Borno politics used to be unpredictable. In 1979, when the second republic kicked off, a home-grown progressive ideology of politics without bitterness held sway in the state and even beyond. In 1983, when the leftists were expected to consolidate, a new order emerged with the National Party of Nigeria (NPN) producing a governor in Alhaji Asheik Jarma, a development which altered the calculus and encouraged observers to accept the reality of the unpredictable nature of politics of the state. At no other time afterwards, has any leaning become singularly dominant even when the tempting had been there, at times, to hazard guess as to the likely dimension and direction of where the pendulum will swing to. This state of affairs notwithstanding, there was one particular trait with Borno politics that has, since 2003, been constant regardless of its circumstances. Since his foray into politics and since he began contesting for the presidency, Muhammadu Buhari has never ever lost any election in Borno state. On a scale of natural liking and solidarity with the nature of his politics, there is no state that can match Borno’s sustained embrace of the Buhari political ideology. Borno is in the class of states like Bauchi and Kano in their unwavering, unambiguous and undiluted camaraderie with the Buhari enigma.
Kano is seen in the light of its size and the high number of votes because of the advantage of its population, Bauchi is celebrated for the consistency in its mainstream politics while Borno is noted and identified as being an untouchable Buhari stronghold regardless of which ideology controls its politics at any given election period.
Since 2003, when Buhari began his presidency quest, Borno has consistently given him the majority of their votes. It is instructive to note that even when then Governor Ali Sheriff was double dealing and cunningly engaging in anti-party activities, Buhari never lost any election in Borno state. Of course, Ali Sheriff had, although his years succeeded in delivering 25% of the votes to Obasanjo and ‘Yar’Adua, but at no time has Buhari lost in Borno. In fact, in 2015 when the Kashim Shettima factor came into play, Jonathan ended up with less than 10% of the votes. It is, therefore, proved that when it comes to Buhari, Borno has, on more than three occasions, spanning 16 solid years, sacrificed entrenched political ideologies as well as survived anti-party activities of a compromising political leadership intent on selling out.
So, when an unprecedented crowd in Borno went gaga and virtually uncontrollable on Monday, January 21, 2019, as Buhari launched his campaign rally, Borno was only acting true to type. Visits by Buhari to Borno have always been unprecedented crowd pullers, but the 2015 and the 2019 were simply out of this world. Governor Kashim Shettima, the architect of modern Borno and the man at the centre of the successful organisation of the two events, has proved that the politics of Borno in modern times is progressively predictable. Again, when he mounted the podium and vowed to deliver two million votes to Buhari in this year’s general elections, almost everybody at the Ramat Square Maiduguri nodded his or her head in agreement of the attainment of the goal. There are 2.8 million registered voters in Borno.
Don’t be tempted to assume that the support is based on the ability of the President to degrade the capacity of Boko Haram to either conquer and keep territories as was the case before or to launch daring gun and suicide bomb attacks on civilian targets like Mosques, Churches and Markets, among others. That factor had truly upped the ante of Borno peoples love for Buhari, but the totality of it has its roots from 2003 when the insurgency was not even there and at a time Buhari was not the President. As I noted earlier in this piece, the Buhari enigma had survived high level treachery and sell out at the hands of a one-time governor of the state who served as an ANPP/APC member but sold out to the PDP in the hope of remaining relevant even when his peoples heart was somewhere else to the extent that he agreed to be held responsible in the event that he failed to deliver Borno to the PDP in 2015.
It is important to see the nobility of Borno politics and its people in the way they stood up against the tyranny and treachery of powerful elements, at a time it was very risky to do so considering the stakes that were involved and the powers behind them. The role played by Governor Kashim Shettima in daring those powers, remaining resolute and steadfast in preserving Borno as a key support base for the president and generally protecting the state from falling into the hands of political merchants whose intention was to make personal capital out of all the rigmarole of their machinations and duplicity of loyalty is instructive here. The insistence of Governor Shettima that his successor must be a man with the education, courage and experience to hold onto the banner of the fundamentals of progressive politics and bastion of sincere engagement falls into the overall objective of national rebirth and reorientation as encapsulated in Buhari’s politics of incorruptibility and transparency.
It is this state of mind of Borno politics that has bewildered some Nigerians who have continued to question the achievements of the Buhari administration in the fight against insurgency believing erroneously that opposition parties could make an inroad using a perceived disenchantment of the people as a launch-pad, without realizing that the amity between Buhari and Borno people got its roots from afar and was based on the freewill of the people as well as the risks taken by a group of daring political egg heads who resisted the old order of political merchandising and redefinition of politics in Naira and Kobo.
Ahmed-BK writes from Birnin Kebbi, Kebbi state
