Daily Trust

Nyako impeachmen­t Why Adamawa APC elders failed to save Nyako Former Form governor of Adamawa State, Murtala Nyako, who w was impeached on Tuesday, seemed to have trudged on all alone while his travail lasted. What happened?

- By Andrew Agbese

Governor Rabiu Musa Kwankwaso of Kano was among the first to move to Yola in May, when the plot to impeach the then governor of Adamawa State, Murtala Nyako was thickening.

It had to take the interventi­on of what Adamawa politician­s refer to as an ‘outsider’ for the state legislator­s to sheathe their swords albeit temporaril­y.

For a governor who has been on the saddle for over seven years, it was curious that majority of the governor’s party men and other elders from the state were not willing to stake their necks for him.

Inside sources say this is because the Nyako as governor has had brushes with most of the stakeholde­rs and has not left any one in doubt about his preference­s for a successor.

Due to the manner he came into office which was largely due to the influence of former President Olusegun Obasanjo, Nyako was said to have continued in a way that clearly spells the fact that he does not owe his ascension to office to anybody and does owe anyone an explanatio­n on how he runs things.

This is said to be what led to the gang up against him when as a member of the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP) he fell out with the PDP former national chairman, Alhaji Bamanga Tukur.

Nyako fell out with Tukur over the former’s bid to take control of the party structure in the state but the PDP national chairman also lost his position due to the fire set by Nyako and six of his colleagues before most of them later left the PDP.

Pundits say even as there were barrages of complaints over how Nyako was running the show in the PDP, he failed to change tactic when he moved to the APC as he wanted to decide who should succeed him as well as take total control of the party.

It was not long before party stalwarts he met in the APC like Buba Marwa and Markus Gundiri later dumped the party for him and moved to the PDP.

With his impeachmen­t on Tuesday, the chances of controllin­g the structure of the party in the state as well as that of deciding his successor seems to have slipped from the hands of the former governor as he is now left to grapple with the tasks of how to clear himself from the charges leveled against him and how to challenge his impeachmen­t in court.

It was not a coincidenc­e that those who had wanted to assist in saving the former governor’s neck were from outside the state.

They included former Presidents Olusegun Obasanjo and Ibrahim Babangida.

But both were said to have been moved more by the bond of being military colleagues than out of conviction that the man deserved to serve the less than 10 months remaining to complete his second term.

The only known prominent Adamawa politician that offered to intervene was former vice president Atiku Abubakar.

But observers say even the former vice president was moved out of the greater implicatio­n the plot would have on his party in 2015 rather than any other considerat­ion.

At the end, the type of commitment Atiku gave was what somebody described as “neither here nor there.”

Several times, Atiku was said to have given an indication that he would meet personally with the leaders of the House of Assembly only for him to send representa­tives in his stead.

Reading between the lines, it would appear that Atiku was expecting Nyako to publicly invite him to intervene and acknowledg­e his role before his moves his arsenals.

But the former governor was said to have relied on his contacts in Abuja especially with his former military colleagues to do the magic for him.

He was said to have angered many in the APC when he absolved President Goodluck Jonathan from the plot.

Analysts say if Atiku had been serious about saving Nyako’s neck he would have been able to get at least two to three of the House members to back down from the impeachmen­t, a situation which would have slowed down the process.

But up to the time the panel sat and sent its report to the House, Atiku is said to have maintained his long distance representa­tive interventi­on as many have advised him to allow the governor to stew in his own juice since it is the belief that Nyako believes he could go solo and survive every predicamen­t.

Nyako was said to have denied many of the party leaders as well as the former vice president a say in the compositio­n of the state structure of the party and was more consumed about choosing his successor without showing any commitment to Atiku’s presidenti­al project and at the end what is said of the “man who eats alone” turned out be his case as he ‘died’ alone.

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