POLITICS TODAY

By muazu Abubakar Maigini

Before now, there was the growing fear that no state governor in Northern Nigeria has numerous political rivals, each as vicious as cobra than Governor Nasir Elrufai of Kaduna State. By the end of the year 2018, all his political enemies were either on the run, or struggling to wriggle out of political oblivion. The political master-stroke of Elrufai was sending them out to political retirement. Let us examine the classes of politicians and others that erroneously thought that a gan-up would pay.

By this weekend, we shall gracefully celebrate Elrufai’s second coming and pity his political rivals whose gang-up would have been reduced to ashes on the democratic space.

The first class of those that earlier ganged-up against Elrufai for fours years but failed are the top guns of the old order in Kaduna politics, who were familiar with feeding fat on tax-payers’ money at the expense of development projects. This group is angry with Elrufai’s government because free cash gift has given way to infrastructural revolution, educational reforms, civil service transformation and empowerment programmes. This was followed closely by the establishment of new, powerful agencies of government.

The second class consisted of those who felt so bad that Elrufai has not appointed their cronies into juicy positions in his government. They felt hurt for not having their way as they did in the immediate past, when a Kaduna State governor was at the beck and call of “powerful” interests.

The third class of Elrufai’s antagonists were those young unemployed youths that terrorized their neighborhoods antagonists are those young un-employable and unemployed youths that terrorized their neighborhoods, whose gangsterism is now unheard of.

The fourth set and equally dangerous group was that of overly-ambitious politicians, who would stop at nothing to dent the person and image of his government as an orchestrated stepping-stone to the seat of governorship by 2019. These marauding politicians want power by hook or by crook, out of the hands of the no-nonsense governor at the end of his first tenure of office. They unleashed millions of naira in a massive anti-Elrufai media campaign – taking advantage of other instruments of mass communication like the social media. From their comfort zones, they concoted mischievous texts messages and even videos for whatsApp chat groups. In this group of propagandists, were serving senators, three of whom will be on their way to political retirement beginning from the next two days.

The combined goal of these groups of Elrufai antagonists was to spend a lot more, to ensure that any policy issue state governor or even gets twisted in order to create suspicion and discontent against the governor, ahead of their schemigs for this year’s election. They have to change their series of negative narratives at every turn as Elrufai demystified  even their paymasters.

In their miscalculations for attracting support and sympathy ahead of 2019, the elite group of Elrufai’s antagonists had extended their infantile strategy to enlist the additional cash-backing of a former Vice President, who has since squandered his political goodwill and transformed from Northern Nigeria’s biggest political liability into a democratic spent force.

It is evident now in this governorship election year of  2019, that only projects would speak for any candidate seeking the peoples votes and any candidate with mere records of political inconsistency, media propaganda designed to create bad blood and instability instead of projects, would have himself to blame. Elrufai’s refusal to join issues with these divisive forces signposts the doom awaiting his antagonists in just a few days from now. This is big lesson in political sagacity and strategic thinking. Best of luck to the masses’ most trusted political ally.

Maigini is a member of Buhari/Elrufai Support Organization (BESO). He wrote this article from Kaduna