman governing Adamawa or any state for that matter was simply unacceptable, and so the gang-up started to place a spanner in the works.
Soon after, new figures showing the incumbent leading Binani by over 30,000 votes surfaced from nowhere. The people were disappointed and wasted no time in calling on the electoral umpire to review the results and return victory to Binani, the real victor.
There were loose talks that PDP’s loss of Adamawa aggregated to a humiliation of Atiku Abubakar, a son of the soil who contested and lost the presidential election two weeks earlier. Observers wondered how the feelings of one man, however powerful he might be, could subordinate those of millions of other citizens of the state who desperately yearned for a positive change.
There were allegations that, though the electoral umpire knew Binani truly won the election, the officials were afraid of being misperceived as taking sides with her, given that the institution was already being blackmailed with allegations of manipulating the presidential election, which Atiku lost, and was won by Binani’s political party.
Angered by the sad development, the apex body of northern women, the Jam’iyyar Matan Arewa (JMA), a credible group founded on May 27, 1963, and which has been fighting for social justice since then, called on women from all nooks and crannies to come out en masse and save Senator Binani from a gang-up by unscrupulous men who do not want women to succeed in politics.
Addressing a press conference in Kaduna, penultimate week, the president of JMA, Hajiya Rabi Saulawa, said men had been consistent in ganging up against women in politics, especially in northern Nigeria, citing the case of late Aisha Alhassan of Taraba State and Binani of Adamawa.
Recall that the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) declared the Adamawa State governorship election inconclusive and rescheduled it for this month.
The candidate of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) and incumbent governor of the state, Ahmadu Fintiri, was credited with 421,524 votes, while Binani’s was placed at 390,275 votes before the election was declared inconclusive. Of course, these figures differ from the reality of what took place on Election Day, but they remain the official figures the supplementary election is going to be based on.
Hajiya Rabi said, “In the National Assembly election, only three female senators were elected out of a total of 109; 15 female members of the House of Representatives were elected out of 360 members.
“To compound our myriad of gender-related problems in the North, we have only one northern female senator and five honourables in the Houses of Assembly. Being born female in the North automatically makes you a third class citizen that should not be seen or heard, and this has more to do with culture than religion.
“A nation that refuses to allow half of its population, which happens to be us women, to give its quota in its development cannot prosper. The irony of elections is that the majority of the voters that actually come out to vote are women, and we go there to vote in men that continue to make our lives more difficult.”
Of course, it is not all men that are making life difficult for the womenfolk in northern Nigeria. Senator Binani herself, for example, rose to the top with the full support of Dr. Modibbo, her beloved husband, and she won the gubernatorial election that is now being snatched away from her through a sleight of the hand, with the help of uncountable number of men that made it possible.
But why are the people of Adamawa so passionately supportive of Binani? It is not because of the usual soft spot that men of virtue tend to have for women. It is largely because of her excellent record as administrator of proven capacity, as well as her position as philanthropist extraordinaire.
For example, Senator Binani sponsors free cataract and fibroid surgeries in Adamawa, and at one instance last year alone a total of 1,550 men and women benefited from the free cataract and fibroid surgeries. She is on record to have organised and sponsored a record-breaking medical outreach at Modibbo Adama University Teaching Hospital, Yola, Adamawa State.
Those with visual impairment not only received free cataract surgeries, their sights have been restored. The beneficiaries were also provided with free eyeglasses. Meanwhile, another contingent of women received free fibroid surgeries, taking the number of beneficiaries of the medical outreach to thousands.
Further to that, Senator Binani procured seven state-of-the-art medical equipment: Bilirubim Meter (1), CPAP Machine (3), Infusion Pump (6), Infrared Vein Finder (2), Patient Monitor (3), Photo Therapy Lamp (LED -3), and Baby Cot (3) all of which she presented to the Pediatric Department of the Teaching Hospital.
In her flag-off speech, the lawmaker stressed that, “We are doing this in order to assist our people to regain their full health status, because as it is often said ‘health is wealth,’ for without good health, one cannot be productive, and without productivity, our families easily fall back to poverty.”
That aside, many indigent children of Adamawa received scholarship from Senator Binani, and the number is so huge that she cannot readily give an exact figure, but the beneficiaries cover all nooks and crannies of Adamawa State.
Senator Binani is already working towards returning Adamawa to sustainable peace by making life more meaningful for its citizens. The people appreciate such unprecedented gestures and are sure that, as their governor, Aishatu Binani will do far more for them, rather than stealing their collective patrimony and making life miserable for them.
Even with the way things are presented, Senator Binani is poised to win the supplementary election and stamp her earlier win to become Adamawa governor and make life more meaningful for its teeming populace, most of whom have been consistently impoverished by bad governance.
Governor Fintiri may have tried his best, but for sure, his best is far from being enough, and he should thank his stars that he has had the grace to govern his people, inspite of his many imperfections. Forcing himself on them this time around is going to boomerang. It will also be seen as an insult to the collective patience and intellect of the Adamawa people.
In saner climes, people resign from jobs they cannot perform, but here, in most cases, it is all about ego and personal aggrandizement. The outgoing governor can learn important lessons from his failure of today and effect significant corrections to possibly bounce back in the future.
(To be concluded)
