Still on Niger guber race

My expression of cynicism last week, in my take on the generational chaos that is the contest to succeed Governor Aliyu in 2015, has sparked a torrent of reactions, fierce from the devastated camps and patronising from likeminded Nigerlites, with the defence of the former group being accusations of mine as unfair and “incomplete” criticism of the process. This, I want to clarify here.

My observation that the frontrunners in the marathon to Government House, Minna, is dominated by the children of the Old Powers, the power-brokering military overlords, whose children have now come of age, and ready to amplify their family name, pride and fortune in a changed world that seemed to have forgotten about them, was not a mischievous portrayal as countered, it’s my honest identification of the aspirants, especially the poster-child  of PDP, Umar Nasko, son of General Gado Nasko, and even the retreating Mohammed Babangida, whose father, former Head of State General Babangida, is reportedly unenthusiastic about his bid. In APC, the frontman is Abubakar Sani Bello, representing a Forbes-recognised family, and also son-in-law of former Head of State, General Abdulsalam Abubakar; his father, a former military Governor of Kano, Colonel Sani Bello, has been ranked among the 50 richest Africans.
The happiest dissenters may be the handlers of Mustapha Bello, who have insisted that their principal, who’s the younger brother of the Forbes-recognised entrepreneur, and uncle to the APC frontman Abubakar Sani Bello – not from a modest background, him too – shouldnt t have been categorised amongst the younger aspirants.

They argued that Mustapha Bello does not fit into my declaration that we’ve no marked progressives in the race, ignoring my definition of the progressive as “one previously involved, even if individually, in the struggles for liberation of the state”, not an emergency politician, not a politician who only appears in the space and in people’s consciousness only when he seeks an elective office. I compared our aspirants to Governor Aliyu, highlighting the latter’s advantages, which unsettled them more.

The reference to “credentials” in that of my occasional praises of Governor Aliyu was mistaken, by them, for just academic achievements, which may also favour Bello. Mine was actually a recognition of our governor’s pre-governorship achievements as a legislator, highflying bureaucrat and of course his PhD in Public Policy and Strategic Studies, which complemented his cultural responsibility as a title-holding, fanfare-sponsoring “man of the people”, an unofficial populist, as testified to, by witnesses of his aristocratic tendencies and largesse in the old Minna!

Yes, it’s not a praise of the man’s academic feats, and even though he’s favoured by the establishment, his political resilience isn’t even as remarkable as that of David Umaru who, unlike fellow serial aspirants, haven’t fizzled out or joined the winning PDP since defection, and has thus remained the soul of opposition politics, becoming a political activist, unlike Bello, in Niger State. To some local analysts in Minna, Bello’s emergence was regarded as Abuja’s covert intervention in our local politics, and that he emerged to frustrate the reelection bid of the then incumbent Governor Abdulkadir Kure. Though the zoning formula, which I don’t even endorse anyway, favours his senatorial district this term, Bello is morally unqualified to pursue his ambition on that pedestal having challenged aspirants from other zones in a past election, when it was the turn of Niger South (1999 – 2007). The next two terms of the next eight years are, by the designs of our power-brokering elite, for the people of Niger North of which all foremost aspirants are constituents.

In the case of Umar Nasko and Abubakar Bello and Mohammed Babangida, the last column wasn’t an attempt to criminalise their descents or fault their academic achievements, for they are representatives of a sidelined generation, a generation plugged into modern ideas, and waiting for more opportunities to establish the place of the youth in a country where the redemption of the people rests on the shoulders of an individual, one who’s already lived his years. So, my column wasn’t an attack of Umar Nasko. I only set out to advise his handlers to engage competent hands in managing his personality and ideas, for in spite of any shortcoming he’s just as qualified to vie as the rest of them.

We live in a country of deep-rooted political patriarchy where the ambitions of youthful aspirants are trivialised and mocked by fellow youths, having, over the years, been crushed to the lower rungs of our socio-political existence by a destructive gerontocracy. The youth may not be the answer for salvation of this dysfunctional system, but their audacity to vie in a system that doesn’t praise and their active participations in the power game, without being dismissed as too youthful, is a triumph for our generation.
So far, the lineup for the guber marathon is an amusing commentary on the biology of our politicians. While a people are celebrating the emergence of a 39-year-old Umar Nasko, being the youngest in the race, there is, in the race, a 73-year-old Senator Nuhu Aliyu, older than the fathers of the aspirants, older than General Babangida, older than Colonel Sani Bello, and, wait for it, born in the same year as Umar Nasko’s father. May God save us from us!