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By Desmond Mgbo
To many critical observers, the defection of the former Governor of Kano State, Ibrahim Shekarau, to the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), would return the party to winning ways in the state and beyond. Not a few PDP stakeholders believe Shekarau would revive the opposition in the state and subsequently assist its presidential standard bearer, Atiku Abubakar’s journey with ease to Aso Rock.
A reflection of the reception of the former governor, which occurred a few days ago, underlines this great expectation. Nearly everybody that mattered in the PDP, especially in the North, was there. The names include Atiku Abubakar, his running mate, Ifeanyi Okowa, the National Chairman of the party, Iyorchia Ayu, immediate past PDP Board of Trustees Chairman, Senator Walid Jilbrin, Sokoto State Governor, Aminu Tambuwal, former governors Sule Lamido, Namadi Sambo, Ahmed Mohammed Makarfi, Saminu Turaki, Ibrahim Shema as well as some former ministers.
Taking into consideration all of these, one is tempted to conclude that Shekarau has already delivered Kano to Atiku.
The school of thought in favour of Shekarau comes to the table with a number of arguments.They insist that he has a huge support base, pointing out that since the era of Mallam Aminu Kano and the time of Mohammadu Abubakar Rimi, none of Kano’s politicians has matched his popularity.
They believe Shekarau is a political metaphor and whichever party he joins becomes a beneficiary of the value he brings to the table. Abubakar Bello, one of his fans, drew attention to his Shura Advisory Council of 160 members, drawn from the state’s 44 local government areas, while asserting that in each of these wards, this Council has about 50 leaders and compounds of die- hard followers, who are just waiting to be directed.
Another argument advanced to assert Shekarau’s popularity is that his personality conforms with the values of the Kanawa people, adding that he has successfully married his secular disposition with his religious inclination.
“One must not forget that despite its urban outlook, Kano is a conservative, highly religious society and anybody who fits well into these contexts, like Shekarau does, would reap the benefit of the people’s loyalty” Abubakar told Daily Sun on Tuesday.
Since Shekarau joined politics, riding on the back of the Sharia revivalism that swept across some Northern states years ago, he has attracted an uncommon attention –for good and for other reasons. From his modest disposition, his public speech typically interjected with intermittent religious citations, his respect for culture and tradition and his warm disposition to non natives, he has successfully put himself forward as the right option to the ordinary man.
Many have also acknowledged his margin of victory in the last senatorial elections, in which he polled 506,271 votes as a characterization of his political valour. “In all fairness, this maybe a result of other factors, including the Buhari factor, the quality of his rivals and the incumbency advantage of the All Progressives Congress in the state at that time but there is no doubt that it is a measure of his personal worth and luck” Abubakar declared.
Is Shekarau a man of luck? Several persons would respond in the affirmative. It was this uncommon luck that saw him resign as a classroom teacher only to thrash an incumbent governor, Rabiu Musa Kwakwaso in 2003. Yet there is a limit to luck and in the battle ahead, Shekarau would be faced with an uphill task that would test his strength and not his luck. In fact, the thinking that Atiku will overrun his opponents in the state by mere partnering with Shekarau is nothing but a dream.
“The fact remains that Kano politics is well too complex to support this kind of reasoning. In order words, though Shekarau would raise the bar of the contest, nothing is certain about what will happen in 2023” emphasized Abubakar .
Political historians are equally quick to recollect that a similar optimism attended his defection in 2014. President Goodluck Ebele Jonathan was desperate to garner votes from Kano. He needed a strong and daring character to counter the wave of Buharism at that time. And all hands pointed at Shekarau as the man for the job.
Shekarau was promptly appointed the Minister of Education, despite the fact that Kano already had the Foreign Affairs Ministry. A seed fund was quietly approved for his ministry to enable him reset himself to the job at hand. The tragedy thereafter was that Shekarau failed woefully to save Jonathan. Scores from INEC in that presidential election showed that while Buhari scored 1, 903,999 votes, Jonathan scored a misery 205,799 votes in the state. A post- mortem of that election equally revealed that Shekarau, out of respect for Buhari, never challenged, repudiated or attacked Buhari in rallies or in any public outing, a situation which raised doubts about his reliability for this sort of task that requires commitment and reliability.
Again, Shekarau’s ability to successfully push for Atiku in the state is also blighted by a set of odds in the political calculations. In the past, the big weights of Kano politics had somehow found themselves in one strong party at the expense of the less fortunate ones. For instance, at the dawn of the Fourth Republic in 1999, the PDP had a cluster of Mohammadu Abubakar Rimi, Musa Gwadebe and Aminu Wali in one party. A similar cluster of strength played out in the 2019 general elections where Buhari, Ganduje and Shekarau were all in the All Progressives Congress.
But the present setting in the state clearly separates the three leading political powers- Rabiu Musa Kwankwaso, Abudulahi Umar Ganduje and Ibrahim Shekarau- into three different camps. This situation, therefore, offers an exciting competitive atmosphere for all of them to test their strength and under this circumstance, it is doubtful if Shekarau’s coming to the PDP now would be of much help to Atiku.
Another odd against the current venture is that Atiku abandoned Kano State in the past four years. The PDP presidential candidate turned his back on the state after his sad experience in the hand of Rabiu Musa Kwankwaso, his point man in the state in the 2019 presidential elections, whom he believed did not execute his plans.
Unlike him, Bola Tinubu has kept an eagle- eye on the votes of the state. He has a concrete understanding with the clerics; he has the state governor, Abdullahi Umar Ganduje on his side and he has the sympathy of many elites.
“He mourns the death of the prominent indigenes here, he comes during marriages and festivals and he has “settled” a lot of groups, unlike his rival who only recently gave a donation to clerics, flood victims at Kanti – Kwari and victims of the collapsed building in the state”
There is also the fear that Shekarau and Wali’s factions may not work as smoothly as an organic whole. While Wali‘s faction has already occupied all the elective positions in the state, Shekarau’s is left with a promise of future appointments, a situation that may not be good for team spirit.
