Amana Online - Articles - Barka Da Zuwa

Of DPP, Elections Tribunal and Mercenary writers

Dahiru Maishanu

Sokoto

moyeejoh@yahoo.com

The outcome of the gubernatorial elections tribunal in Sokoto has generated a lot of comments and rekindled a familiar terrain in the politics of the state. The opposition especially, has gone back to its old ways of using mercenary writers to not only condemn the outcome of the case, but to also castigate the personas of the members of the tribunal. This has once again brought back many salient issues that we have been commentating on over the years.

I have written before that the concoction called the DPP ( Democratic Peoples Party) was a hurriedly built sand castle that would not stand the test of time and would self-extinct sooner than later. I wrote this for various reasons that were both obviously immediate as well as those that were distant but real at that point in time. With the elections over, and the rancour over the outcome of them, I stand to be vindicated that the concoction has begun its descent to the land of oblivion, irrelevance and finally, unsolicited annihilation.

The DPP as an association or a political party has as its biggest problem in its leadership. It is bereft of a sound and educated leadership in the person of its leader and presidential candidate. It is also captured by what I call leader-arrogant disposition and follower-ignorant convergence. This is a situation akin to the proverbial country of the blind where one eyed man becomes explicitly the king. This is the worst situation a political party can find itself in and expect to survive.

The DPP has channelled all its resources in trying to upturn the election of Dr. Aliyu Magatakarda Wamakko as Governor of Sokoto State through various means. The party went to the elections tribunal challenging the elections of the Governor and had its case thrown out for lack of merit. Next, the party started following a familiar terrain by sponsoring some faceless writers to be writing rather unprofessionally on the verdict of the elections tribunal.

I’m not prepared to discuss further, the issue of the court case concerning Governor Aliyu Magatakarda of Sokoto State and the defeated DPP gubernatorial candidate in the state for simple reasons bordering on the law. Since the case has been thrown to the appeal court by the same DPP castigating the entire judicial establishment in Nigeria for awarding the first round of the case to Governor Wamakko, I shall wait to see both teams argue their cases in appellate court.

However, from what the DPP is saying about the verdict of the Sokoto tribunal, they seem to be the only voice saying that the judiciary in Nigeria is not living up to expectations. Ironically, while they are condemning the verdict of the election tribunal, they are at the same time ‘mopping’ up energy to ‘bribe’ the appellate court through newspaper write–ups attempting to feed the appellate court with what they think should be the final outcome of the case without even waiting for the hearing to begin.

By these desperate actions, the DPP has already shown the whole country where it stands in the case; it is either victory comes their way or all the statute books of the federation of Nigeria including the constitution must be re-written. The courts must give the Sokoto State Government House to Alhaji Maigari Dingyadi or all the ‘writers’ of the land would be hired to interpret the law according to the dictum of the DPP.

A horde of lawyers and an army of unprincipled journalists are feeding fat on the struggle by the DPP to survive despite obvious ailments and weaknesses. The ‘journalists’ especially have been frantically writing to condemn the verdict of the sokoto elections tribunal and calling the learned members of the tribunal names for doing their jobs.

While one cannot blame the former for answering their professional calls, the latter should be condemned for selling their conscience and bastardising the noble profession of journalism. It is a shame to see some renowned columnists allowing themselves to be used by those that are not as half educated and half exposed as they are for ‘chicken feed’. These ‘renowned’ journalists have consciously damaged the reputation of their papers after having erased their personal, hard earned, enviable places in the profession with the sharpness of the razor blade.

Political parties’ spread, membership and number of elected political office holders all account for the continued stay of any political party in the register of INEC as a registered political party. As soon as one or more of these criteria seize to be in the party, that party looses its relevance and focus. The only natural thing to do at thing juncture is to unwind and disperse. A typical example here is the Alliance for Democracy, AD which has now become a little tribal umbrella for some old brigade politicians in the south-west.

From any where you look at the predicament of the DPP, their best chance was to keep Sokoto and use it as launching pad for national politics. Unfortunately, arrogance and insensitive leadership coupled with unnecessary culpability in religious crisis caused them the state and also sowed the seed of hatred for them from the elites and the traditional as well as the religious leaders in the state. These ultimately culminated into a sound defeat at the polls for them.

It is therefore laughable for a group with all these ‘ailments’ to think that the people are now behind them after such a reign of a ‘Katrina-like’ catastrophe and emasculation of both the powerful and the masses. It should start to down on them that the people of sokoto have already exposed them to the world by rejecting them at the polls. It is also clear that if elections are to take place again, they will be even more comprehensively defeated in the gubernatorial bout which will undoubtedly throw the party into the final oblivion mentioned earlier.

The tactic of hiring spin doctors to spurn on learned judges will not take the party anywhere. The Bafarawa administration did that to almost every group in sokoto including the revered traditional and religious institutions and ended up with a battered face in the hands of the electorates. By the time the their ignoble fate is finally handed over to them, the only option will be to remember their preoccupation prior to 1999 so that at least the leaders would get a soft landing into a familiar ground where mistakes would be minimal.

It still baffles me to see why INEC has still not started the process of deregistering some political parties in this nation that lack the necessary requirements to continue to be political parties in the country. This will save all of us from unnecessary rantings and dust-raising by parties that are even on paper not worth to be called their names. It is equally baffling to see the EFCC still ignoring the call of the good people of Sokoto to come and investigate the ‘missing’ 13 Billion naira in Sokoto.

The process of extinction for the Bafarawa Group started even before the DPP was formed when the cookie in the group started crumbling in 2004. The cookie finally crumbled when Dr. Aliyu Magatakarda Wamakko left the government and took control of the ANPP machinery in the state. The struggle became fiat-accompli on the 14^th of April, 2007 when the gubernatorial elections took place and Wamakko emerged victorious.

That was how the culture of silence was finally broken in Sokoto and those that didn’t read the signs clearly were caught pants down. That was how the group got finally exposed and pomposity and crass arrogance was shown the way out of Sokoto. Welcome to the seat of the caliphate where knowledge always triumphs over ignorance.