BINDOW AND ADAMAWA STATE HOUSE OF ASSEMBLY
Since its inauguration, the Eighth Adamawa State House of Assembly has enjoyed relative peace and smooth romance with the state executive. On Monday, September 25, 2017 everything changed. The impeachment of some principal officers on that day was a resounding political blow to Governor Mohammed Umaru Jibrila Bindow. The deputy speaker, Peter Sunday; majority leader, Musa Mahmud; deputy majority leader, Mutawalli Mohammed and minority leader, Justina Nkom were affected and Emmanuel Tsamdu, representing Madagali as new deputy speaker and Hassan Burguma representing Hong as new majority leader of the House, including Abubakar Isa as deputy majority leader while Lamsumbani Dill as minority leader were elected as respective replacements. It was simply a smooth takeover of the house by the loyalists of former governor Murtalla Nyako and his allies.
It was a surprise that speaker Kabiru Mijinyawa survived the ‘coup d’état’. Notwithstanding his survival, he will operate under the control of the ‘majority’ opposition group in control and this is where Mr. Bindow will feel the impact.
Before the storm occurred, the Adamawa state House of Assembly had two groups: an eight-member opposition group led by member representing Gombi constituency, Rufa’i Umar and 17-member group loyal to the governor led by speaker Kabiru Mijinyawa.
The genesis of the crisis is tripod – poor leadership and alienation of other members by the impeached principal officers; governor Bindow’s bossy approach in dealing with members, and pure politics. The Rufa’i Umar group took the opportunity of the issues and won the heart of nine aggrieved members, thus forming a majority 17-memebr group who engineered the impeachment of the principal officers. In a nutshell, the Nyako group now has 17 remembers on its side, while governor Bindow is left with only eight members who may be publicly loyal to him; but will be unhappy with the way he is treating the house. This should be highly frightening to the governor, knowing the intricate working of the Adamawa state House of Assembly which goes in tandem with the general local politics of the state.
Looking at things from the political perspective, Governor Bindow has not been fair enough to the members in considering their political needs. For instance, since 2015, the house has approved constituency projects in the 2015, 2016 and 2017 budgets, but the last time the members got constituency project allowance was only in 2015. Equally, the impeached members were also penny wise and pound foolish as there were allegations that all the principal officers including the speaker Kabir Mijinywa were like puppets to governor Bindow. In fact, the impeached deputy majority leader Mutawalli Mohammed was alleged to be in the habit of leaking everything going on in the house to the governor for pecuniary gains from Mr. Bindow, whom many close associates claim to be stingy.
Some pundits are of the view there is a correlation between good legislation and members’ level of education. The Adamawa House of Assembly is young; but has a poor level of education. Of the 25 members, only five are graduates. In fact, Governor Bindow is lucky; the only barrister in the House shares the same constituency with him. Looking at the whole scenario, Governor Bindow appears ‘self-assured’ in the murky waters of Adamawa politics, because he thinks, as long as he has the former Vice-President Atiku Abubakar by his side- most political opponents can easily be dealt with thanks to Atiku’s immense war chest and history of successes in political legal battles that easily scares off his opponents. However, where the challenge lies for Mr. Bindow is that he reads the doctrine of politics in a poor; rural and salary-dependent state, up-sidedown,.
In fairness to him, the governor is doing well in terms of infrastructure development. But Mr. Bindow has also failed woefully, notably in the political arena: he made a political blunder in his failure to manage the widening division within his own party and the growing disconnect between him and some political bigwigs in the state, and now the powerful House of Assembly has joined the league of the opposition within. Zayyad I. Muhammad, Jimeta, Adamawa State