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Even in the face of deep gloom that the Nigerian political space represent, this column has every reason to celebrate. Nothing excites a newspaper columnist than getting his calculations correctly.
Two days to the gubernatorial election of March 18, this column correctly predicted that Governor Inuwa Yahaya of Gombe State was going to brave the odds placed on his way to clinch a second term of office. Yahaya not only won the election but also mercilessly trounced his main opponent, the PDP candidate.
Gone are the days when some lousy persons calling themselves political godfathers would dictate how the outcome of an election should be. Of course, there are still vast swathes of Nigeria where that still remains the case. Luckily, the people of Gombe proved too smart to allow that kind of thing to happen to them. And so they firmly supported their hardworking governor, even when all sorts of falsehoods, including manipulation of artificial intelligence to produce false videos, were being fabricated against him.
As if to confirm that the Gombe electorate have done exactly the right thing by electing Governor Yahaya for a second term of office, the Presidential Enabling Business Environment Council (PEBEC), earlier this week, released the second edition of the Subnational Ease of Doing Business Report for 2023, with Governor Yahaya’s Gombe State leading the 36 states and the Federal Capital Territory.
Gombe scores a total of 7.15 out of 10 scale-points to emerge as the one state providing the friendliest business environment in Nigeria. This is the second time in a year that Gombe, under this committed governor, will clinch the first position.
And look at the six indicators determining the examination: infrastructure, secure and stable environment, transparency and accessibility of information, regulatory environment, skills and labour, as well as economic opportunity.
At a time when poverty and harsh economic environment are helping induce some of our youths to join criminal elements to unleash mayhem on the citizenry, Governor Inuwa Yahaya is making Gombe a fertile ground for everyone interested in earning legitimate livelihood.
Of course, the larger economic environment of the country is affecting his ability to make life as easy as he desires for all Gombe people, but at least the people saw his genuine efforts and decided not to allow themselves to be hoodwinked by any godfather, including those under whose tenure of office as governors of the state terrorist groups like the Kallare were deliberately encouraged to thrive.
The biggest responsibility of government anywhere in the world is security of life and property. The PEBEC report has shown Gombe has the most secure environment to do business and live peacefully. These are achievements worth celebrating by all persons meaning well for Nigeria and its growth as a democracy.
Another reason this column is presently in a celebratory mood is that, a few days after the first part of this piece was published last week, Governor Bello Matawalle of Zamfara State made a statewide broadcast in which he accepted losing the gubernatorial election to Dr. Dauda Lawal Dare of the PDP.
That came as a big surprise to many, because that same governor allowed tyranny to become the most common denominator defining his almost four years of rulership. The people call him Dodo, roughly translated to mean, fearful spirit, owing to the reign of terror unleashed by him and his band of illiterate supporters.
Early 2021, I was driving from Abuja to Sokoto when I received a call by the president of a major Islamic group, who told me that he and his members were in Gusau, the Zamfara State capital, to meet in audience with Governor Matawalle. So when I told him I was also going to Sokoto the same day and was already on my way, he pleaded that I stop over for the event, which I did.
I witnessed the group’s meeting with Matawalle and was personally impressed with what I thought was his genuine commitment to peace-building in Zamfara, a state ravaged by banditry and terrorism. It was the first and only time I met with the governor, and he left a positive impression on me.
But it is said that a true taste of the pudding is in the eating. Soon after that meeting, it started emerging that Matawalle was largely only paying lip service to all the niceties he was mouthing. It was all too clear that the man was fond of speaking from both sides of his mouth when I started hearing, and even witnessing, cases of Zamfara indigenes being pursued by goons of Matawalle.
Only in Matawalle’s Zamfara did I hear that no citizen could sell his or her property to PDP chieftains, especially Dauda Lawal, the person who is now the governor-elect. I am talking about your own property, not one given to you by the governor or his people. An illiterate member of Matawalle’s inner circle even took over a property belonging to two orphans in Gusau, insisting the owners could not sell to Dauda Lawal. I have proof of all these.
When the matter was reported to me, I called Matawalle on phone, but he refused to pick my calls. I then sent him messages on Whatsapp, respectfully appealing he correct the illegality, but the governor would read my messages and arrogantly refuse to reply. That gave me the impression that the whole disgraceful conduct was happening with his own stamp of approval.
When the two orphans insisted on having their property returned to them, the arrogant jester occupying it illegally threatened them with a demolition, saying they were in power and had the authority to do what they wanted. He then started training outlaws within the same property, promising to kill any PDP member that came near the place. Sadly, not even the security services could remove this jester and his gang when the matter was reported to them. The whole thing was becoming hopeless for the innocent orphans who were being cheated and dehumanized.
I wanted to let the world know about this particular act of sheer wickedness, but the victims begged me to allow God deal with the situation. One of them, in my presence, burst into tears of deep pain and prayed to God to deal with all those denying them their right.
When Matawalle was defeated by the same man that he did everything to entangle (including illegal closure of media houses that covered a rally by Dauda Lawal), I sent him a message of commiseration, but reminded him that this act of betrayal and sheer wickedness alone was enough to make him lose the election. The God we worship is a living one, and he does not condone injustice. The Lord also does not share His Kingdom with anyone.
The only good thing about Governor Matawalle is that, in accepting the outcome of the election that he lost, he also profusely begged the people for forgiveness. This measure alone shows some of the terrible mistakes he made happened because he allowed himself the liberty to be intoxicated by power. In other words, some of the mistakes were of the head, and not of the heart.
It was Nelson Mandela who said only the strong forgive, and it is not an attribute for weaklings. In the same vein, only the strong confess to mistakes and ask for forgiveness as Matawalle has done.
I am using this page to appeal to the good people of Zamfara to forgive Governor Matawalle, provided his actions in the remaining few weeks of his administration do not prove that he was being deceitful by his confession and appeal for forgiveness.
In the message I sent to Matawalle, I urged him to seek forgiveness (which he has now done) and convince the people that he was only human prone to mistakes. I told him he could still bounce back in the next eight years, the same way Engineer Rabi’u Musa Kwankwaso bounced back after being defeated by Malam Ibrahim Shekarau as an incumbent in 2003.
But Matawalle cannot hope to become relevant again if he does not internalise the inherent lessons in his outright rejection by the same Zamfara people who showed him so much love only four years ago. Kwankwaso did that, even when then President Obasanjo made him the nation’s minister of defence, and today, no politician alive in the whole of northern Nigeria is as influential as him.
Governor Matawalle should never allow a possible federal appointment in the Tinubu administration make him return to his arrogant, irresponsible ways. He should remain level-headed and learn to stoop to conquer.
The third reason informing this column’s celebratory mood is also the acceptance of the election outcome by Nasiru Yusuf Gawuna, the APC candidate for the April 18 gubernatorial election in Kano State. In the piece last week, BRASS TACKS urged Gawuna to accept the outcome of the election and move on. We said that his continuous refusal to do so was making the people of Kano angrier, and that he stands the chance to bounce back in future by summoning the courage to accept the outcome.
Gawuna has done exactly that, earlier this week. We only hope that he would not behave like Senate President Ahmed Lawan who openly said that he was not going to go further in his contest for the senate seat that we all know he did not participate. But the same man allowed his political party, the APC, to use a sleigh of the hand to take the matter up to the Supreme Court where the most bizarre of all judgements in global history was given, affirming Lawan as the winner of an election in which he was not a contestant. It remains one judgement that is going to rubbish the Supreme Court in a long time to come, probably forever.
