Lawan: Adamu Works the Magic Again
Ordinarily, there should be a strong connection between having hoary hair and having honour. That explains why, in a community, whenever there are naughty issues to be resolved, the elders are invited to intervene, believing that the elders will speak the truth and ensure justice is done.
But consistently, we seem to be seeing the opposite of this virtue in the barely three-month-old leadership of the National Chairman of the All Progressives Congress (APC), Senator Abdullahi Adamu. He was elected only last March. In three months, Senator Adamu has practically shaken the table several times.
Barely a month after he was elected, we suddenly saw photographs of heavily-loaded Ghana-Must-Go bags in his house, while he held discussion with one of the presidential aspirants at the time. Nobody could say for sure what the content of the bags were. It was however enough to say it was quite suggestive of something ignoble. But somehow, the story was managed away from sustained public scrutiny.
The jarred explanation was that Adamu had just hired a personal photographer who was “too zealous” and eager to demonstrate competence.
The next time we heard from Adamu was the rounds of postponements of pre-primary election activities, one of the reasons the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) was compelled to shift the deadline for party primaries by nine days. This was after he had disorganised the zoning arrangement of the party which had earlier exclusively zoned the party’s presidential slot to the Southern part of the country.
When Adamu came on board, he managed to convince President Mohammadu Buhari that the position should be thrown open. That was how and when the likes of the Senate President, Ahmad Lawan, the Jigawa State governor, Mohammed Badaru and former Zamfara State governor, Ahmed Sani Yerima, all got into the presidential race, thus confusing the polity.
Perhaps what was far more intriguing was how, few days to the presidential primaries, early this month, Senator Adamu suddenly announced that President Buhari had endorsed Ahmad Lawan as the presidential consensus candidate of the party. The Adamu announcement came against the backdrop of the resolution of the Northern Governors’ forum that, in pursuit of fairness and equity, power should shift to the south, thus a Southerner should emerge as the party’s presidential candidate.
But Adamu was bent on complicating the process. He unilaterally announced that Lawan, from Yobe State, a far-flung North East state, had been endorsed by Mr President. Alas, it was a lie. A Black lie!
It took the determination of all the APC governors, who drove to Adamu’s house to confront him, to discover that the National Chairman was merely flying a kite. A dangerous kite. A kite that could scatter the party.
Many believe that the matter was allowed to die because it was damn too close to the party’s presidential primary.
As it happened, the APC presidential primary was held between June 6 and 8. Ahmad Lawan was among the thirteen aspirants who contested the election. He Polled 152 votes, to come fourth.
The Presidential primary came last. All other primaries for elective offices had held before June 6. That of the senatorial contest held on May 21, according to the INEC timetable.
Perhaps in anticipation of the success of the “coup” he planned with Senator Adamu, Lawan had concentrated his efforts on the presidential race.
We however now hear that he had secretly arranged a “placeholder” ( a new political lexicon) candidate for his Yobe-north senatorial district. The man who emerged as the APC senatorial candidate for Yobe-North (when the primary was legally and openly held) is Bashir Machina, having scored 289 votes.
But Lawan, determined to eat his cake and still have it, had arranged that Machina will stand in the gap for him, in case the presidential plot does not work out, then he would revert to take up the senatorial ticket. As it happened, the presidential plan failed, and so Lawan headed back home to take over from Machina. But the latter believed Lawan came too late. He has already begun to enjoy and savour the status of a senatorial candidate. He was no longer willing to step down for Lawan.
But Lawan will not hear any of that “trash”. He is determined and desperate to retain his seat in the National Assembly, 23 years after he had been in the parliament, by hook or by crook. Many are wondering whether the parliamentarian representation in that district is the birthright of Ahmad Lawan. If he had done 23 full years of unbroken representation, is it not just fair and equitable to allow others to also represent the district in the upper House?
However, Mr Machina will not bulge. He insists he remains the APC senatorial candidate for Yobe North and that he is not going to surrender his certificate.
Hear him: “I did not withdraw for anybody, and will not withdraw because that is a matter of right. Removing my name, I consider it very undemocratic, illegal and of course, inhuman”
But despite his insistence, Adamu is back with his electoral magic again. He wants to wangle Ahmad Lawan’s name into the list, even when Lawan did not contest the senatorial election in his Yobe State. He has in fact, removed Machina’s name and unilaterally replaced it with Ahmad Lawan’s and submitted same to INEC, in clear breach of the law, propriety and the ethos of justice. Worse still, Adamu is now claiming that Lawan contested the Senatorial primary in Yobe north. Really? Who conducted that primary wherein Lawan emerged? Who were his fellow contestants? What did he score?
Adamu, it appears, is determined to be an old and irresponsible liar. He is a lawyer. But must he also be a liar?
Confronted by journalists in Ekiti, he described the replacement of Machina’s name with Lawan’s as “negativities”. What does he mean by that?
What happened to Lawan also happened to Godswill Akpabio. If Akpabio’s name will not be supplanted for the real person who won the primary contest in Akwa Ibom, why will Lawan’s own be different.
Gov Bala Mohammed of Bauchi, who also wanted to run for the presidency under the PDP had a similar plot, but was smart enough to discontinue his presidential race and got the placeholder to step down for him before the deadline.
Adamu should not be allowed to damage the APC.
At nearly 76, he should be a go-to elder when there is a problem in the party, not one to be generating and spreading infamy and mischief like a social media activist.