Nyako: A post mortem
For the civil servants of Adamawa State, their sleepless nights are finally over. Governor Murtala Nyako has finally been impeached and only a miracle will #bring him back to Dougirei.
It had been two weeks of intense gerrymandering. From the speculation that some legislators were ferried to Akwa Ibom State to have their palms greased for the impeachment exercise to Nyako’s brazen appearance at the National Council of State meeting, where he was said to have been, to seek the president’s intervention or permission to return to the Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), a report which was later denied, culminating in the action-packed cat-and-mouse game between the admiral and the postman, all provided pensive frenzy.
But like a fugitive, Nyako’s flight of fancy is all over. It is also all over for Abdulaziz Murtala Nyako, the son, who abandoned his naval career to return to Adamawa in search of power. For father and son, therefore, it is the end of a beautiful dream. Some Adamawa indigenes had opposed Nyako’s impeachment for the simple fact that it was Aso Rock-induced. Two wrongs, they argue, do not make a right. But even as this thinking may be right, it also lacks objectivity. To the extent that Nyako’s handling of the public’s trust cannot be justified, he must go. In a million years to come, only a fool can proudly associate with Nyako’s actions as governor.
The impeachment charges apart, a picture of Adamawa under Nyako brings tears; workers have not been paid for months; the state assembly was cordoned off to deny it regular democratic proceedings; and contracts were allegedly awarded to family members, most of whom do not understand the need to execute the jobs, as a result of which Yola, the state capital, remains one of the most backward and most neglected cities in the country. In this overall view, Nyako was simply bad news.
There are those, on the other hand, who argue that Nyako is only being witch hunted on primordial sentiments, religious irredentism and bigotry by those who see nothing good in the Fulani stock and even think worse of Islam. This group is populated mostly by Nyako-apologists who try, tooth and nail, to reinvent the wheel. But regardless of how hard they try, the evidence on ground, at least in Adamawa State, disappoints them. Adamawa is perhaps the other than incompetence and corruption are simply playing the ostrich. He deserved to go.
The bottom line in this absurd drama is that Murtala Nyako rode to power on the crest of a sound public appeal. He was once fanatically loved and admired by the same people who are jubilating over his removal today. When Nyako came to power, the tribal and religious colour-bars were nowhere. I remember his rerun election of April 2008 against Ibrahim Bapetel who was then backed by Atiku and Boni Haruna with this fond anecdote. Atiku had arrived at his polling booth to vote. One of Nyako’s sympathizers, a young man, perhaps in his twenties, brought out a huge mango and started shouting “Adamawa Sai Baba Mai Mangoro”. He shouted so hard that he got on Atiku’s nerves.
To justify their presence around the former vice president, a group of ACN thugs descended on him with a mission to get the mango out of the young man’s hands and out of Atiku’s view. But they couldn’t. I had to personally instruct a mobile policeman to restrain the mob from the Nyako die-hard, who again shouted in victory as he was led away, displaying his “beloved” mango, symbolizing Nyako. Atiku’s thugs could only watch in disappointment.
I am sure that the same guy would not touch Nyako’s mango with a mile long pole today. And that is a moral in all that has happened to Adamawa in the last eight years. Nyako presided over the most primitive form of administration in Nigeria. He ran the state like a fiefdom. He was the state and the rest of his family stuck their noses in the air. But the party is now over for the Nyakos. As to whether or not Aso Rock was behind his removal is, to many, immaterial. Nyako had been running until he finally could not hide. It is time for him to taste his own medicine.