Yesterday, October 11, 2014, would have been an important day politically in Adamawa, one of the three states in the Northeast most ravaged by Boko Haram insurgency. The bye-election ordered by the Independent National Electoral Commission (INEC) after the impeachment of the Governor, Murtala Nyako, on July 15, ought to have held yesterday. But it didn’t.
If the election held, it would have been a straight fight between the ruling Peoples Democratic Party (PDP), whose candidate, Umaru Fintiri, was the Speaker of the state’s House of Assembly who led the PDP troops in sacking Nyako and took over as the acting governor and the opposition All Progressives Congress (APC), whose candidate, Senator Muhammad Jibrila Bindow, was already poised for a fight. It would have been the third major war of supremacy since the APC happened on the political scene. The two parties fought pitched electoral battles in Ekiti and Osun states recently.
But there was no bye-election because a Federal High Court, Abuja presided over by Justice Adeniyi Ademola ruled on Wednesday, October 8, that there will be none. But more importantly, the court sacked Fintiri, who became the acting governor after Nyako’s impeachment and had picked the PDP ticket to contest the now cancelled governorship bye-election.
The court further ordered that Nyako’s deputy, Bala James Ngilari, be sworn in as the substantive governor. And the judge’s reason for arriving at his conclusion was simple; the process that threw up Fintiri as the acting governor breached the Constitution and his governorship was, therefore, illegal.
In the heat of the impeachment battle, Fintiri read on the floor of the Assembly a resignation letter written to him by the embattled deputy governor and the letter was unanimously adopted by the lawmakers. So, when Nyako was sacked by the same lawmakers, his deputy was no longer there to take over as dictated by the Constitution having purportedly resigned and the Speaker stepped in.
But Section 306, sub-sections 1,2 and 5 of the Constitution of the Federal Republic of Nigeria (as amended) unambiguously stated that for such a resignation letter to be valid, it must be addressed to the governor and not the Speaker as was purportedly done. As at the time Fintiri usurped the governor’s constitutionally assigned role, Nyako had not been impeached and was therefore still in office.
The Adamawa saga raises some fundamental issues. Did Ngilari actually write the resignation letter? If he did, was it voluntary? If not, was he tricked, blackmailed or forced into writing the letter? Did Ngilari, a lawyer, deliberately address the letter to the Speaker, knowing the implication? Was it a tactical move on his part, a classical case of he who fights and runs away, living to fight another day? Was Fintiri, the chief lawmaker in the state, so blinded by his greed for power not to see the trap being set for him when he accepted the deputy governor’s resignation letter?
When Nyako defected to the opposition APC with four other PDP governors, Ngilari, his deputy, refused to join him just as his colleague in Sokoto Muktar, Shagari, refused to hitch a ride in the defection bandwagon with his principal, Aliyu Wamakko.
So, he was to that extent a loyal party member. In PDP, “loyalty” is everything and is always handsomely rewarded. So, when the powers that be both in Abuja and Adamawa decided that Nyako must go, Ngilari ought to have instantly become the heir apparent. So, why was he herded into the same impeachment guillotine with his boss from whom he had been estranged on account of his loyalty to PDP? The fact that a deputy governor, who in Nigeria’s very peculiar leadership structure is seen as very inconsequential, refused to jump ship with the almighty governor is the height of insurbodination. So, rather than being slammed with the same impeachment threat, Ngilari would have been, ab-initio, the primary beneficiary when Nyako was served the political hemlock.
The fact that he was forced to resign before Nyako’s impeachment may have been a consequence of two factors. First, the greed of Fintiri and second, the most virulent of the country’s fault-lines, religion, became an issue. The powers that be who were thoroughly fed up with Nyako wanted to shove him off his high political perch but they wanted him replaced by another Muslim. Ngilari is a Christian and they didn’t want the Abubakar Atiku/Boni Haruna saga of 1999 where Atiku’s elevation to the position of Vice President after winning the governorship election in Adamawa cleared the way for Boni Haruna’s governorship for eight years.
So, the idea was for Ngilari’s political career to be sacrificed on the altar of religious expediency and the Speaker became the joker in the political chess game. The idea was for the Speaker, a Muslim, to take over the reigns of power for the three months provided by the Constitution and supervise the bye-election, where he will not be a candidate but work to ensure that the “desired outcome” was achieved. For his services, he was handsomely rewarded but the conspirators didn’t reckon with his greed. Having tasted executive power, Fintiri could not wean himself of the allures of office, hence his decision to contest the bye-election.
So, what happened on Wednesday was more of a judicial coup against Fintiri than “democracy in action” as enthused in certain quarters and it has the imprimatur of the Abuja political mafia. Fintiri, the political rascal, has been taught some bitter political lessons. His political career may well be over in PDP.
So, there was no bye-election yesterday. Ngilari, a Christian, will be governor until elections are held in 2015. And nothing stops him from contesting the election next year if he so wishes. Six months is enough time in Nigeria to build impregnable political war chest. He has already pledged his loyalty to President Goodluck Jonathan and the fabled largest political party in sub-Saharan Africa – PDP.
In the game of wits and intrigues that is Adamawa political struggle, whether it is the successful impeachment of Nyako, the upstaging of Fintiri or the ascendancy of Ngilari, Jonathan’s political sagacity is evident. He has proved himself a master political tactician. He seems to have all the aces.
And yet, some insist he is clueless.